The Supremes A’ Go-Go

Eddie’s Attic | April 11, 2012 | Doors: 6:30pm, Show 8:00PM |  TIckets: $10 Online $12 Door

The Supremes, American pop-soul vocal group whose tremendous popularity with a broad audience made its members among the most successful performers of the 1960s and the flagship act of Motown Records. The principal members of the group were Diana Ross , Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson, and Cindy Birdsong.

Not only were the Supremes the Motown label’s primary crossover act, they also helped change the public image of African Americans during the civil rights era. With their sequined evening gowns and the sophisticated pop-soul swing given them by the songwriting-production team ofBrian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland from 1964 to 1967, the Supremes were the idealized look and sound of the “integrated Negro.” Indeed, the youth of America learned many of its first lessons about racial equality from teen magazines that documented every hyperglamourized move the Supremes made as they went from topping the pop chart to appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show” to sold-out as Vegas, Nevada, bookings.

Their story began humbly enough when a group of working-class girls from Detroit’s Brewster public housing project formed a singing group called the Primettes, their name derived from their sister-act association with the Primes, a forerunner of the Temptations. The details of the group’s formation (namely, who came first) have been disputed, but, from a series of permutations of five principals (including, initially, Betty McGlown), a quartet emerged that comprised Ballard, Barbara Martin, Ross, and Wilson. After recording briefly with Lupine Records, the quartet signed with Berry Gordy’s Motown Records in 1960. They changed their name to the Supremes before releasing their first Motown single in 1961, and upon the subsequent departure of Martin the remaining trio [...read more]