Happy 68th birthday to the Supreme Mary Wilson!

By Greg Hernandez on Mar 6, 2012 10:37 am | Comments (1) |

SUPREME LADY: It was more than 50 years ago that a young girl named Mary Wilson formed a singing group with her friends Diana Ross and Florence Ballard.

They went on to become The Supremes, the greatest girl group of all time.

The Supremes took a few years to reach No. 1 with 1964’s Where Did Our Love Go, but once they were on top, they stayed there with an astounding 12 No. 1 hits, including Baby Love, Stop! In the Name of Love and You Can’t Hurry Love.

With worldwide fame, the trio had adjusted to early growing pains such as Ballard being replaced by Ross as lead singer. The arrangement, publicly at least, seemed to work well for a good five years before Ballard – depending on who you believe – either quit or was pushed out of the group for unprofessional behavior. She was replaced by Cindy Birdsong and the group was rechristened Diana Ross and the Supremes.

This all kind of sounds like a movie called Dreamgirls, doesn’t it? Mary has mixed feelings about the obvious similarities.

“It’s a piece of work, a piece of art,” Mary told me in an interview we did in 2009. “Anytime you have art, and it’s good, you have to acknowledge it. However, it was not the Supremes story. Whoever wrote it was inspired by the Supremes, they used our images. “That’s OK, but if you’re going to write about someone, you should say it’s them. It’s not plagiarism, and yet it is. I’ve always been on the fence. If anything was closest to reality, if would be the (Effie) character – a singer so good who didn’t fit the image. It was kind of eerie. And yet, it wasn’t really Florence.”

I love Mary and have interviewed her a couple of times. Still, I turn into kind of a dork when I see her because to me, she’s like one of The Beatles. We chatted a bit when I saw her again at an event back in 2010 and she posed for a picture with me (see left). It was all I could do to not ask her to do the Stop! pose from Stop! In the Name of Love.

At 68, Mary is still as glamorous as ever and she has written two best-selling memoirs: Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme about her years traveling the world with Diana Ross and Florence Ballard (and later Cindy Birdsong) and Supreme Faith about the post-Ross Supremes who continued on until 1977.

I asked Mary if there is a third book in store and she said: “Yes. But it’s a long time from now.”

We can wait. Everyone will want all the details of how a reunion tour of The Supremes fell apart in 2000 and bad blood resurfaced between Mary and Diana.

Meanwhile, Mary continues to perform all around the world and has won raves for the cabaret show she has performed at major venues in New York and Los Angeles.

Happy Birthday to this Motown legend!

Here are some of Mary’s solo performances so you can see she can do a lot more than sing background!