Was Diana Ross leaving the Supremes a terrible career move?

I can't remember- 40 years ago. It would change month to month.

 

Good for Diana ... bad for Mary & Flo.

 

You can hear this on the live Farewell album (never reissued). Side three is a loooong version of "Aquarius" with Diana interacting with celebs in the audience...Lord knows what Mary and Cindy were even doing at that point.

The story is that Berry Gordy fought against having Jean Terell replace Diana, and basically forgot about the Supremes when they insisted on having her. So it's impressive that they had as many post-Diana hits as they did.

 

Again with that stupid song...LOL! Everyone figured that tune for a hit and recorded it. No clue why. It's totally unremarkable. This has always been a head-scratcher to me.

Ed

 

Berry likely forgot about the Supremes when Diana left. He wouldn't have been on board with anyone else. It's well-documented that Berry had a thing for Diana so he was only interested for her.

Ed

 

All of those tunes have been lost to time. The only Supremes tunes people think of were written by HDH and feature Diana. Those were the halcyon days of the Supremes.

Ed

 

Diana 'only had 5 number one hits'? Most acts would be delighted with that figure, especially after already having had so many hit songs.

I personally think that leaving was a great decision; she was able to establish herself as a solo star throughout the 70's and 80's, gaining fans like my Mother, who was too young to follow the Supremes, but who loved Diana's solo work.

I don't think that the Supremes would have had another 5 number 1 hits had she stayed.

 

Flo had already left the group by then.

 

True, but he wanted Syreeta Wright to step in, and he clearly had long-term interest in her career.

 

The problem with this thread is that Diana Ross, the Supremes AND James Brown are being judged by the pop charts. You're totally forgetting the SOUL charts, which showed JB and the Diana-less Supremes a little more love. Especially James Brown - for the first half of the seventies, he ruled black radio with an iron fist.

No offense, folks, but Diana Ross in the 70s and 80s was basically a black Barbra Streisand. Total megastar. Maybe the Supremes got the raw end of that deal, but not Diana!

 

I always overlook the R&B charts simply because it was solely limited to Soul music. The competition was slim compared to the Pop charts where it's multiple genres competing for the top spot.

 

She had an incredible voice and was criminally ignored save for "With You I'm Born Again". If he had an interest in her career, he had a funny way of showing it through the shoddy marketing that bogged down her career.

Ed

 

I can vouch for that. I first began buying records in 1970 and the record that started my whole interest in music was "Sex Machine" by James Brown. I never once heard it played on radio, I discovered it through it being played on the student jukebox at school. Same goes for all his subsequent singles through 1972-never heard them on radio.

 

I didn't know it was so high on the charts-I bought the 45 circa January 1971. It was a Supremes/Four Tops record. I didn't hear the Ike & Tina version until many years later.

 

Yes.

 

Obviously your prerogative, but sometimes things were big hits on the soul/r&b chart but didn't cross over simply because they were "too urban" for most mainstream top 40 radio stations. There are some great tracks that were big hits on the soul chart that either didn't cross over at all or had very modest success on the Hot 100.

 

I'll bet that if you tuned into the soul station, you would have heard a lot more JB than you did. Between 1970-76, James Brown records were just as important to black radio as the transmitters. That's where some of my earliest musical education came from, and I can verify that the Godfather of Soul wasn't exactly invisible.

Even so, you really have to consider the R&B charts when dealing with R&B artists. There were a whole lot of major movements in the black world that were just minor tremors on the white side. When you judge them only by the pop hits, that's only telling half the story. Same goes with country & western. Even though Buck Owens only made the pop Top 40 once, it doesn't feel right calling him a one-hit wonder.

 

This! So much great music showed up only on the R&B charts. To ignore it is to miss a lot of the really amazing stuff. No real crossover was happening of any note until about 1991. The good R&B started crossing over Pop at that point but until then, everything was very compartmentalized. You would have missed out tremendously if you weren't paying attention to both charts.

Ed

 

Things came a long way from then. Songs like "Trap Queen" and "Uptown" (along with most Hip-Hop) sound urban as hell and still did/do extremely well on the Pop charts.
I'm guessing things changed when Rap arrived on the scene. That "Urban" sound will always be popular with the teens because it's edgy and that will always be cool.

 

I think the OP was speaking relative to the success of the Supremes when he used the phrase "only" five no. 1 records. Remember that the Supremes once had five no. 1 records in nine months, so there is really no comparison in terms of chart success. Diana's only no. 1 album came as a member of the Supremes (one of my all time favorite albums, the mostly-filler but all killer Supremes a Go Go). I think his question was more along the lines of whether she might have achieved even greater success as the lead vocalist of the Supremes in the 70's, battling it out at the top of the charts with acts like the Bee Gees and Donna Summer. My gut tells me no. Then again, I doubt that anyone (even Barry's mom) could have predicted that the Bee Gees would be the top musical act of 1978. So, you never know.

 

It would have been a terrible move if Diana Ross had stayed with the Supremes. It wasn't the same without Florence Ballard anyway, those later Supremes albums were a mess. Diana Ross basically just singing with the Andantes anyway after a certain point.

Yeah, leaving the Supremes was a great career move, dare I say one of the best.

 

One of their best albums were one of their last albums...

 

Diana actually has 6 #1 hits, not 5 and thats more than most artists could hope for. I reckon the Supremes were irrelevant by the mid 70's where as Diana maintained her relevance and popularity well into the 80's. It was a great move.

 

You're right. (I left out the duet with Lionel) It was a slow burn and struggle for her in the 70's.

 

Not in the UK at least. She was also terribly unhappy with The Supremes who had all turned against her by then anyway