Vocalist Mary Wilson, who co-founded Supremes at the age of 15 on a housing estate in Detroit and remained with the famous Motown Records trio until its dissolution in 1977, died Monday night at her Las Vegas home. She was 76 years old.
Wilson’s longtime publicist, Jay Schwartz, reported that she died suddenly. The circumstances of his death were not immediately revealed. Funeral services will be private because of COVID, he said, but there will be a public memorial later this year.
“I was extremely shocked and saddened to learn of the death of an important member of the Motown family, Mary Wilson of the Supreme,” said Berry Gordy in a statement late on Monday. “Supremes have always been known as ‘Motown girlfriends’. Mary, along with Diana Ross and Florence Ballard, came to Motown in the early 1960s. After an unprecedented series of hits in the. 1, reservations for television and nightclubs, they opened doors for themselves, for the other acts of Motown and many, many others. (…) I was always proud of Maria. She was a big star in her own right and over the years she continued to work hard to boost the Supremes’ legacy. Mary Wilson was extremely special to me. She was a pioneer, a diva and will be sorely missed. “
Just two days before her death, Wilson posted a video on her YouTube channel announcing that she was working with Universal Music on the release of solo material, including the unreleased album “Red Hot” that she recorded in the 1970s with producer Gus Dudgeon. “I hope that part of it will be released on my birthday, March 6,” she said in the video. She also promised future interviews she did about the Supremes’ experiences with segregation, which she said would take place in honor of Black History month.
Wilson had been highly visible in 2019, when he appeared in the 28th season of “Dancing With the Stars” and released “Supreme Glamor”, his fourth book.
Wilson was preparing to spend part of the year participating in the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Supremes, still the most iconic female singer trio of all time.
With lead singer Diana Ross and founding member Florence Ballard (and Ballard’s replacement, Cindy Birdsong), Wilson appeared in all 12 Supremes # 1 pop hits from 1964-69; During that period, the act – the largest of Motown’s vocal groups thanks to its silky sound – reached a total of 16 top-10 pop singles and 19 top-10 R&B 45s (six of them at the top of the charts).
If Ross became known as the group’s international superstar and Ballard, who died prematurely at the age of 32 in 1976, was honored as his tragic figure, Wilson was his constant, omnipresent and open driving force – although many see her as a little more than a supplier of the backup hooks that supported Ross’s main job.
The Supremes: Mary Wilson, left, with Florence Ballard and Diana Ross
Courtesy of Motown Archives
“They think I’m just an ‘ooh girl’,” Wilson said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in 1986.
After Ross left the group in 1970 for solo stardom, Wilson remained his hub and zealously supported a succession of women in the lead. Although the Supremes never regained their dominance in the 1960s, they still managed to get a 1970 R&B No. 1, “Stoned Love”, and returned to the top 20 pop five times.
The image of glamor and sisterhood offstage that was carefully crafted by Motown was belied by Wilson’s scathing description of bandmate Ross in a 1986 bestselling memoir, “Dreamgirl: My Life As a Supreme”, the first I am revealing by a member of the so-called “Motown Family”.
In the book, Ross – referred to throughout his birth name, Diane – was portrayed as an attention-seeking diva and traitor who used his relationship with Motown’s founding president, Berry Gordy, to get what he wanted professionally and personally.
Opening the book with an episode in which Ross literally pushed her aside on stage while recording the 1983 recording of the NBC anniversary special “Motown 25”, Wilson wrote, with a mixture of emotion: “She did many things to hurt , humiliate, and upset me, but, strangely, I still forgot about it and I’m proud of it. “
Wilson, who released two solo albums and toured successfully with a solo act that combined cabaret with interpretations of his former Supremes hits, was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the group in 1988.
She was born on March 6, 1944, in Greenville, MS. After moving to St. Louis and then to Chicago with her parents, she was sent at the age of three to live with her aunt and uncle in Detroit, and grew up believing she was his daughter. She didn’t know who her real parents were until she was six, when her mother came to Detroit to live with the family. She moved with her mother several times until she settled on the Brewster-Douglass Housing Project at 12.
Wilson had already sang briefly in a group led by Aretha Franklin’s younger sister, Carolyn, when she was approached by Ballard, a charismatic neighbor on Brewster’s projects, to form a new group that would serve as a “brother act” for the Primes , a quintet man who included Paul Williams and Eddie Kendricks, both future members of Motown’s unit, the Temptations.
The two girls soon joined Ross (who only took on the professional name of “Diana” after the group’s first successes). With fourth member Betty McGlown and her successor Barbara Martin, they would present themselves as Primettes until they were renamed Supremes in early 1961.
After an unsuccessful audition for the Motown label in Detroit, the group recorded a couple of tracks for another label in their city, LuPine; Wilson sang on the B-side single “Pretty Baby”, but, like Ballard, she was soon replaced by Ross. Finally brought to Motown, they struggled to find their musical niche, recording songs (by Smokey Robinson and others) that either languished on the charts or stayed in the vault. In 1963, the fourth member Martin left the unit.
The trio finally began to bear fruit when the team of composers of brothers Brian and Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier became their main cleffers. After reaching second position on the R&B side with the writers “When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes” in late 1963, the Supremes simultaneously reached the peak of the pop and R&B lists with the thunderous “Where Did Our Love Go” during the summer of 1964.
With Ross now installed as the lead singer, the trio rivaled the Beatles on radio and omnipresence on the charts over the next three years. His 1964-67 pop # 1 included “Baby Love”, “Come See About Me”, “Stop! In the Name of Love, ”“ Back in My Arms Again ”,“ I Hear a Symphony ”,“ You Can’t Press Love ”,“ You Keep Me Hanging On ”and“ Reflections ”.
In mid-1967, Flo Ballard, less and less reliable, plagued by alcoholism, drug abuse and depression, was expelled from the Supremes and replaced by Birdsong. Gordy – who was already envisioning a career in Las Vegas, TV and films for Ross, with whom he was now romantically involved – established his lover’s supremacy by renaming the group as Diana Ross & the Supremes that year.
The writing was actually on the wall for the Supremes after Ross started recording as a soloist in 1968, and at the end of the following year it was announced that she would be leaving the group. The swan song of the act with its founding vocalist, “Some Day We Be Together”, topped the pop and R&B charts in December 1969, and Ross left after a heavily administered farewell show on stage at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas in January 1970. The single marked the act’s last visit to the top of the United States pop chart.
The Vegas show featured Jean Terrell – sister of heavyweight boxer Ernie Terrell and a singer from his Knockouts group – as the new lead singer for the Supremes. Surprisingly, Berry Gordy quickly tried to replace Terrell with Stevie Wonder’s wife, Syreeta Wright, but, according to Mark Ribowsky’s 2009 group story, Wilson intervened; while Terrell remained, the Supremes never enjoyed the kind of budget or promotion they had with Ross in the fold.
With Terrell in the lead, the Supremes maintained some momentum: In addition to “Stoned Love”, they reached the top 10 of R&B with “River Deep, Mountain High”, “Nathan Jones” and “Floy Joy. But Wilson remained the only constant in an ever-changing formation after 1972, and in the late 1970s the trio was mired in light disco material – part of which was provided by the Holland-Dozier-Holland return team.
The Supremes closed their tents with a farewell show in London in June 1977. Wilson’s self-titled solo LP for Motown (which Marvin Gaye planned to produce before his divorce dispute with Gordy’s sister, Anna ending him) failed reaching the national album chart its only point culminated at number 95.
Except for his participation in the 1983 Motown special, little was heard of Wilson until his eyebrow raising memoir was published. (She would write two more books on the Supremes, in 1990 and 2019.) The title “Dreamgirl” was inspired by the 1981 Broadway hit musical, which the singer claimed was a fairly accurate representation of the turmoil within the Supremes during the Ross management.
Defending herself in a 1986 interview in Jet magazine against possible accusations of serving green grapes, she said: “I’m sure people will have their own opinions about this, but I don’t really care. My main problem is that when I was in the group I maintained my position and did not step on Diane’s position. I am no longer in the group now. I have my own position to defend and it is not in the background. “
An attempt to reunite Wilson with Ross and the other surviving members of the Supremes for a 2,000 tour came to nothing after a prolonged public discussion about Wilson’s fees for the trip.
Wilson’s album, “Walk the Line”, was released on the CEO label in 1992; she released a pair of live DVDs in the new millennium.
In 2015, she released what would be her last single, “Time to Move On”, which reached number 23 on the Billboard dance chart.
Her aide said she was trying to get a United States postage stamp intended for Ballard. Wilson’s activism included traveling to Washington, DC to lobby for the Music Modernization Act, which passed the law in 2018.
She leaves her daughter Turkessa and grandchildren (Mia, Marcanthony, Marina); his son, Pedro Antonio Jr and grandchildren (Isaiah, Ilah, Alexander, Alexandria). The two children are from her marriage to Dominican businessman and former Supremes businessman Pedro Ferrer, whom she divorced in 1981. In 1994, the couple’s 14-year-old son Rafael was killed and Wilson was injured when his jeep Overturned on the road between Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
Wilson also leaves his sister Kathryn; his brother, Roosevelt; his adopted son / cousin Willie and grandchildren (Erica (great-granddaughter, Lori), Vanessa, Angela).
Instead of flowers, the family asked friends and fans to support UNCF.org and the Humpty Dumpty Institute.