Brewster-Douglass teens became Motown’s premier girl group
The Supremes began in Detroit in 1959 as the Primettes—Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson, Diana Ross, and Betty McGlown from the Brewster-Douglass projects. They became Motown’s most commercially successful 1960s act once Holland–Dozier–Holland songs and Ross’s lead defined the mid-decade hits.
A 4 July 1960 Windsor–Detroit festival win aimed them at Berry Gordy’s Hitsville studio until persistence won a contract. In 1967 Motown’s president pushed Ross-forward billing that foreshadowed her solo exit. Ballard’s earlier link to future Temptations Paul Williams and Eddie Kendricks shows how tightly Detroit’s housing projects fed the label’s roster.
The group began in 1958 as the Primettes, a sister act to the Primes set up by manager Milton Jenkins after Florence Ballard, living in Detroit's Brewster-Douglass projects, met Primes members Paul Williams and Eddie Kendricks. Hanging around Hitsville U.S.A., they talked their way into supplying handclaps and backing vocals for Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells before Gordy signed them in January 1961.
Success was slow. Their first six singles, from 1961 to 1963, all missed the Top 40, earning them the nickname the no-hit Supremes. Lovelight began their partnership with the Holland–Dozier–Holland team, and in late 1963 Gordy made Diane Ross, who became Diana in 1965, the official lead. Where Did Our Love Go, a song the Marvelettes had turned down and the Supremes disliked, hit number one in August 1964, followed by four more straight chart-toppers, from Baby Love to Back in My Arms Again.
In January 1965 each member received a $100,000 cheque, and they bought family homes on the same street, leaving the projects behind. Gordy, working with Maxine Powell of the label's artist-development and etiquette school, cultivated a deliberately glamorous image, and Time called them the reigning female rock 'n' roll group in May 1965. Bookings at supper clubs such as the Copacabana, with Broadway standards added to the set, made them one of the first Black acts to achieve sustained crossover success, and they even had their own brand of bread.
Source: The Supremes
