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.Rosscompleted the crime with a screechy twang, executing an odd, quiveryglissando on the word want. Both mentor and protégé, however, werequite satisfied with the work Ross could even wax in Secrets of a Spar-row that I vividly remember this session.It felt so important.With myeyes closed and my arms outstretched, I poured my heart into this song.When I listen to it now, I feel nostalgic; I can hear that teenage yearn-ing in my voice. Gordy must have heard the same thing.He penciled it in as theirfirst release and, in its wake, approved more sessions for the group.Outof those came one more Gordy-written stinker, The Boy That GotAway featuring Ross baying as if she d inhaled helium and tryingvainly to sound cool with a spoken one-two, one-two-three downbeatintro and two others written and produced by Smokey Robinson, Who s Lovin You and After All. While the latter is intriguing be-cause the lead vocal was split among all four girls and, given this, theonly record on which Martin s strong baritone can be clearly heard allthese tracks reveal less about the limitations of the group than those ofGordy and Robinson in getting a grip on the girl-group form.Notreally knowing how to update pop and R&B the way they had in ShopAround, they lost the buoyancy and effervescence that the Primetteshad evinced when they performed on stage.What came out of themixed tracks were more like two-chord demos that cribbed Chantelsand Shirelles melodies and slapped them on top of the Gordy sound, with its deep bottoms, crisply accented highs, and misty echoes.Themissing element: imagination.Gordy and Robinson agreed that they were rather lost in these ef-forts, and that the last two should not be released; they would remainunreleased until forty years later, when they appeared as historical curiosi-ties on the five-disc Supremes box-set.Still, aside from Ross s troublesomenasal delivery which was incidental to Gordy s opinion that her voicehad an indefinable commercial kick the Primettes were judged ready 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:06 AM Page 8484 THE SUPREMESfor their close-up.After the new year, Gordy got moving on the prom-ised contracts, and on January 15, 1961, the girls were called in to signthem.All of them were accompanied by their mothers, even Barbara,who at 18 was of legal age; the others still needed parental consent formaking Gordy their de facto guardian until they came of age.Again,Fred Ross had objected, on the usual grounds: that if Diane, now twomonths from her 17th birthday, went ahead with her singing, shewould never go to college.And, this time, Ernestine was prepared tostand with him.Very skeptically, she agreed to come to 2648 WestGrand Boulevard with her daughter, to meet Gordy face-to-face.When they met, she wasn t impressed.Gordy was wearing a fluffywhite Angora sweater Who s Mr.Fancy? she said when he cameinto the room and he seemed disinclined to say much as he turnedover the contract business to Motown A&R* man Mickey Stevenson,who couldn t have been more than a couple years older than Diane,though he d been in the music business since he was 9 years old, as asinger and behind-the-scenes mover.Eyeing Gordy mostly from a dis-tance, Ernestine believed that the diminutive, baby-faced Gordy, too,was a young man.At least Milt Jenkins had some seasoning.Gordy, shekept telling Diane, was a kid, a term she kept using even after beinginformed that he was in fact in his 30s. How could this kid, shewould ask, be anyone s guardian? Seeing how wary all the mothers were, Gordy called in his sophisti-cated sister Esther to explain to them about the selectiveness of the Mo-town family, how the men of Motown were Boy Scout pure, andhow the girls were all chaperoned on the road often by some of thegirls mothers.Esther had the rap down to an art by now, havingquelled many mothers fears, but it was touch-and-go right to the end.Barbara s mother was, if anything, more recalcitrant than Ernestine, be-coming haughty and, as Wilson recalled, condescending in her atti-tude that her daughter was too good to be a singer. But under grouppressure, intensified by the charged atmospherics of Motown, ErnestineRoss, Lurlee Ballard, Johnnie Mae Wilson, and Barbara s mother ulti-mately left their marker on each eye-glazing fourteen-page, double-spaced contract.* This acronym is industry shorthand for artists and repertoire, the functionalmeaning of which is the scouting and signing of talent, though Stevenson spurview was far greater, extending to producing, writing, green-lighting songs forrelease, and keeping musicians paid and loyal to Motown. 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:06 AM Page 85SUPREME BEINGS 85Technically, the deal was not with Motown but, rather, with BerryGordy Enterprises and specifically Tamla Records, and was typical forsuch contracts of the era which, if any young performers had runthem by a lawyer, would quickly have set off alarm bells.Of course, ithelped the industry panjandrums that this rarely if ever happened, thescent of fame trumping the notion of not signing.In this construct,the fine print, filled with numbing legalese, was a formality of interestonly to the muckety-mucks.Of more compelling interest to prospec-tive Motown acts and their elders was a simple proposition: WouldBerry Gordy do wrong by his family ? The answer, implicitly, was no.Still, not one among the three mothers felt sanguine about leaving theirsignature that day. They just didn t trust this little guy, Berry Gordy, not with ouremotional development or with our money, Ross would recall.Their gut feeling was well founded.As they would discover later,what they had signed was the abrogation of every conceivable right ahuman being has, except possibly the right to vote and to have a trial byjury.The decision on how, when, and how much to pay them restedsolely with The Company. They had no inherent right to questionThe Company draining such remuneration for unspecified expenses (Gordy having learned that trick from Al Green and Nat Tarnopol).Inwhat may have seemed a trivial matter at the time, Motown retained100 percent of all royalty rights to future commercial applications ofsongs in movies and commercials
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