Diana Ross & the Supremes were still leading the way at Motown. Six of Motown’s thirty-one albums issued during 1968 bore their new name, two with the Temptations, one live album, one Broadway album and two studio albums, which featured hit singles. Together they form an impressive display of the girls’ talent, highlighting in particular Diana Ross’ versatility.
Diana Ross & the Supremes rehearsing in Amsterdam 1968
Photo: Eric Koch for Anefo (Wikimedia Commons)
The first of the six albums to be released was “Reflections” in March, their twelfth studio album and the first to include Cindy Birdsong in place of Florence Ballard on two tracks. It contains five Holland, Dozier, Holland songs, two by Smokey Robinson, co-written with members of the Miracles, one by the Holloway sisters and one co-written by Debbie Dean and Dennis Lussier. The remaining three are covers of songs by Bobby Gentry, Bacharach and David, and Jimmy Webb.
Two of the H-D-H songs had been released as singles in 1967, with a third “Forever Came Today” appearing in February 1968. The album reached number three on the Billboard R&B Albums Chart, number eighteen on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart, and number thirty on the Official UK Pop Albums Chart. It was produced by Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier, who had left Motown soon after the recordings were completed.
Cindy Birdsong, Mary Wilson & Diana Ross January 1968
Photo: Jack de Nijs for Anefo (Wikimedia Commons)
The second album, “Diana Ross & the Supremes Sing and Perform Funny Girl”, features ten songs from the show, arranged by Gil Askey and produced by Askey and Berry Gordy. It was issued in August. Like several of the other 1968 releases, the album is clearly aimed at White audiences, who wouldn’t usually buy Motown records. It was not a success, only reaching number one hundred and fifty on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart.
The third release, “Live At London’s Talk Of The Town”, is a mix of twenty-two show tunes and Supremes’ hits, presented as a series of medleys, produced by Tony Palmer. It was also released in August and sold well, especially in the UK, where it peaked at number six on the Official UK Pop Albums Chart. In the USA, it reached number fifty-seven on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart.
The second studio album of the year was “Love Child” issued in November. It was the first Supremes’ album that had no input from Holland, Dozier, Holland. Instead the songs were put together by a varied group of producers and songwriters. The title track, “Love Child”, was written by Deke Richards, Frank Wilson, Pam Sawyer, Hank Cosby, and R. Dean Taylor, whom Berry Gordy had called together in late 1967, in anticipation of losing his leading songwriters. The Clan (as they were named) didn’t let him down. The song was released as a single in September and sold half a million copies in the first week. By the end of the year sales had topped two million copies. Although it is credited as a Supremes’ song, the Andantes backed Diana Ross, replacing Cindy Birdsong and Mary Wilson.
The song went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart, where it stayed for two weeks, until Marvin Gaye took over, and also topped the Cashbox Top 100 and R&B Singles Charts. Surprisingly, it was kept at number two on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart for three weeks by Johnnie Taylor’s “Who’s Making Love”. It has become the third highest-selling Supremes’ single, behind “Baby Love” and “Someday We’ll Be Together”. Internationally, it is also one of the Supremes’ most successful songs, charting in Australia (numbers four and two on the two national charts), Canada (number one), Ireland (number twelve), Japan (number twenty-three), the Netherlands (numbers eighteen and nineteen), New Zealand (number one), Sweden (number seven), Switzerland (number seven), and the UK (number fifteen). The success of the song is even more amazing, given the subject matter: a young woman talking to her boyfriend about the risk of a child being born illegitimate to a mother who was also illegitimate.
The rest of the songs on the album were written by the best of Motown’s many teams, including Ashford and Simpson, Smokey Robinson, Janie Bradford, Harvey Fuqua, Johnny Bristol, and Ivy Jo Hunter. Berry Gordy and Anna Gordy also contributed. There is no doubt that Berry Gordy had reacted to the departure of H-D-H and to the relative failure of the first two Supremes’ singles in 1968. As usual, he found the answer.
The album’s final track, “Can’t Shake It Loose”, was co-written by the Golden World team of George Clinton, JoAnne Jackson, Rose-Marie McCoy and Sidney Barnes, who added a touch of funk to the mix. The song was written for Pat Lewis, who recorded it at Golden World in 1966. It is interesting to see it picked up by Diana Ross two years later.
It seems as though the departure of Holland-Dozier-Holland forced Berry Gordy and his team to rethink the Supremes’ sound. Several of the tracks on the “Love Child” album are more mature lyrically and more unusual musically, pointing to a future that would be very different from the H-D-H past.
The two albums that bring the Supremes and the Temptations together are “Diana Ross & The Supremes Join The Temptations” and “Diana Ross and the Supremes with the Temptations: The Original Soundtrack from TCB”.
The first of these is a studio album of covers, including several Motown hits and also some show standards. It was released in November, just as the TCB Special was being aired on television. The recordings were made in Detroit in Hitsville’s Studio A and Golden World’s Studio B, and at various studios in Los Angeles, with Frank Wilson overseeing the project as executive producer. Diana Ross sings the lead vocal on each track alongside different leads from the Temptations. The album was very successful, reaching number two on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart and number one on the Billboard R&B Albums Chart, later receiving a gold disc from the RIAA. It also topped the Official UK Pop Albums Chart for four weeks.
As happened for the “Love Child” album, the songs were produced by various producers, including Frank Wilson, Nickolas Ashford, Deke Richards, Smokey Robinson with Al Cleveland and Terry Johnson, and Henry Cosby. Frank Wilson took overall control of the project. Arrangements were the work of Paul Riser (six tracks), Gene Page (three tracks) and H.B. Barnum (two tracks). The advantage of choosing to sing covers was that the songs were all well-known. The joint super-groups could give them a fresh interpretation, fairly certain that the public would like them. The advantage of having different songwriters, producers and arrangers was that each song had its own focus, which was reinforced by recording the songs at different studios. One interesting feature of the album is that five of the backing tracks were recorded in Los Angeles.
Three singles were taken from the album, with two of them released in 1969. The first of the three was “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me”, released in November 1968. It was written by Gamble, Huff and Ross for Dee Dee Warwick, who took the song into the top twenty of the Billboard R&B Chart in 1966. The Motown artists took it to number two on both the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B Singles Charts in January 1969, while it reached number one on the Cashbox Top 100 Singles Chart. In the UK, the song spent six weeks in the top ten on the Official UK Pop Singles Chart, peaking at number three.
The second collaboration album, the TCB soundtrack, was the final release of the year for the Supremes. The TV special was recorded with a live studio audience in September 1968 and broadcast on 9th December on NBC. The album was released a week earlier, reaching number one on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart and the Billboard R&B Albums Chart, later earning the groups another gold disc from the RIAA. The album peaked at number eleven on the Official UK Pop Albums Chart.
The album contains a collection of Supremes’ hits, Temptations’ hits, covers of recent chart hits and some show songs. It completed another extraordinary year for the group, during which Berry Gordy steered them back to the top of the charts and set Diana Ross on course to enjoy an outstanding solo career in the not-too-distant future.
