Free The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal by Mark Ribowsky Page B

replied, “No. Why?” As he explained about the Primes and Primettes, Flo didn’t know if the whole thing was some sort of con, but the guys in the car seemed down to earth and made small talk with her. And she was duly impressed that they had a singing group, and more than a little intrigued that they were looking for a singer, especially when Maxine, trying to keep Jenkins around longer, told him, “My sister sings.” At that, Flo jumped in. “I’ll sing in your group, mister.” Maxine, always protective of Flo, told her, “Flo, you ain’t doin’
    nothing until we go ask Mom and Dad.”
    Jenkins waited in the car while she and Flo went inside and told Jesse and Lurlee of the opportunity for Flo. Predictably, neither was excited about it. “Daddy wanted no part of the whole music thing,” Maxine confirmed. “He said we were too young.” Jesse, though, was not calling the shots for the clan. He was very sick, and had not long to live. It was up to Lurlee, and she didn’t cast the notion away. Instead, wanting to hear what this Jenkins character had to say, she went outside with Flo and Maxine and heard out his rap. He was smooth, all right; of that she had no doubt. Maybe a little too smooth.
    “If you’re a manager,” she sniffed, “show me papers or something, or else you ain’t getting nowhere near my daughters.” Lurlee perceived that Milt had designs on both Flo and Maxine.
    And it worried her that if she allowed him to have dibs on Flo, Maxine might enter into an adulterous fling with him. As it turned out, she had reason to worry. Still, how could she crush Flo’s dreams of singing? As long as she had assurances that he was on the level, she’d go along with it. Milt obliged her. He left, soon to return with a sheaf of papers, including publicity photos of and newspaper ads billing the Primes.
    Lurlee looked them over and made her decision. “You have something for me to sign?” she asked.

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    THE SUPREMES
    He whipped out a contract that required both Flo’s signature and her own, since Flo was a minor. This document, in effect, granted Jenkins legal guardianship during the time she would be in his custody.
    Milt left the projects that day feeling pleased. He now had a young singer under his thumb, and her hot sister soon to be in his bed. Driving back downtown, he sat a little higher in his soft leather seat. It had been a good day.
    Because Florence told him she knew other singers her age, Jenkins left it to her to bring one around to his place later that week. That was when, according to Wilson, Flo ran up to her in school and gushed to her all about being in this new group called the Primettes, which needed another girl—“That’s you!” Flo told her.
    When Flo told her about going to Milt Jenkins’s place to sing for him, Mary was game. But she, too, needed permission. That night she told her mother about the offer, her words spouting so quickly that Johnnie Mae didn’t quite get the group’s name.
    “The Primates?” she said, looking pained.
    “Prim- ettes .”
    Johnnie Mae, as warily as Lurlee Ballard—but seeing the look in her daughter’s eyes when she said that this could be “the chance of a lifetime”—agreed that she could at least go and audition for Milton Jenkins.
    A couple of days later, Mary and Flo set out on foot after school for the other side of the tracks, treading through the red-light streets of Paradise Valley looking for the address Milt had given Flo. It turned out to be a transient hotel across the street from the Flame Show Bar. The two wide-eyed girls were thankful for the late daylight, but had to ascend a dark stairway; as they went up, they gripped each other’s hand tightly, not knowing who or what was lurking in the shadows. Arriving at Jenkins’s room, they knocked and Milt opened the door to a large, furnished flat he shared with the Primes. Clothes and food wrappers littered the