Free The Lost Supreme: The Life of Dreamgirl Florence Ballard by Peter Benjaminson Page A

it out, or you get shot!”
    In Miami Beach, as the Motortown Revue acts were checking into a motel, fifteen police cruisers with dogs pulled up outside and waited as the performers entered the motel. When they left later in the day to perform, the cruisers were still there. Finally, someone went out and explained to the cops that this was a musical show on tour, and the surveillance was finally lifted.
    Flo and the others were often shocked by the squalor they were forced to endure. “The hotels we stayed in were unbelievable. Bad,” she said. “But you know I would like to go back just to see the changes. . . . [Then it was all]
    roaches, broken-down facilities, bad plumbing, face bowls and stuff; some of them didn’t even have bathtubs. You know, like a flophouse. But you’re black—you’ve got to stay there.”
    Nevertheless, especially in the North, the Motortown Revues often attracted large, somewhat integrated, and entirely peaceful crowds. “We were the only whites there,” said Nancy Van Goethem, who attended one show in Detroit, “but there was no fear in us. Maybe we were naive girls from the suburbs, but there was such a feeling of camaraderie and togetherness. Everyone would be on their feet, moving their bodies as much as they could, dancing in front of their seats.”
    The Motortown Revues would eventually be disbanded, but only because individual Motown artists would become so well known that they could draw large crowds touring on their own.
    After the 1962 Motortown Revue, the Supremes, still without a hit record, languished in the record-biz equivalent of a segregated rooming house.
    It’s hard to imagine what not having a hit meant at Motown in terms of the pecking order, but one clue is that at a Motown Christmas party held in the 43
    R oughing I t c
    Supremes’ early days, they received tiny transistor radios as Christmas pres-ents. The hit-making Marvelettes received diamond rings.
    Still, Gordy was impressed by the professionalism the Supremes displayed.
    Undaunted by their string of duds, they continued to perform as background singers, tour, and make local appearances into 1964. Also, Gordy hadn’t worked in a factory for nothing: he knew the value of interchangeable parts.
    The way he arranged things at Motown, nothing tied any particular artist or group at the company to any particular producer or writer, unless they began making hits together. In fact, writers, producers, and artists were like the hands of a clock, constantly revolving—sometimes together, sometimes apart.
    Sometimes, the tracks that were recorded revolved rather than the groups themselves. The Supremes, for instance, recorded many tracks that were never finished and that are still sitting in Universal Music / Motown’s vault waiting to be overdubbed. In fact, in 1975, reacting to an epidemic of discomania, Motown released an album called The Magic Disco Machine , which consisted entirely of old background tracks never fitted to lead parts.
    If a song didn’t work for the Supremes, it might work for the Vandellas or the Marvelettes. The company would lay different voices over the same background track and see what happened. Writers and producers also were interchanged, rotated from group to group as the company searched for better combinations. Gears revolved within gears. Producers would rotate from song to song on a single album recorded by a single group. As many as twelve different producers would produce songs on the same album, causing one critic to call some Motown albums “musical quilts.” If a group didn’t create a hit with one producer, it would be moved on to another producer, and then to another.
    Artists also climbed aboard the mechanical merry-go-round. Different artists performed together at different times or on different albums. These constant revolutions were necessary because Motown’s products were not always perfect. Brenda Holloway wrote a song for the Supremes that she was going to call