50 Fun Facts About The Supremes

Under what name did the Supremes form in Detroit in 1959?

The Primettes. A local manager put them together as the sister act to his male group, the Primes, and gave the girls a matching name.

How many Billboard Hot 100 number one singles did the Supremes have?

12. Every one of them came between 1964 and 1969, after a start so slow that the group's first six singles all missed the Top 40.

In which Detroit public housing project did the future Supremes grow up as neighbours?

Brewster-Douglass. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt came to its ground-breaking in 1935, when it was Detroit's first public housing built for Black families.

Which member of the group chose the name 'the Supremes' from Berry Gordy's list?

Rejected alternatives on the list included the Darleens, the Sweet Ps, the Melodees and the Jewelettes.

Which Motown star did Diana Ross ask to arrange the group's audition for Berry Gordy in 1960?

Smokey Robinson. Ross's old neighbour got them in front of Gordy, but he liked their guitarist, Marv Tarplin, even more and hired him away for his own group, the Miracles.

Why did Berry Gordy send the future Supremes away after their first Motown audition?

They were too young and inexperienced. Gordy told the schoolgirls to finish high school first, so they hung around his studio after class until he gave in and signed them in January 1961.

Which founding member of the Supremes left in 1960 and was replaced by Barbara Martin?

Betty McGlown. Her exit, and her replacement's own two years later, turned the original quartet into the famous trio that had all the big hits.

The 'no-hit Supremes' sang backing vocals on Can I Get a Witness, a 1963 hit for which singer?

Marvin Gaye. With no hits of their own yet, the trio earned their keep at the studio by clapping hands and singing backup on other Motown artists' records.

On which Motown subsidiary label were the Supremes' first two singles released?

Tamla. Both singles flopped, so in 1962 the group was switched to the Motown label itself, where every one of its hits came out.

Which songwriting and production team wrote most of the Supremes' number one hits?

Holland-Dozier-Holland. Lamont Dozier and the brothers Brian and Eddie Holland wrote most of them, then walked out of Motown in 1968 in a fight over royalties and set up labels of their own.

What was the Supremes' first number one, in August 1964?

Where Did Our Love Go. The trio disliked the song and had to be talked into recording it, then watched it climb to the top while they toured at the bottom of the bill on Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars.

Which Motown girl group, per Mary Wilson, turned down the song that became the Supremes' first number one?

The Marvelettes. The backing track had been cut in a lower key than Diana Ross was used to, which is why she sings the hit in such a low, breathy voice.

Which single completed the Supremes' run of five straight number ones?

Back in My Arms Again. It was their fifth chart-topper in under a year, and the streak died with the very next single, which stalled at number 11.

Which Supremes single was the group's only one to top the UK chart as well as the US chart?

Baby Love. Berry Gordy wanted a carbon copy of the hit before it, so the producers reused the same cooing vocal and even the same foot-stomping for the beat.

Come See About Me opens with which then-novel studio technique?

It topped the chart twice, non-consecutively, swapping places with the Beatles' I Feel Fine.

The Supremes unveiled their traffic-cop 'stop' hand routine on a 1965 British TV special hosted by which singer?

Dusty Springfield. A champion of Motown who covered its songs herself, she hosted the special to sell the label's acts, the Supremes among them, to British audiences.

Which 1965 single's number 11 peak prompted Berry Gordy's memo that the Supremes would 'only release number-one records'?

Nothing but Heartaches. It ended a run of five straight chart-toppers, and its writers answered the memo with I Hear a Symphony, which put the group straight back at number one.

Phil Collins had a UK number one with his cover of which Supremes hit?

You Can't Hurry Love. Its writers had lifted the idea from a 1950s gospel number by Dorothy Love Coates, (You Can't Hurry God) He's Right on Time.

Which British singer took You Keep Me Hangin' On back to number one in the US in 1987?

Kim Wilde. Her dance remake stalled at number two at home in Britain but went all the way in America, where it was the only chart-topper of her career.

The signature guitar riff of You Keep Me Hangin' On was inspired by what?

A Morse-code-style radio news sting. By his own account, one of the song's writers heard the stuttering signal that came before news flashes and turned it into a guitar line for a tougher, rockier Supremes single.

The Supremes A' Go-Go knocked which Beatles album off the top of the Billboard 200 in October 1966?

Revolver. It had been on top for six weeks when the Supremes knocked it off with an album filled out by covers of other acts' hits, from the Four Tops to Nancy Sinatra.

Before The Supremes Sing Country, Western and Pop, which soul star's country covers album reached US number one?

Ray Charles. His Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music knocked the West Side Story soundtrack off number one, while the Supremes' own country set stalled at number 79.

Which New York supper club did Berry Gordy book the Supremes into to broaden their audience?

The Copacabana. Their debut there in July 1965 was taped for a live album and went over so well that Motown began booking its other stars into the club.

Which programme hosted Diana Ross's TV farewell as a Supreme?

The Ed Sullivan Show. The trio had appeared on it more than a dozen times since 1964, and it was there that they sang Someday We'll Be Together, weeks after Motown announced that Ross was leaving the group.

Which unusual product did the Supremes endorse with their own brand in the mid-1960s?

Bread. A loaf sold as Supremes white bread carried the trio's faces on its wrapper, one of dozens of products the group put its name to at its peak.

Who ran Motown's finishing school that readied the Supremes for 'kings and queens'?

Maxine Powell. She taught Motown's young singers how to walk, talk and carry themselves, because Berry Gordy wanted acts that would win over white audiences as well as Black ones.

After Diana Ross won top billing over the Supremes in 1967, which Motown singer demanded the same in his own group?

David Ruffin. Motown refused to put his name in front of the group's, the rows that followed soured everything, and after he missed a show his bandmates fired him.

Cindy Birdsong was recruited from which group in 1967?

That group's lawyers filed an injunction after her Hollywood Bowl debut, so Gordy had to buy out her contract.

At which Las Vegas hotel was the group's founding member dismissed on 1 July 1967?

She had performed inebriated after discovering an extra set of gowns brought along for her replacement.

With which Motown group did Diana Ross & the Supremes record the 1968 hit duet I'm Gonna Make You Love Me?

The Temptations. The duet reached number two, and the pairing also produced joint albums and two television specials; the Supremes had begun as the sister act to a forerunner of the Temptations.

Which 1968 Supremes number one ended the Beatles' nine-week run at the top with Hey Jude?

Love Child. After a run of misses Berry Gordy shut a team of writers in a hotel to come up with a hit, and they gave him a daring story about a girl born out of wedlock.

Which 1967 chart-topper kept the Supremes' Reflections stuck at number two?

Ode to Billie Joe. Bobbie Gentry's song held the top spot while Reflections waited behind it: the first single billed to Diana Ross & the Supremes, yet with the founder sacked that year still singing on it.

The electronic sounds on Reflections, often mistaken for a Moog, were actually made with what?

A test oscillator with tape echo. The bleeps were Motown's answer to psychedelia: the single came out in 1967's Summer of Love, weeks after Sgt. Pepper, as the Supremes' first step into the new sound.

Which Supremes number one was the theme song of a 1967 Anthony Quinn film that flopped?

The Happening. The film sank at the box office, but the theme its composer Frank De Vol wrote with the Supremes' usual team went to number one and outlived it.

Which session group often stood in for Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong on late-1960s Supremes recordings?

Neither Wilson nor Birdsong sang on the group's final number one either.

Berry Gordy first planned to release the Supremes' Someday We'll Be Together as what?

Diana Ross's first solo single. Gordy decided he wanted one last Supremes chart-topper instead, so it went out under the group's name even though neither of the other two members sings on it.

Where did Diana Ross & the Supremes give their farewell performance on 14 January 1970?

Frontier Hotel, Las Vegas. The show was taped for the double album Farewell, and before it ended Ross's replacement was brought on stage and introduced to the audience.

The singer who replaced Diana Ross in 1970 is the sister of which heavyweight boxer?

Ernie Terrell. The former champion, who had lost a title fight to Muhammad Ali in 1967, led a band called the Heavyweights, and Berry Gordy spotted his sister Jean singing with it in Miami.

Mary Wilson shares the lead vocal on which Supremes Top 20 hit of 1972?

Floy Joy. Wilson had waited more than a decade to sing lead on a Supremes hit, and when her turn came it was one of the last times the group reached the Top 20.

Which singer's sister Scherrie joined the Supremes in 1973?

Freda Payne. Her Band of Gold had been a 1970 smash for Invictus, the label started by the very writers who quit Motown after giving the Supremes their biggest hits.

Where did the Supremes play their farewell concert on 12 June 1977?

London. The last show was at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, where Mary Wilson, the only member left from the start, bowed out for a solo career after 18 years.

Which 1981 Broadway musical was loosely based on the Supremes, with Effie White standing in for the dismissed founder?

Dreamgirls. Its creators denied it was about the Supremes, but Mary Wilson liked it enough to borrow the title for her memoir, while Diana Ross said she had never seen it.

Who played Effie White in the 2006 film of the musical inspired by the Supremes?

Jennifer Hudson. Voted off American Idol in seventh place in 2004, she beat hundreds of hopefuls, that season's winner among them, to the part and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

Which hall of fame inducted Ross, Wilson and Ballard together in 1988?

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Little Richard gave the induction speech; the trio never won a Grammy in competition, though the Recording Academy gave them a lifetime achievement award in 2023.

Why did Mary Wilson skip the Supremes' 2000 'Return to Love' tour?

She was offered far less money than Ross. Wilson held out for equal pay and a say in the show, so the tour went out with two 1970s members instead and was cancelled halfway through.

What did all three Supremes buy in Detroit in 1965 with the money from their first run of hits?

Family homes. The move took their relatives out of the housing projects and put the three Supremes a few doors apart on the same street, Buena Vista.

The Supremes' lead singer's mother meant to give her which first name?

Diane. A slip on her birth certificate made it Diana, the name she took up on stage, but family and old friends such as Mary Wilson went on calling her Diane.

Mary Wilson was born in the Delta town of Greenville in which state before her family moved north?

Mississippi. She left as a small child and was sent to an aunt in Detroit, whom she grew up believing was her real mother.

What was the nickname of the Detroit house where the Supremes recorded?

Hitsville U.S.A. Berry Gordy bought the house in 1959 and turned a photography studio at the back into the recording room; it is now the Motown Museum.

After the Supremes, Mary Wilson campaigned across the US for Truth in Music laws aimed at stopping what?

Fake line-ups using a group's name. Wilson took up the cause after losing a court fight over acts touring as the Supremes, and more than half the states passed such laws.