Dreamgirl

In the end, rhythm sections make soloists better, backup singers make lead singers better, quarterbacks don’t exist without offensive lines, and someone has to accompany DON CORNELIUS down the SOUL TRAIN line, else he'll never ever go. MARY WILSON, who died suddenly Monday night, was all that in the SUPREMES, the group she founded with DIANA ROSS and FLORENCE BALLARD as the PRIMETTES in 1959 and that she, and only she, stayed with until the end, long after Ballard was forced out and Ross walked out. She was the adhesive, as the New York Times once put it, that glued together the outsize personalities and voices around her. She'd be the first to tell you her soft, silky alto, which joined Ballard's gritty soprano on harmonies for nearly every recording in the initial trio's run, was the least immediately distinctive of the three Supremes' voices, but without it the Supremes wouldn't be the Supremes and "WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO" wouldn't be "Where Did Our Love Go" and "REFLECTIONS" wouldn't be "Reflections." It's all about the blend, and the mysteries therein. "My image," she once told the Los Angeles Times, "is like a shadow." After it was over, Wilson, ironically, was the one who unglued the Supremes' mystique, in a 1986 memoir, DREAMGIRL: MY LIFE AS A SUPREME, that, among other revelations, painted Ross as calculating and manipulative and opened the books on the predatory contracts the trio signed with MOTOWN. The three Supremes split a 3 percent royalty rate three ways. Wilson released only two studio albums in a hard-luck solo career repeatedly sidetracked by label problems, but she published two more books, toured frequently, fought Motown for the use of the Supremes' name, fought for artists' rights and, with her fellow Supremes, cast a long shadow over nearly every girl group that followed (the word "nearly" may not be necessary). Probably some boy groups, too. Attempts to reunite with Ross famously fell through over money issues, but Wilson was the one who loved being a Supreme, and having been a Supreme, to the end. "There was no downside," she once told the Detroit Free Press, "other than losing my individuality. I absolutely adored being a Supreme. If I die, I want to come back being Mary Wilson of the Supremes." Until then, RIP.

Dot Dot Dot

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Rest in peace

Detroit underground radio pioneer JERRY LUBIN.