10 Stories of Music. 2) Florence Ballard "The Lost Supreme" WALK ON BY
It’s July 1975 at Magic Mountain in Los Angeles. The Supremes begin the first notes of “Save Me a Star.” Mary Wilson tells the audience, “I have a surprise for you,” and on stage appears Florence Ballard.
Florence the “lost Supreme.”
The audience stands up. Mary whispers to her, “we love you Flo.” Tears melt the makeup and the tension. And suddenly everything seems to go back to how it once was. Mary and Flo were 15 years old, 15 years old with two amazing voices, especially Flo’s. They could never have imagined that from their meeting, their colorful wigs, and their homemade outfits would come the greatest female vocal group in history.
No female group (and especially no group of black girls) had ever been able to do what the Supremes would achieve.
But there was also Diana. Diana’s voice couldn’t compete with Flo’s, but Berry Gordy had eyes only for Diana. She even slipped under the sheets with Berry, and the “Supremes” soon became “Diana Ross and The Supremes.” Mary could tolerate it, but Florence could not.
The breakup was inevitable, and Flo was kicked out in ’67, replaced by Cindy Birdsong.
Then Diana also left the Supremes.
Flo tried to make it on her own, but depression (weighing heavily on her soul was also a rape she suffered as a teenager that she never overcame), alcohol, drugs, a wrong marriage, and three children pulled her down for good.
And yet God had given her that voice.
“Florence we love you.” The concert ends. We will do it again. We will sing together again.
Mary and Flo will never sing together again.
Alone and broke, Florence dies in Detroit just months later. On February 22, 1976, from a coronary thrombosis. But the real reason remains a mystery: alcohol, barbiturates, the beatings from her ex-husband, a hole in her soul…
She was only 32 years old.