Florence Ballard - The Supreme Florence Ballard: 18 Essential Original Recordings
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Artist: Florence BallardEdition: Music CD
Format: Import
CD Release Date: 2001-07-02
Music Label: Polygram UK
Soundtracks:
- Like You Babe
- Yesterday
- Yours Until Tomorrow
- It's Not Unusual
- The Impossible Dream
- It Doesn't Matter How I Say It (It's What I Say That Matters)
- Stay in Love
- Walk on By
- Goin' Out of My Head
- You Bring Out the Sweetness in Me
- Everything Wonderful
- Love Ain't Love
- Forever Faithful
- My Heart
- Buttered Popcorn
- Ain't That Good News
- Hey Baby
- Heavenly Father
Music reviews of The Supreme Florence Ballard: 18 Essential Original Recordings
Music Review: Flo honoured at last
Rating: 3 Stars
Florence Glenda Ballard, born 30th June 1943, the eighth of thirteen children, did pretty well for someone from the Brewster Housing Project in Detroit, as did some of the Primettes, the group she founded from the neighborhood in 1957. They became the Supremes and conquered the world.
Unfortunately, the pressures of fame and fortune affected "Blondie" adversely. She developed alcohol, diet pill and drug dependencies, had weight problems and became increasingly unreliable. Berry Gordy's decision that Diana Ross should be the Supremes' lead singer didn't help, as it didn't suit Flo's temperament to be sidelined in such a way. She didn't, for example, turn up for the recording session for My World Is Empty Without You and session singer Marlene Barrow had to deputize, and she had a number of rows about her role within the group with Berry Gordy and Diana Ross.
On 29th June 1967, while the Supremes performed at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas NV, Flo was ousted from Motown for her "unprofessional behaviour." The official line was that the strain of constant touring had led her to retire.
She signed as a solo artist to ABC, but due to the terms of the annulment of her contract was not allowed to mention her former status as a Supreme, a problem the present compilers seem not to have had. Work began on an album to be called You Don't Have To in March 1968, and the sessions produced a single, It Doesn't Matter How I Say It (It's What I Say That Matters), with a version of Goin' Out of My Head on the flipside.
It Doesn't Matter How I Say It was arranged by Richard Tee and had more of a Motown type of sound than most of the album tracks, where the producer George Kerr struggled to find the right setting for her voice and style. Unsympathetic arrangements of standard material such as the flipside plus The Impossible Dream and It's Not Unusual were not entirely conquered by Florence's testing vocals, and there was some lack of direction. Yesterday and Walk On By were presumably designed to explore Florence's vocal range, while the likeable Like You Babe instead mimicked the stylings of Stax Records. Just as Mary Wells couldn't recreate the Motown magic elsewhere, and just as the Crystals couldn't find a hit without Phil Spector, so Florence Ballard struggled away from the Hitsville production line she had rebelled against.
These problems were clearly addressed as the follow-up single, Love Ain't Love, was much stronger. Produced in August 1968 by Robert Bateman, who Flo knew from his work at Motown in the Supremes days, written by Van McCoy and arranged by Bert DeCoteaux, it had a far more confident and forward looking northern soul kind of sound that should have put her career back on track. Forever Faithful, the flipside, from the same sessions but written and arranged by Bob Bateman, whilst being another strong sound and performance also emulated the Motown style, and could have been an A-side in its own right.
Unfortunately, it also failed to chart except in Detroit, and ABC canned the album and dropped her from the label just nine months after signing her. Other record labels were allegedly reluctant to sign her for fear of falling out with Berry Gordy. She made some TV and public appearances before taking maternity leave (she was pregnant with twins, and had a third child in 1972), but her career never recovered.
By 1975 she had come off welfare, reconciled with her husband, bought a car and found a new home at 17701 Shaftsbury St. in Detroit. Plans were afoot to resume her singing career, but events took a tragic turn.
Flo was always extremely popular with the fans, and when she died prematurely on 22nd February 1976 at Mount Carmel Mercy Hospital of a coronary thrombosis, there was a widespread shock, and there are ripples of the outpourings of love from her fans still clearly evident from a cursory search of the internet today.
Finally, 33 years after they were recorded, most of the tracks she recorded for the album were released on this compilation, which also includes the ABC singles and four of the tracks from the early days of the Supremes on which she does sing lead. As a result, the valuable contribution she made to the Detroit music scene in its early days has been re-appraised and recognised.
Apart from the ABC singles, the four Motown tracks are of the greatest interest. Buttered Popcorn is a lively dance craze number which began life in 1961 as the B-side of Who's Lovin' You, but was switched after DJs favoured it in airplay. It was also on their debut album, Meet The Supremes. Ain't That Good News comes from the 1965 album We Remember Sam Cooke and is a real showcase for her vocal strengths. Both these tracks are in full stereo. Hey Baby probably comes from the same sessions as Buttered Popcorn. The song, by Berry Gordy, is fairly throwaway but is enlivened by a gutsy vocal and that great early Motown sound. It was previously unreleased as was the sweet, devotional Heavenly Father, from August 1961.
Berry Gordy may well have been correct in his commercial decision to make Diana Ross the group's focus and primary lead singer, but it is sad that Flo and Mary were not given a little more scope on the albums, especially Flo as she was the group's founder, original lead singer and energizer. Let us hope there are more examples of Flo's lead vocals in the Motown vaults to be discovered in the future.
I have found a couple of other released tracks on which she sang lead with the Supremes and there may be others. Let Me Go The Right Way was a 1962 A-side later included on Meet The Supremes, now to be found on The Motown Box. You Bring Back Memories was on the B-side of My Heart Can't Take No More in 1963, and is available on the CD Early Classics. Her version of Silent Night was on 1965's Merry Christmas and is on the Spectrum compilation Merry Christmas From Motown. She is also featured to dramatic effect in the closing moments of Long Gone Lover (on the album Where Did Our Love Go).
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