Mary Wilson (March 6, 1944 – February 8, 2021) – Early Morning Love (1975)
The founding member of the Supremes sang lead on this superb early disco hit, co-written and produced by Brian and Eddie Holland.
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Mary Wilson was one of the founding members of the Supremes, the most commercially successful U.S. female group of all time, and sang on ten of their #1 hits. She stayed with them from 1959 until 1977 even as the other original members departed, and when she left, they disbanded.
Born in Greenville, Mississippi, her family moved to Chicago early on, but she went to live with her aunt and uncle in Detroit when she was three years old. Her mother eventually joined them, and they moved into the city’s largest public housing complex, the Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects.
At a talent show in middle school, Wilson met Flo Ballard who also lived in the complex. They became friends in high school. When Ballard joined the Primettes in 1959, an all-female vocal group being put together by Milton Jenkins who managed the Primes, she persuaded Wilson to join too. The last members recruited were Betty McGlown and a 15-year old named Diane Ross.
See our earlier posts on Flo Ballard, her replacement Cindy Birdsong, and producers Brian and Eddie Holland for more on the group’s history.
One of the tragedies of the Supremes’ rise to the top of the charts in the 1960s is that because Motown founder Berry Gordy was so hellbent on enshrining Ross as their lead singer, he refused to allow Wilson or Ballard to sing lead on more than a token number of their songs. It weakened their long-term appeal, and fueled Ballard’s alcoholism, which ultimately led to her being forced out in 1967.
Two years later, as Ross prepared to go solo, Wilson’s lead vocals were finally allowed to shine on a duet of Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” sung with Eddie Kendricks for the second joint Supremes-Temptations album Together (1969). During the Supremes’ final appearance on the soon-to-be-cancelled TV variety series The Hollywood Palace on October 18, 1969, Wilson performed the song live.
After Ross’ departure, she was replaced by Jean Terrell on lead vocals. Motown producer Frank Wilson (no relation to Mary) helmed most of Right On (1970), their first album without Ross. He co-wrote and produced its advance single, the stellar “Up The Ladder To The Roof,” which was released on February 16, 1970. The night before, the group premiered it live on The Ed Sullivan Show, a knockout performance that announced to the world the Supremes were still a force to be reckoned with.
The single went to #5 R&B and #10 on the Billboard Hot 100, outperforming Ross’ first solo single, the socially conscious “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand).” Co-written and produced by Nickolas Ashford & Valerie Simpson, her debut peaked at #7 R&B and #20 on the Hot 100 when it was released in April, 1970.
Frank Wilson also produced Right On’s second single, the upbeat message song “Everybody's Got the Right to Love,” written by Lou Stallman. He would produce two more studio albums for the Supremes before leaving to work with Eddie Kendricks. He also produced or co-produced three albums of duets they did with the Four Tops, starting with The Magnificent 7, which came out in September, 1970.
Its single was a cover of Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound masterpiece “River Deep – Mountain High” which he co-wrote with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich and produced in 1966 for Ike & Tina Turner (although Ike had no involvement in its recording). The original was ahead of its time and stalled out at #88 on the pop charts, a commercial failure that turned Spector into a recluse and marked the beginning of his long decline from the heights of the music industry.
The version by the Supremes and Four Tops was a hit, reaching #7 R&B (although Cashbox and Record World ranked it even higher at #2 and #3 R&B) and #14 on the Hot 100. It was the highest-charting cover of the song in the United States to this day.
Their final album produced by Frank Wilson was Touch (1971). Its title track featured Wilson and Terrell splitting lead vocals. For their next LP Floy Joy (1972), Smokey Robinson stepped in as producer. Wilson sang lead on the beautiful love song “A Heart Like Mine,” co-written by Robinson and Ronald White of the Miracles. She traded leads with Terrrell on its two singles “Floy Joy” and the upbeat jam “Automatically Sunshine,” which was solely written by Robinson and peaked at #21 R&B and #37 on the Hot 100.
Several different producers had a hand in the Supremes’ 1975 self-titled album, the first to feature Scherrie Payne who replaced Jean Terrell in 1973. On a few tracks they were reunited with producers Brian and Eddie Holland. As two-thirds of the Holland-Dozier-Holland team at Motown, the brothers had written and produced most of their biggest hits a decade earlier. The superb jam “Early Morning Love” with Wilson on lead vocals which the Hollands co-wrote and produced was released as a single only in the UK, but still became a club hit in America and went to #6 on Billboard’s new disco charts.
She sang lead on the slow jam “Where Is It I Belong,” co-written by Ronald and Elaine Brown and Samuel Brown III. The beautiful song “Can We Love Again” also featured Wilson on lead, but was cut from the album and remained unreleased until 2011.
Happy Heavenly 80th Birthday to the great Mary Wilson.
Further info:
"Mary Wilson on Diana Ross' tour," interview by Bryant Gumbel, The Early Show, CBS, April 21, 2000.
“Mary Wilson Looks Back at the Supremes' History and Legacy,” interview, Variety, 2009.
“Mary Wilson - a Motown legend and a style icon,” by Mark Savage, BBC News, February 9, 2021.
“Mary Wilson Refused to Let the Supremes Fall Apart,” The New York Times Magazine, December 22, 2021.
#soul #funk #disco #Motown #The Supremes #MaryWilson