Singers: The Girls from Motown

One midsummer eve in a Negro-ghetto backyard in Detroit, Diana Ross, then 14, Mary Wilson, 14, and Florence Ballard, 15, made their first profession al appearance. They sang Your Cheat ing Heart, and afterward they passed the hat. The take: "Darn near $3," says Diana's mother. Last week at Manhattan's Copacabana, home range of the big names (Sinatra, Dean Martin), where the big beat is seldom heard, the same rock-'n'-roll trio was doing turn-away business. Diana, Mary and Florence now call themselves the Supremes, and the take is $5,000 a performance.

And their Copa runneth over. The Supremes were nationwide headliners last week on the Ed Sullivan TV show and this week will be on the Sammy Davis Jr. show. Their latest record, My World Is Empty Without You, rose to No. 5 on the Billboard "Hot 100," with plenty of thrust in reserve. If it keeps climbing, it could become the Supremes' seventh release in a row to make No. 1. "You know," burbled Diana, now 21, "we used to get excited about the Apollo [a Harlem vaudeville house]. We never even thought about the Copa. The first night I sang there, I just started laughing and couldn't stop. It must have been because I was so happy."

Hiphazard Impresario. Diana, Mary and Florence were all neighbors in Detroit's dreary Brewster Housing Project. "We were eatin'," recalls Mrs. Ross, "and that's pretty good. In the project you got along according to how many children you had. There was twelve in Florence's family, there was three in Mary's, and there was six in ours. So Mary was the best off, Florence the worst, and we were in the middle." Introduced to each other by a smalltime promoter, the girls were soon singing at neighborhood hops, block and basement parties. "I used to get whipped every night for going to those parties," recalls Diana, "but I always went. We sang because we loved to sing. We wanted to work, to do a show, any show. We didn't care if we got paid." Adds Mary: "We usually didn't."

In 1960 they made their first bid for a recording contract with Berry Gordy, the hiphazard impresario of Detroit's Motown* Record Co. "They seemed like just three skinny teen-age girls," he remembers. "I told them to go back to school." Back they went, but in her junior-year Diana wangled work with Gordy as an assistant to his secretary. "I didn't know anything about being a secretary," says Diana, "and I used to sing every time he opened his inner door." She was fired within two weeks, but did manage to land the girls some recording jobs in a background chorus. One day after school, they dropped in to tell Gordy he owed them some back pay. The ensuing conversation led to the audition and the contract that was to make Berry the U.S.'s largest producer of 45-r.p.m. records last year.

No Strains. The sound of the Supremes is a blend of gospel and rock, Detroit Symphony strings and Willow Run blues, which even the girls can't describe. "Maybe the Motown sound is just love and warmth," says Mary. "Like a family, we all work together, fight and kiss all day long. You see someone you haven't seen in an hour, and you've got to hug and kiss."