Saturday interlude - Diana Ross and The Supremes (sort of)

Saturday, 1st March 2008

Ah, the sound of Motor City. My weekend listening is going to be revolving around the newly-released Complete Motown Singles, Vol 9 - six CDs of gems and rarely heard nuggets. The packaging is superb too, the background to each recording sketched out in full. "Someday We'll Be Together" is a song that never appealed to me until I heard it again a couple of years ago; now it's one of my all-time favourites. Its origins tell you a lot about the Tamla production line.

The tune was actually co-written by singer Johnny Bristol eight years earlier, for another label, and did next to no business. After Bristol joined Motown's production team, he had the backing track recorded with Junior Walker in mind as the vocalist, but Walker turned it down. Only then, during a chat with the company's founder, Berry Gordy did Diana Ross's name come up. She was about to embark on her solo career, so Bristol went into the studio with her - and with two backing singers who weren't members of the Supremes. Apparently,Ross was in a difficult mood, and Bristol had to go into the booth to coax her along on the lyrics.

The results were so distinctive that Gordy decided to leave Bristol's soulful ad libs on the final version. Then, at the last minute, it was decided that the number would make a perfect swangsong for The Supremes, even though the two other members, Mary Wilson (right) and Cindy Birdsong, didn't perform on it. And that was how the the group and the label scored their last number one of the Sixties. This video is taken from the Supremes final TV appearance with Ross (and without Bristol's voice). The sound is slightly out of synch, but that doesn't matter too much - in fact, it somehow seems weirdly appropriate.