Unexpected and sad news - Miss Mary Wilson, legendary co-founder of The Supremes, and quite likely the feistiest of all of 'em, has shimmied off to Fabulon. A trouper of the first order, her battles with Motown big-wigs, the music industry in general, and, of course, Miss Ross have been well-documented - and, having celebrated her 60th year in the music business in 2019, even as recent as this week she announced that she was working on releasing new solo material.
I have, of course, paid myriad tributes to Mary and the girls - with and without the saintly Diana - over the years so, by way of a tribute, I have dug out a real rarity. A song written by the great Northern-Soul-turned-Hi-NRG maestro DJ Ian Levine (apparently about one of his own bitter break-ups), this fabulously camp number sounds like it was written for her - and should have been a huge hit, in my opinion! Take it away, Mary...
Facts:
- In the late 60s she had a torrid affair with our very own Tom Jones - whose wife Linda, when she found out, threatened to cut his balls off!
- After she walked away from the final iteration of The Supremes (following a concert at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London in 1977), Mary found it difficult to make a success of her solo recording career - a fact that wasn't helped when she signed with CEO Records in 1992, which promptly went bankrupt.
- Bitter wrangling about fees and artistic control meant that, despite several attempts by all concerned, Miss Wilson never did reconcile with La Diana to join the "Supremes reunion tour" in 2000.
- In 2009 she appeared on The Paul O'Grady Show - which ended in a special performance with her, Paul O'Grady and Graham Norton as "The Supremes". [I would kill for a video of that routine, but YouTube has no record of this extravaganza.]
- In 2019, Mary was reunited with one of her gowns that was missing from her collection when a British vintage clothing store owner found one at a garage sale in France.
