Actors - Diana Ross

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Diana Ross (born Diane Ernestine Earle Ross on March 26, 1944 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American soul, R&B and pop singer and actress. Ross is one of the most successful female artists of her era, both due to her solo work and her role as lead singer of The Supremes during the 1960s.

In 1976, Billboard magazine named her the female entertainer of the century. In 1993, The Guinness Book Of World Records pronounced her the most successful female artist ever, partly due to her combined total of eighteen #1 singles, six of them recorded solo and the remaining dozen from her work with the Supremes. Only The Beatles (twenty number ones), Mariah Carey (seventeen number ones) and Elvis Presley (seventeen number ones) have equalled or bettered this accomplishment.

Biography

The Supremes

Main entry: The Supremes

Fred and Ernestine Ross had named and christened their daughter "Diane"; however, due to a clerical error, "Diana" was what wound up on her birth certificate . Regardless of the mistake, Ross would continue to use the name "Diane" through her teenage years.

Ross began her long music career with Mary Wilson, Florence Ballard and Betty McGlown as the doo-wop quartet the Primettes, a sister group to The Primes in 1959. After signing to Motown Records in 1961 and replacing McGlown with Barbara Martin, they changed the name of the group to The Supremes. Barbara Martin left the group shortly afterwards, and The Supremes carried on as a trio.

Although all the girls originally took turns singing lead, Motown chief Berry Gordy made Diane the permanent lead singer starting in 1964, because he felt her voice had the pop appeal the Supremes needed to cross over to white audiences. Ross also began using the name "Diana" at this time. Between the summer of 1964 and the summer of 1967, the Supremes released ten singles which went to #1 on the pop charts becoming the most successful black group of the decade.

In July 1967, Florence Ballard was fired from the Supremes and replaced with Cindy Birdsong. At this time, the group was officially renamed Diana Ross & the Supremes recognizing Ross as the focal point of the group. During this period, the group had two more #1 hits as Motown began plans for a Diana Ross solo career, which was announced in November 1969. In January 1970, Ross officially departed from the Supremes after a January 14 Farewell concert at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. The group moved on with new lead singer Jean Terrell, while Ross put the finishing touches on her debut album.

Early solo career

In the Spring of 1970, Diana Ross, Ross' debut solo album, was released. After the initial moderate success of what turned out to be Ross' signature concert song, "Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)" (U.S. #20, U.S. R&B #7), Ross broke out of the pack with her cover of Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell's 1967 classic "Ain't No Mountain High Enough". The original 3-minute love duet was turned into a 6-minute dramatic soul opus, where Ross was in spoken word half of the running time. The song would peak at #1 on both the U.S. pop and R&B charts, and Ross received a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female.

In the first few years of Ross' solo career, she developed a polished, soulful style that was particularly her own and was well suited to her work with songwriters-producers Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson. Ross and Gordy struggled to find a record able to top the success of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough". Her second release, Everything Is Everything, failed to produce a top 10 hit in America. However, her covers of Aretha Franklins "Call Me" (her second Grammy-nominated performance), The Carpenters' "(They Long To Be) Close To You", and the Beatles "The Long and Winding Road" on that album showed that she was, indeed, a singer to be reckoned with, exhibiting both the vulnerability and longing that would become her trademark. In the United Kingdom, she enjoyed a massive #1 hit from the LP, "I'm Still Waiting", which spent 4 weeks at the top. The cover photo of that album would later inspire Britney Spears who wears a similar outfit in her 2004 video for her single "Toxic". For her third, 1971's Surrender, she was teamed again with Ashford and Simpson. "Surrender" was notable for several Top 40 solo recordings, however, Gordy decided Ross needed a new outlet for her talent and set his sights on motions picture. It would prove to be a fateful move.

Lady Sings the Blues

When word got out that singer Diana Ross was going to portray jazz-blues legend Billie Holiday in a box-office movie, critics, Holiday's fans and Ross' skeptics laughed at the news. Like many of the singers-turned-actors of the day, Ross was slammed early by critics because "she didn't look like Billie" nor did she have the same qualities that made Holiday so unique when she became a superstar during the jazz era. However, Ross, Gordy, and the newly established film division of Motown Productions carried on with their Billie Holiday bio-pic production, Lady Sings the Blues
.

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Actors - Diana Ross

Biography

The Supremes

Early solo career

Lady Sings the Blues

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