Baby love
My baby
love
Why must we separate, my love?
All of my whole life through
I never loved no one but you
Why you do me like you do?
I get this need….
(From
the song “Baby Love,” from the Supremes’ Where Did Our Love Go album, 1964,
composed by Brian Holland/Lamont Dozier/Edward Holland Jr.)
I
|
am a product of the “golden age” of television. I was conceived on a balmy night in
July of 1957, between episodes of Roy
Rogers and Wagon Train. Nine months later, Dale Guy Madison was
born. Named for Dale Evans, Roy Rogers’ wife, and Guy Madison, one of the guest
stars of Wagon Train, my purpose in
life seemed destined -- I was to become a performer.
I was cooing only my first words when the group “The Supremes” was born (they were originally founded as “The Primettes” in 1959 and became “The Supremes” in 1961). By the time they had their first hits in 1964, their music, energy, and essence encompassed my world. Every car transistor in my neighborhood could be heard playing “The Sound of Young America,” (the official slogan that then referred to the music of Motown,) and often it would be a Supremes single that would float through the speakers and dance on the air. Whenever my family tuned into The Ed Sullivan Show, I would see those beautiful ladies again as they captivated the audience with their style and grace. What drew me to these three young singers from the Detroit projects, discovered by Berry Gordy? Of course in the sixties, it was exciting just to see black people on television. I shared the same sentiment as Oprah Winfrey when as a child she would holler from her back porch, “Colored people on! Colored people on tv!” But the Supremes had a special appeal to me, beyond any of the other “colored” performers of that era. They were something unique.
Mary Wilson,
Florence Ballard, and Diana Ross. Mary always seemed to be having the most
fun. Diana was cute but was always
popping her large eyes to make them appear even bigger. Florence always seemed a bit haughty or
pissed. She was stern, pretty, and
aloof like my mother, who even had a wig very similar to one of the many wigs
that Florence wore. I loved to watch those three singers standing in front of
the microphone, all eyes on them.
To a black kid growing up in the
sixties, the Supremes were an undeniable symbol of success. They were an example of what could
happen if you had talent and drive. You could rise from the projects and one
day be on The Ed Sullivan Show. They were given very little in the beginning and look
how they turned it around -- they were performing all over the world. In the
late 50’s and early 60’s when the civil rights movement was huge, success was
about crossover. That’s just what
the Supremes did. They weren’t just stars for the black community, they leapt
over color barriers. White kids helped the Supremes bust the charts open with
more number one hits than any other artist or musical group, except for the
Beatles and Elvis Presley.
Everyone knew their names and I wanted people to know my name: Dale Guy
Madison. My name reminded me of the Hollywood star, Edward G. Robinson. Just as
the Supremes had done, I wanted to cross over too.
No, I wasn’t a
singer and I did not live in the projects. I lived in a middle class
neighborhood in Portsmouth, Virginia. The community was named Cavalier Manor,
and every street was named after a famous black person. I lived on [Duke]
Ellington Square; behind our home was [Billy] Ekstine Drive, and across the way
was [Count] Basie Crescent.
However, I knew from the time I was a small child that I had been given
my name for a special reason. Why else would my parents have named me after
those white people? Ironically
enough, it sometimes felt like the only obstacles standing in my way were my parents.
One
day, as I sat in the living room watching a tv documentary on the life of
Marilyn Monroe, (narrated by famous movie heart throb Rock Hudson), my father
felt it necessary to comment as he walked past the television set, Issac Asimov
science fiction novel in hand. “You know that is not her [Marilyn Monroe’s]
real voice singing,” he said.
I
continued staring at the television set and tried my best to ignore him -- he
certainly had a way of throwing ice water on a dream. But he kept on.
“That long note she is singing at
the end of Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best
Friend is another singer’s voice mixed in on top of hers,” he added. “I
don’t understand what you see in those old movies anyway.”
“Marilyn Monroe is famous,” I quipped
back. “People know her name.”
“You
really live in the past too much, watching those old movies. Why don’t you go read a book? Marilyn
Monroe isn’t even her real name.”
Well,
I did go read a book. I went to
the library, checked out a biography on Marilyn Monroe and studied about the
life of Norma Jean Baker, the woman who would groom herself into the famous
icon. I read several versions by several different authors from cover to
cover. What mattered to me in
everything I read was that Marilyn Monroe was a star.
I also learned that
Marilyn Monroe died when she was thirty-six years old. That age seemed old to
me as a child. I told my brother, Ricky, that I’d rather die than be old at
thirty. Headed to Saturday market,
one crisp morning in our 1959 red Chevrolet Impala, he tattled on me.
“Hey, Ma -- Dale says he is going
to kill himself before he turns thirty!”
“Dale,
why would you say a fool thing like that?” my mother asked in shock.
“I
don’t ever want to be old,” I replied.
Ricky and my sister, Elsie, burst
out laughing at my ridiculous statement. I didn’t understand what was so
ridiculous. In the early to mid
sixties, many famous people had died young just like Marilyn Monroe, including
John F. Kennedy and Dorothy Dandridge.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would die in the late sixties, at only the
tender age of 39.
That morning I ignored their
teasing and turned up the volume on the car radio to drown them out. As usual, the Supremes were playing on
the radio, singing one of their top ten hits, “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.”
With all the enthusiasm my
free-spirited, eight-year-old self could gather, I laid down my vocals right
along with them:
Set me free, why don’t
cha babe
Get out my life, why
don’t cha babe
‘Cause you don’t really love me
You just keep me hangin’ on
I was a diva in the making, but
this time it was my mother who shut me down.
“Boy, what did I tell you ‘bout
singing like a girl? Don’t no boy
supposed to be runnin’ ‘round sounding like no girl. Now turn that shit down!”
I turned down the
radio but never turned down my love for the three girls from Detroit. That same
year I bought my very first record album, a 45 rpm of the single “Come See
About Me,” which I purchased from the Navy commissary where things were
discounted below retail. (Only a military ID could get you in and my father was
a military man.) I began to
collect more record albums, posters, magazine articles, and anything I could
find related to the Supremes. I craved
for tidbits about their lives; I wanted to know who their boyfriends were, if
they fought over gowns, where they lived, and how they really got along. I wondered why Diana Ross had to sing
lead on every song instead of sharing the spotlight. The Temptations seemed to have two or three different guys
take turns on the lead -- why not the Supremes? Why were the Supremes such a
success while some other girl groups were not? During that era, all the girl groups pretty much looked
alike. Most had three singers and,
if they were black, they always wore big wigs. I did notice that the Supremes always wore nicer wigs than
the Marvellettes or the Vandellas.
But what made their sound unique?
I wanted to feel
the magic and know all the dirt. I believed that if it could happen to them, it
could happen to me. It was not
that I wanted to be a singer; I just wanted the fame that comes when people
know who you are.
At eight years old, I had already
started to follow my passion and had held the lead in every school play since
grade one, (and would do so through grade five.) From the time I appeared in my first school play, Jimmie and the Sleep Fairies, I was
hooked on performing. The play was
about a little boy, Jimmie, who refuses to go to bed until he is visited by
fairies that tell him, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a young boy
healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
Jimmie starts going to bed early, (and so did I in real life.)
During the fourth and fifth
grades, I would make the morning announcements over the school’s PA
system. Being the morning
announcer always made me feel special, and the teachers always told me I had a
great speaking voice. In classes,
the teachers always called upon me to read aloud. Then something happened in the sixth grade -- my voice changed. And it happened right
after I was cast as Ebenezer Scrooge in the musical A Christmas Carol.
Like
many boys going through puberty, sex hormones began to set in and my voice
started cracking. So there I was in this production, giving my best British
accent for the meanest Scrooge this side of the London breweries, however, when
it came time for me to sing, my voice would akwardly break. The director of the production, Mr.
Brown, finally replaced me two weeks before the show opened. (By this time, the Supremes had also
replaced Florence Ballard with a new background singer, Cindy Birdsong.) I wondered, “Is this how Florence felt
after being pushed out of the group?”
It
was my first taste of the bitter side of the world of entertainment. I should have packed up and quit the
business then, but I did not. Instead, I just went home and cried.
About a week
later, Mr. Brown called saying that, although he had replaced me with a
brilliant singer named Anthony Avery, Anthony just couldn’t get his lines
right. So, Mr. Brown had come up
with a perfect solution.
“Dale,”
he said. “Did you see the movie My Fair
Lady that came on television the other night?”
“Yes,
Mr. Brown. But what does that have
to do with me?”
“It
was a musical, Dale, and the star, Rex Harrison, could not sing. Did you notice how he talked his way
through the songs? I think if you
are willing to practice talking through your songs like Rex Harrison, we could
put you back in the play.”
It was like a dream come true. My
mother was against it, fed up with the going back and forth, but I
persisted. I resumed the role of
Ebeneezer Scrooge, and the sense of accomplishment of doing that play never
left me. Afterwards, I felt I
could do anything.
The next year when my school cast
the non-musical play No Man Is An Island,
based on the poem by John Donne, I knew that I had the lead, since I was on a
streak. But Mr. Brown cast
my best friend, Bruce Melvin, instead.
I guess he figured I had given him enough stress the year before and he
didn’t want to take any chances.
I had experienced
my first disappointments at the hands of “showbiz,” and would eventually learn
that they can not always be avoided. It was around this time in 1969 that I
learned that the Supremes were breaking up. I still remember the confusion I felt. What did Diana Ross hope to achieve by
going solo? Would it change her sound?
I remember watching the Supremes as they performed their song “Someday
We’ll Be Together” on The Ed Sullivan
Show, wondering why they had to break up and if they were getting a divorce
like my mother and father. (My parents were separated by that time, and in the
final stages of divorce proceedings.)
I also wondered why Florence had
left the group a few years earlier.
There were rumors, but information was spotty. I remember reading somewhere that Florence was going to
release her own album. I was happy
for her because, like most fans, I always wondered what she would sound like if
she came out of the background and sang solo. I remember a sense of relief
when, after Diana Ross’ departure, the Supremes rebounded with new lead singer
Jean Terrell and scored a hit with “Up the Ladder to the Roof.” I loved the new sound as much as I
enjoyed Diana Ross’ debut solo hit,
“Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand).” Prior to the
breakup, I heard Mary sing the song “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” on the
television show The Hollywood Palace. I liked her singing but was hoping she
would pick a better song to showcase herself. I wasn’t crazy about the original
version, much less Mary’s version.
My brother, a die hard Fifth Dimension fan, teased me unmercifully about
this.
“Now we know why Mary sings background and won’t be singing
lead when Diana Ross leaves,” he jabbed.
“You’re just jealous,” I said. “Your ol’ Fifth Dimension doesn’t have
half the hits that the Supremes have!”
My family and I
were extremely competitive with our favorite musical groups. In Ricky’s mind, Marilyn McCoo of the
Fifth Dimension couldn’t sing a bad note if she tried. He was always looking for ways to pick
on my beloved Supremes. My baby
sister idolized the Jackson Five. My mom kept a picture of James Brown on her
dresser, but one day my father came to visit and tore it up. I felt I was
always the most dedicated to my group, as I kept up with every member.
When Florence died in 1976, she
made the cover of Jet Magazine. The publication reported that she had been broke and on welfare. I knew then that there was an untold
Supremes story. It wouldn’t be
until years later, when I saw the musical Dreamgirls
and read Mary Wilson’s autobiography, that I would be exposed to the drama
behind the music. Drama or no
drama, showbiz and the Supremes were already in my blood. They weren’t going anywhere.
Baby love, my baby love,
I need
you, oh how I need you
Why you do me like you do
After I’ve been true to you
So deep in love with you…
Baby, baby, ooh ‘til it’s hurtin’ me
‘til it’s hurtin’ me
Ooh, baby love…
No comments:
Post a Comment