Day 2 of the milestone birthday mayhem commences with one of the first ladies of the music of our age.
Keep reading this post all the way through, too. There may be hidden secrets, hiding in plain sight.
Our heroine today is reaching the platinum 75 plateau, fitting for someone with so many platinum smash hits.
As everyone knows she started as the Supreme Queen of Motown in the Sixties, then went solo in 1970 and never looked back.
More zillion sellers and standard tunes followed. A reputation as the diva's diva grew.
A rare combination of paradigm-defining style and genre- and era-defining sounds, to say there will only ever be one Diana Ross is probably the most grotesque understatement you'll ever read on this page.
Never one to give all that many fucks what anyone thinks or says, she was just in the news last week defending Michael Jackson -- whom she helped to discover at age 9 -- against the allegations in that explosively lurid documentary.
We'll keep that out of it for today, with the caveat that the only people who'll ever really know were the people who were there.
Anyway it's her birthday, so I'm sharing this incredible French TV footage of The Supremes from 51 years ago, plus this other, even more spectacular thing after the break.
Diana Ross & The Supremes
ORTF Studios
Studio 102
Paris, France
likely 1.21.1968
01 Medley: Stop In the Name of Love/Come See About Me/My World Is Empty Without You/Baby Love
02 interview
03 The Lady Is a Tramp/Let's Get Away from It All
04 Reflections
05 Michelle
06 Medley: Mame/Thoroughly Modern Millie/Second Hand Rose
07 Somewhere
08 J'attendrai - Reach Out, I'll Be There (with Claude François)
Total time: 26:41
Diana Ross - vocals
Cindy Birdsong - vocals
Mary Wilson - vocals
with elements of the Tamla Motown Orchestra -- incl., it seems, James Jamerson on bass -- and unidentified Parisian musicians
Claude François - vocals on Track 08
PAL DVD of an ORTF-TV "Melody" rebroadcast from 2010
probably taped 1.21.1968 and first broadcast on 2.3.1968
1.21 GB PAL/March 2019 archive link
We'll finish out this trifecta of big birthday posts tomorrow with a real blast from the past, but before I go I'm going to Easter Egg something ridiculous.
There's this ultra-rare promo triple CDr of remixes of her solo stuff that gets up to five hundred dollars on Discogs.com, and I'm putting it here if anyone is interested. We're talking 15 minute versions of Love Hangover and whatnot.
Enjoy your early Easter, and see you tomorrow... and obviously a very excellent 75th birthday to Miss Diana Ross!--J.
