The Supremes
Tuesday, 3 July 2007
It is difficult not to have at least ten LP’s of The Supremes on your shelves, even if you don’t really like their music. All the records of The Supremes in my collection were cheap, meaning 1 euro or less. I have never met anyone who collects The Supremes. Maybe I should better not have written this story, because my Supremes collection is not complete yet.
Yesterday I came home with the LP The Supremes sing Rodgers and Hart. The best thing on the LP are the thumbnails on the back cover, showing ten other LP’s of The Supremes, two of which I had never heard of yet. Especially A bit of Liverpool sounds promising. So if you have a copy and want to sell it to me for 1 euro or less, please let me know.
On the Rodgers and Hart LP it is mainly Diana Ross who is doing all the singing. Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard are only singing some ooooh’s and aaaah’s in the background, and in some songs not even that. When I listened to the LP last night I was surprised: hey, this is good stuff! But before the second song my attention began to wander. And no matter how I tried, I could not keep my mind focussed on the songs for longer than half a minute or so. I have this problem with almost all Supremes records, except for their Greatest Hits. And I guess that many people have the same problem with The Supremes; that’s why their LP’s are so un-collectible.
Another reason why The Supremes are not collectible is the voice of Diana Ross, of course. To my ears it is one of the least erotic voices in pop history. It sounds to me as if she imitates emotions. She does this very good, but ears can’t be fooled easily. It all sounds to me as a cry for help, as if she is in need for some therapy. Not the kind of voice that I love to listen to.
Here is The lady is a tramp, choosen because Diana Ross gives a rather convincing imitation of Eartha Kitt here.
Maybe it would be an interesting experiment to get a stopwatch and to measure how long you can keep your mind on listening to this song. I mean really listening, with full attention, and not thinking of any thing else.
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(I noticed that the picture on the Christmas album looks very much like a mask of some sort of puking deity.)