It's great credit to an artist and an unusual way to celebrate their passing and their life that your immediate thought on hearing the news that they are no longer with us is to go and find one of their records from your shelves, and proceed to listen to it for the best part of the afternoon wanting to punch the air but feeling it might not be altogether appropriate reaction to someone important's death.
Such is the strange case of Mary Wilson and my reaction to her passing when I heard the news this afternnoon. A Supremes Greatest Hits is now on my record player and my hips are swaying in an unseemly and undignified manner not befitting a man of my age. It's probably a good job that nobody is here to witness this at the moment, but seriously. Excuse my language but The Supremes were and are fucking fantastic.
Where Mary Wilson stands in the scheme of things I'm not exactly sure. But she was always there, from start to finish as far as I'm aware. She strikes me as the calm but determined one, while Diana was flighty and Florence was plain unlucky, I imagine Mary backstage, constantly steadying the ship, acting as peacemaker, smoothing over the cracks.
Then when Diana flew the coop and Florence fell, or was pushed out of the picture, Mary kept her nerve and welcomed in new recruits, took control as Berry Gordy lost interest and contributed to some of the groups's very best singles and some of my absolute favourites of their's Up the Ladder to the Roof, Stoned Love, Automatically Sumshine. Also the Floy Joy album which came out in 1972 and is absolutely wonderful. Trust me. Nobody paid any attention, then or now. They were a singles band weren't they? Well, not quite. Mary, surely gets most of the credit for this glorious second act
I don't know if I've got things right about Mary and her career and character in the preceding paragraphs. I'm no expert on The Supremes, I've never read any biographies about them, or many articles for that matter, This is just what my impression I've always had of the mechanics.of how things worked between them. Anyhow, ultimately they were all replaceable. Except perhaps ironically for Mary. The least flashy of the original three.
What does it matter anyhow .I just think they're one of the best things that happened musically in the Twentieth Century. Three sassy, sexy black women, swooning and cooing onstage and on television every few months until the next fabulous single came along the conveyor belt.
So RIP Mary. Thanks for everything and thanks for countless millions of others too. Yours was some journey. I'll listen to your records until the end of the day and intertittently from then on until it's time for me to go too. There aren't too many better things to do with your time.
Here's a link to The Guardian obituary.
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