Diana Ross

Diana Ross was born on March 26, 1944, in Detroit, Michigan, one of six children of Fred Ross, a factory worker, and Ernestine Ross ^[1]. The family lived for a time in the Brewster-Douglass Homes, a large public housing project on Detroit's east side that also produced several other future Motown performers ^[2].

Music filled her childhood through church choirs and the vocal harmony groups that flourished on Detroit street corners in the 1950s. She attended Cass Technical High School, where she studied fashion design and dress making, skills she later applied to her own stage wardrobes ^[1]. Any accurate Diana Ross biography begins with this mix of discipline and ambition: a teenager who worked as a bus girl and department store employee while rehearsing with friends after school.

In 1959 she joined Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson, and Betty McGlown in a singing group called the Primettes, formed as a sister act to a male group known as the Primes ^[2]. The girls performed at local talent shows and sock hops, and they began appearing at the offices of a new Detroit record label run by songwriter Berry Gordy Jr., hoping for an audition.

Gordy signed the group to his Motown label in January 1961 on the condition that they finish high school, and they took a new name: the Supremes ^[2]. Success did not come quickly. The trio of Ross, Ballard, and Wilson released a string of singles that failed to chart significantly, earning them a reputation inside the company as the no-hit Supremes.

Everything changed in 1964 when the songwriting team of Holland, Dozier, and Holland gave them "Where Did Our Love Go," which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 ^[3]. Four more chart toppers followed in quick succession, including "Baby Love" and "Stop! In the Name of Love." With Ross singing lead in a light, breathy soprano, the Supremes became the most popular American group of the era and a rare Black act welcomed on prime time television, playing the Copacabana in New York and appearing repeatedly on The Ed Sullivan Show ^[3].

By 1967 Gordy had renamed the act Diana Ross and the Supremes, signaling her central role and preparing the ground for a solo career ^[2]. The group ultimately placed twelve singles at number one in the United States, a total no other American vocal group of the period matched ^[3]. Ross gave her final performance with the Supremes in Las Vegas in January 1970, closing with the appropriately titled farewell single "Someday We'll Be Together."

Ross opened her solo career in 1970 with the album Diana Ross, which included a dramatic reworking of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" that climbed to number one and earned her a Grammy nomination ^[1]. Among the most cited Diana Ross achievements is her 1972 film debut in Lady Sings the Blues, a Billie Holiday biography produced by Motown. Her portrayal of the jazz singer brought an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and a Golden Globe for most promising newcomer ^[4].

She continued acting in Mahogany (1975), for which she also designed costumes, and in The Wiz (1978), a film adaptation of the Broadway musical in which she played Dorothy opposite Michael Jackson ^[4]. On record she moved fluidly with the times: the ballad "Touch Me in the Morning" (1973), the theme from Mahogany (1976), and the disco hit "Love Hangover" (1976) all reached number one ^[1].

Her commercial peak arrived at the turn of the decade. The 1980 album Diana, made with Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards of Chic, produced the hits "Upside Down" and "I'm Coming Out" ^[5]. In 1981 her duet with Lionel Richie, "Endless Love," spent nine weeks at number one and became one of the best selling singles of her career ^[1]. That same year she left Motown for RCA in a contract reported at the time as one of the richest in recording history ^[5]. In 1977 Broadway recognized her one-woman show An Evening with Diana Ross with a special Tony Award ^[1].

Ross married music executive Robert Ellis Silberstein in 1971; the couple divorced in 1977 ^[1]. In 1985 she married Norwegian shipping businessman and mountaineer Arne Naess Jr., a union that ended in divorce in 2000 ^[6].

She raised five children: Rhonda, Tracee, and Chudney from her first marriage and earlier relationship, and sons Ross and Evan from her marriage to Naess. Several followed her into entertainment, most prominently Tracee Ellis Ross, an Emmy nominated actress known for the television comedy Black-ish ^[6]. Ross has spoken often about motherhood as the center of her life, a theme she explored in her 1993 memoir Secrets of a Sparrow ^[7].

Away from recording, she became known for spectacular live events. Her free concert in New York's Central Park in July 1983 drew an enormous crowd and was interrupted by a violent thunderstorm; she returned the next day to finish the show, and proceeds funded a playground in the park that bears her name ^[5].

Ross returned to Motown in 1989 and continued recording and touring through the following decades, including the international hit "When You Tell Me That You Love Me" (1991), which performed strongly in Britain ^[1]. A planned Supremes reunion tour in 2000, Return to Love, was cut short after disputes over billing and pay kept original member Mary Wilson from participating ^[6].

Honors accumulated steadily in her later career. The Supremes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 ^[3]. Ross received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2007, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2016 ^[8].

She remained an active performer well into her seventies. In 2021 she released Thank You, her first album of new material in fifteen years, and in June 2022 she filled the celebrated legends slot at the Glastonbury Festival in England, singing to one of the largest audiences of the weekend ^[9].

Few careers connect as many chapters of American popular music. With the Supremes, Ross helped Motown cross racial boundaries on radio and television during the civil rights era, presenting glamorous, polished Black stardom to a mass audience at a moment when such images were scarce ^[2]. Billboard has ranked her among the most successful chart artists in the magazine's history, counting her group and solo work together ^[1].

Her influence runs through generations of performers, from Michael Jackson, whom she mentored early in his career, to later stars such as Beyonce who have cited her stagecraft and image making as a model ^[5]. The essential Diana Ross facts, twelve number one Supremes singles, six solo chart toppers in the United States, an Oscar nomination, and a Medal of Freedom, only sketch the outline of a career built on reinvention.

For the archive, her story is one of persistence: a girl from a Detroit housing project who studied dressmaking, waited out years of failed singles, and then held the world's attention for more than sixty years ^[8].