The Lost Supreme: The Life of Dreamgirl Florence Ballard »

Peter Benjaminson is the author of Death in the Afternoon: America’s Newspaper Giants Struggle for Survival, Secret Police: Inside the New York City Department of Investigation, and The Story of Motown, and is the coauthor of Investigative Reporting. He is a former reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Detroit Free Press.

In the months before she died, Florence Ballard, the spunky teenager who founded the most successful female vocal group in history—the Supremes—told her own side of the story. Recorded on tape, Flo shed light on all areas of her life, including the surprising identity of the man by whom she was raped prior to her entering the music business, the details of her love-hate relationship with Motown Records czar Berry Gordy, her drinking problem and pleas for help, a never-ending desire to be the Supremes’ lead singer, and her attempts to get her life back on track after being brutally expelled from the group. This is a tumultuous and heartbreaking story of a world-famous performer whose life ended at the age of 32 as a lonely mother of three who had only recently recovered from years of poverty and despair.

Al Abrams

Florence deserved a biographer with Benjaminson's skill and talent. . . . If this book were a record it would top the charts. (Al Abrams, publicity director, Motown Records, 1964-66)

Preface: Flo and Me     xiii
Acknowledgments     xvii
Introduction: Founder and Soul Sister     xix
Detroit Is Where It's At     1
Generosity and Betrayal     9
Always a Bridesmaid     25
Roughing It     37
"Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom, Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom, Ba-by, Ba-by"     45
In Pursuit of False Gods     51
Supremes at the Summit     55
Room at the Top     67
Struggle Among the Stars     75
The Corner of Hollywood and Woodward     83
Trouble at the Top     87
After the Fall     99
"I Now Pronounce You"     107
Dashed Hopes     109
Fleeced Again     119
Bleak House     125
Friend or Foe?     129
Paranoid, Isolated, and Homeless     135
Three into Two Won't Go     141
Down, Down, Down and Out     145
Inside the Mental Ward     153
To Err Is Human     163
The Lost Supreme     167
Flo Sums It Up     171
Where's the Rest of Me?     173
Afterword: The Dreamgirls Resurrections     177
FlorenceBallard, Primettes, and Supremes Discography     181
Excerpts from Florence Ballard's Legal Case Against Motown Records et al.     185
Sources     201
Index     205