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News
michael-jackson-hismuseum

Michael Jackson: HISMuseum

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THE GRAMMYs
GRAMMYs
Dec 2, 2014 - 3:22 pm
  • Michael Jackson photos »
  • Michael Jackson video »
  • Related news: MJ's Final Hours »
  • Related blog: A Pop Messiah »
  • Related blog: A Record Setter »

In June 2009 the GRAMMY Museum was celebrating its six-month anniversary. Having opened to critical acclaim in one of the worst recessions in decades, it was still struggling to find an audience and become the musical destination we all knew it truly was.

Just a few months earlier, the Museum had been fortunate enough to receive perhaps the rarest of 20th-century musical artifacts: eight elaborately embellished jackets and two bejeweled gloves, each undeniably belonging to the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, who had been rehearsing at Staples Center for his upcoming 50-show run at London's 02 Arena. Jackson had noticed the nearby GRAMMY Museum and graciously decided to lend several pieces from his personal wardrobe for an exhibit titled Michael Jackson: HIStyle.

Thursday, June 25, 2009, started like any other day at the Museum, with our curatorial team coincidentally coming in early to remove and replace the Jackson exhibit. At some point in the early afternoon, as our registrar carefully began to collect the jackets for return to their owner, we got word that the pop star had been rushed to the emergency room. Then, that he was in critical condition. Within an hour, we learned of his passing.

As the world waited for answers to a million questions about Jackson's demise, the first news van pulled up to the Museum and telephones began to ring off their hooks. GRAMMY Museum Executive Director Bob Santelli had to make a game-time decision: What do we do with all these artifacts? Since we were the only museum with so many of Jackson's authentic belongings on hand, since our address sat squarely within the epicenter of Jackson activity, and since Jackson was such a huge part of contemporary American music history (which is the story we tell at the GRAMMY Museum) and had such an intimate connection with fans, we made the decision to put our exhibit back up for display.

Within three hours, we had quickly set the exhibit up on the third floor, creating a Jackson memorial of sorts. Instantly, word spread and four different local television stations arrived to report, announcing to Los Angeles that the Museum was the place fans should come to show their respects for the fallen King of Pop. By midnight, I had released the Museum's official statement and Bob had started working with The Recording Academy to bring over a treasure trove of long-unseen footage of Jackson at various GRAMMY Awards shows.

Within 24 hours, it seemed, every major local, national and international news outlet had come calling. The Los Angeles Times, People magazine and NPR all wanted to visit. The word was getting out and we didn't know what to expect. Visitors starting pouring in at a more rapid rate. CNN called. They wanted to go live from the Museum all day, concluding with a sign-off on "Larry King Live."

Within a week, Museum attendance had quadrupled. As droves of fans dressed in MJ T-shirts, wrapped in MJ blankets and holding MJ posters streamed into our lobby, staff watched in awe as attendance numbers skyrocketed.

International media converged on L.A. Live too, anxiously awaiting news of funeral plans. Journalists and TV crews from more than three dozen countries visited the Museum, usually arriving unannounced but quickly uploading photos and video of our memorial exhibit to their audiences around the world. Overnight, it seemed, we became an internationally recognized Museum.

Of course, these 12 overwhelming days were merely a preamble to the official Michael Jackson memorial service, held at Staples Center on July 7, 2009. Before the sun came up, "The Today Show" and "Dateline NBC" were set up in the Museum classroom, interviewing major figures associated with Jackson. Media risers stood three stories high in Nokia Plaza at L.A. Live and tens of thousands of fans flooded through police barricades past the Museum entrance. From our GRAMMY Sound Stage, Museum members watched the broadcast and sang along to every lyric. Afterward, as I walked Bob to the media positions to be interviewed, we literally rubbed elbows with Usher, Dionne Warwick and Stevie Wonder. Though just a bit-sized player in the Michael Jackson story, it was as if our Museum sat at the nexus of pop culture history.

In response to popular demand, last October we opened Michael Jackson: A Musical Legacy. Located on the Museum's fourth floor, it is a larger and more in-depth version of the Jackson exhibit, now equipped with handwritten lyrics, music videos and an interactive dance floor. Of course, it's one of the most popular exhibits in the Museum.

To this day, people arrive at the Museum asking about Michael Jackson. In essence, for some fans, we've become "The Michael Jackson Museum," a nickname we're proud to bear. We owe him a lot, a debt we sadly can't repay. Were it not for Michael Jackson, neither music nor the GRAMMY Museum would be what they are today.

(Katie Dunham is the Communications Manager at the GRAMMY Museum in downtown Los Angeles. A Museum staffer since May 2008, she oversees the Museum’s media relations, and online and social networking marketing efforts. For more information on the Museum, please visit www.grammymuseum.org.)

 

Prince circa 1984

Prince

Photo: Richard E. Aaron/Redferns

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New Auction Features Prince, Taylor Swift & More auction-features-items-prince-taylor-swift-michael-jackson-more

Auction Features Items From Prince, Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson & More

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Also bid on a legendary George Harrison guitar, items signed by Britney Spears and Tom Petty benefitting MusiCares, and so much more
Renée Fabian
GRAMMYs
May 15, 2018 - 2:11 pm

Fancy yourself a songwriter who can "Shake It Off" like Taylor Swift? Into '90s divas such as Britney Spears? Want to make "Purple Rain" like Prince? How about a classic rock guitar slinger like Tom Petty? Or maybe the Beatles' George Harrison is more your style. Whatever your musical affinity, the latest Music Icons auctions from Julien's Auctions are sure to have exactly what you need.

The massive auction features two parts: one day devoted entirely to Prince and a second day of memorabilia featuring artists from B.B. King to Michael Jackson, Harry Styles to Elvis Presley, and everyone in between.

The first day celebrates all things Prince, including a 2002 Schecter "White Cloud" electric guitar commissioned by the man himself, a custom electric blue ensemble worn during a 1999 performance with Lenny Kravitz, a long-sleeved lace-up blue shirt with matching pants, signed handwritten lyrics from 1986's "Miss Understood," and a collection of set lists, tour posters and other unforgettable items.

This velvet sequined coat worn by #Prince during his performance at Studio 54 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in 1999 is in our "Music Icons: Featuring Property From The Life and Career of Prince" #auction event on May 18th at @HardRockCafeNYC and online at https://t.co/TiME89uOXn! pic.twitter.com/NnXonQrb9h

— Juliens Auctions (@JuliensAuctions) May 15, 2018

The second day of the auction features tons of items music fans will want to get their hands on, such as Spears' demo cassette tapes, outfits worn by Alicia Keys, a handwritten poem from Tupac Shakur, the gold outfit Shakira wore during her GRAMMY Awards performance in 2007, platinum records from Madonna, a Whitney Houston GRAMMY nomination certificate, clothing worn by Cher, a guitar played and smashed by Kurt Cobain, jumpsuits worn in a photoshoot by the Jackson 5, and the auction's signature item: the guitar Bob Dylan played when he went electric in 1966.

Check out this custom #guitar owned by #CarlosSantana and played on stage and in studio by @SantanaCarlos! It's in our two day #music #memorabilia #auction May 18th and 19th at @HardRockCafeNYC and online at https://t.co/TiME89uOXn! #Santana pic.twitter.com/rHtK8vKeni

— Juliens Auctions (@JuliensAuctions) May 15, 2018

The auction also features a slate of keepsakes whose proceeds will benefit the Recording Academy-affiliated health and human services charity MusiCares and the music education and preservation efforts of the GRAMMY Museum. These items include signed memorabilia from the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Linkin Park, Ed Sheeran, and Imagine Dragons, among others.

Julien's will host their 2018 Music Icons auction extravaganza in New York City at the Hard Rock Café. The bidding on all Prince items will take place May 18, while the rest will be available during the auction on May 19.

Don't miss your chance to own a piece of music history!

Catching Up On Music News Powered By The Recording Academy Just Got Easier. Have A Google Home Device? "Talk To GRAMMYs"

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The GRAMMY Museum in downtown Los Angeles

Photo: Courtesy of the GRAMMY Museum

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The GRAMMY Museum's Top 10 Moments

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As the Museum turns 5, Executive Director Bob Santelli recalls 10 of its greatest moments
Bob Santelli
GRAMMYs
Dec 2, 2014 - 4:06 pm

Since its grand opening on Dec. 6, 2008, the GRAMMY Museum has made a name for itself as a must-see destination. From the detailed history behind the prestigious GRAMMY Awards and its vast and storied recipients to the mysteries behind the creative process of making music, the Museum is a statement of music's indelible mark on the culture of yesterday, today and tomorrow. In celebration of its five-year anniversary, Executive Director Bob Santelli recalls 10 of the Museum's greatest moments to date.

Grand Opening, Dec. 6, 2008
It was a tough time to open a museum. The economy had just crashed and financial uncertainty was everywhere. I remember getting up at 4 a.m. the day of our grand opening and watching from my hotel room across the street as workers put the finishing touches on the GRAMMY Museum sign.

It was a tribute to our partners, The Recording Academy and AEG, that we opened our doors on time and on budget. But mostly it was because of the tireless efforts of our young museum team that the institution opened with such success. Four other new music museums debuted around the same time. We all wondered if we'd survive the year: all but one did. 

The GRAMMY Museum At The White House
Our first major GRAMMY Museum exhibit was Songs Of Conscience, Sounds Of Freedom. It spotlighted, among other things, the music of the civil rights era and attracted a lot of attention. Thanks to Dalton Delan and our friends at WETA-TV in Washington, D.C., in February 2012 I was asked to put together an education program with first lady Michelle Obama and co-produce a concert with GRAMMY Awards telecast producer Ken Ehrlich and WETA for President Barack Obama. Since then, the GRAMMY Museum has produced eight additional events at the White House. I get chills each time I think about the importance of what we've done there.

Bob Dylan And Mick Jagger Perform At The White House
This gets its own entry because of its magnitude. Bob Dylan played our civil rights concert, "In Performance At The White House: In Celebration Of Music From The Civil Rights Movement," which took place on February 2010. I vividly recall looking into the White House audience — filled with senators and congressmen — and hearing Dylan sing the lyrics to "The Times They Are A-Changin'"— "Come senators and congressmen, please heed the call/Don't stand in the doorway/Don't block up the hall." That was another goose-bump moment. And getting Jagger to sing the blues at the White House, with the president and his family in the first row — talk about a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

Hosting Melinda Gates At The GRAMMY Museum
Melinda Gates and her husband, Bill Gates, are as passionate about education as are we at the GRAMMY Museum. A couple of years ago, we presented an education roundtable hosted by Melinda Gates in our Clive Davis Theater that was broadcast on PBS. Having her say that she heard "great things about the Museum's education programs" gave us a big boost at an important point in the Museum's development.

Producing The Woody Guthrie Centennial Celebration
Everyone who knows me knows how much Woody Guthrie means to me, personally and professionally. The opportunity to produce the Woody Guthrie Centennial Celebration in 2012 with Guthrie's daughter, and my longtime friend, Nora Guthrie, was something I'll always cherish. We hosted an exhibit, This Land Is Your Land: Woody At 100, educational programs, university conferences, and concerts — including one at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The GRAMMY Museum staff, who had never done anything like this before, simply shined.

Hosting The Museum's An Evening With… Program
Imagine "Inside The Actors Studio" meets "MTV Unplugged." That's what happens more than 50 times a year in our intimate, 200-seat Clive Davis Theater. Produced by the GRAMMY Museum's Public Programs & Artist Relations Senior Manager Lynne Sheridan and Associate Manager Stacie Takaoka-Fidler, An Evening With… is our signature public program that features question-and-answer sessions and performances from top artists and industry figures. Participants have included everyone from Smokey Robinson, Kenny Chesney, John Mayer, Stevie Nicks, and Jack White, to Brian Wilson, Yoko Ono, John Fogerty, and Annie Lennox.

Hosting Special Exhibits On John Lennon, George Harrison And Ringo Starr
The fact that the GRAMMY Museum has hosted exhibits commemorating three of the four Beatles is undoubtedly our biggest curatorial highlight. And we did them with the help and cooperation of their respective families. Thank you to Ringo and Barbara Starkey, Olivia Harrison, and Yoko Ono for all that you've done for the GRAMMY Museum. It is very much appreciated.

Lady Gaga Performs At Our First Education Benefit 
GRAMMY winner Lady Gaga, with her full revue, performed for 200 lucky guests in our Clive Davis Theater in 2011. Thanks to her generosity, we raised a lot of money for our education programs. Thank you Ken Ehrlich and especially Lady Gaga. That year alone, we brought nearly 25,000 students to the GRAMMY Museum.

Michael Jackson's Endorsement
We weren't open but a few weeks when I got a call from someone in Michael Jackson's camp. Late one night he passed the GRAMMY Museum and wondered if he was in it. As it turned out, he wasn't. A few days later I was walking through one of his warehouses picking out pieces for a new exhibit: Michael Jackson: King Of Pop. He had hoped to come down to see the exhibit with his family, but sadly, that never came to be.

A Bite With Public Enemy
During my An Evening With… Public Enemy interview, Flavor Flav decided he was hungry and ordered a steak from a nearby restaurant. It was delivered to him onstage where he ate it, answering questions and playfully sparring with Chuck D between bites. Not satisfied, Flav then proceeded to order dessert. The stage was a mess, but everyone in the audience agreed it was a memorable night.

 

Quincy Jones

Quincy Jones

Photo: Rebecca Sapp/Stringer via Getty Images

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How Quincy Jones Architected Black Music mogul-moment-how-quincy-jones-architected-black-music

Mogul Moment: How Quincy Jones Became An Architect Of Black Music

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In his work, which spans seven decades and counting in the business, Quincy Jones has proved time and time again that Black music is America's music
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Mar 4, 2021 - 3:51 pm

Ahead of Quincy Jones' appearance at the Inaugural Black Music Collective GRAMMY Week Celebration during GRAMMY Week 2021, GRAMMY.com explores how the producer, composer and arranger built a launchpad for some of the most revolutionary voices in Black American music.

Quincy Jones has the stories of a townful of people put together. He's eaten rats to survive, attended his own funeral and claims to know who actually shot JFK. He can show you a scar on his temple where an icepick nailed him—and another on his hand thanks to a switchblade. In between, he's helped Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Charles, George Benson, Michael Jackson, Donna Summer and scores of others make some of the most beloved music of the 20th century.

All those artists happen to be Black, and Jones understands profoundly their work's vitality to the American fabric. Between working on classic films like 1966's Walk, Don't Run, 1967's In The Heat of the Night and 1969's The Italian Job; producing bubblegum hits like Lesley Gore's "It's My Party"; and co-producing the celebrity smorgasbord "We Are The World," Jones has spearheaded quintessential Black American albums like Ella Fitzgerald’s and Count Basie’s Ella and Basie, Michael Jackson’s Thriller and George Benson’s Give Me the Night.

In his work, which spans seven decades and counting in the business, Jones has proved time and time again that Black music is America's music. For his trouble, he's collected 28 GRAMMY Awards, 80 nominations and a GRAMMY Legend Award. Ahead of his appearance next at the Inaugural Black Music Collective Event, a virtual event focused on amplifying Black voices, during GRAMMY Week 2021, it's worth noting how Jones helped architect Black music throughout his career.

"I believe that a hundred years from now when people look back at the 20th century, they will look at Miles, Bird, Clifford Brown, Ella and Dizzy, among [other] elders as our Mozarts, our Chopins, our Bachs and Beethovens," Jones told NPR's “Fresh Air” in 2001. (He worked or hobnobbed with all five of those Black geniuses.) "I only hope that one day, America will recognize what the rest of the world already has known, that our indigenous music—gospel, blues, jazz and R&B—is the heart and soul of all popular music; and that we cannot afford to let this legacy slip into obscurity, I'm telling you."

That elevation of Black expression is the headline of Jones' life and work. Here's how it became that way.

For Quincy Jones, Music Changed Everything

On March 14, 1933, Jones was born on the wrong side of town during the worst economic downturn in history. "I wasn't born in Bel Air, man. I'm from the South Side of Chicago," he told Dr. Dre in the 2018 Netflix documentary Quincy, citing an area with a history of violence and poverty. "In the '30s, man, during the Depression, damn, you kidding? We lost my mother when I was seven, and my brother and I, we were like street rats." At first, he didn’t have musical dreams, but those of a life of crime: "I wanted to be a gangster 'til I was 11. You want to be what you see, and that's all we ever saw."

With his mother was in and out of mental institutions, Jones and his brother Lloyd stayed at his grandmother's—a former slave’s—house without electricity or running water. According to his 2001 autobiography Q, they were so impoverished that she fed the boys "mustard greens, okra, possum, chickens and rats, and me and Lloyd ate them all."

Jones’ mother, who often sang religious songs, introduced a young Jones to music. "When I was five or six, back in Chicago, there was this lady named Lucy Jackson who used to play stride piano in the apartment next door, and I listened to her all the time right through the walls," Jones told PBS in 2005. Plus, a next-door neighbor, Lucy Jackson, played stride piano next door; Jones kept an ear to the wall.

When Jones was 10, the family moved to Bremerton, Washington. In his early teens, they relocated to Seattle, where Jones caught word of a skinny, Black 16-year-old kid in town with frightening musical talent. "[He] played his ass off. He played piano and sang like Nat 'King' Cole and Charles Brown," Jones remembered in Q. "He said his name was Ray Charles, and it was love at first instinct for both of us."

Despite Charles' blindness, he was utterly self-reliant, renting an apartment, going steady with a girlfriend and shopping, cooking and laundering for himself. His independence and creativity were galvanizing to Jones, illuminating a path he would follow for the rest of his life.

"Ray was a role model at a time when I had few. He understood the world in ways I didn't," Jones wrote in Q. "He'd say, 'Every music has its own soul, Quincy. It doesn't matter what style it is, be true to it.' He refused to put limits on himself."

Soon after, Jones enrolled at Garfield High School, where he honed his craft as a trumpeter and arranger. He earned a scholarship at Seattle University, transferred to Berklee College of Music in Boston, traveled with the future GRAMMY Special Merit Award Honoree Lionel Hampton's band at age 20. From there, he was off to the races.

Of course, Charles went on to live up to his maxim of artistic limitlessness, cross-pollinating R&B, soul, blues, gospel, jazz, and even country music, on 1962's Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. And Jones remained an integral part of his story, writing and arranging "The Ray" for 1957's The Great Ray Charles. Heavy, bluesy and swinging, the tune telegraphs Jones' admiration for The Genius.

Jones Alters Rock ‘N’ Roll

Fast-forward five years: Jones was in the midst of a fruitful stint as an arranger for the Count Basie Orchestra, on albums like 1960's String Along With Basie. 

Meanwhile, over in rock 'n' roll, an extinction event had hit. Buddy Holly was dead, Chuck Berry was in prison, Jerry Lee Lewis was in the hot seat for a marriage scandal, and a post-service Elvis Presley was flailing from one lightweight flick to the next. Little Richard, for his part, had become born again and forsaken rock 'n' roll, pivoting to Jesus with 1960's austere Pray Along With Little Richard.

Understanding that his earlier, cat-in-heat hits like "Tutti Frutti" and "Long Tall Sally" had a lot in common with gospel music, Jones lit a fire under Richard by way of 1962's The King of the Gospel Singers, a project he joined via Richard’s old producer Bumps Blackwell. 

Over Jones’ revved-up arrangements, Richard sounded less self-righteous and more tapped into the wild, frenzied heart of holy devotion.

Deeper Into Jazz…

Ever since he was a kid, Jones had been a fan of bebop, a harmonically advanced, blisteringly fast form of small-group jazz. The virtuosic trumpeter, composer and educator Dizzy Gillespie was one of the style's principal architects.

Come 1963, and Jones would produce his hero's excellent 1963 album New Wave!. The album braids American mainstays (W.C. Handy's "Careless Love") with bossa nova standards (Antônio Carlos Jobim's "One Note Samba"). As a whole, it provides as effective a gateway as any into Gillespie's innovations in the Afro-Cuban sphere.

...And Soul & Pop

For the rest of the decade, Jones arranged for Black vocal dynamos Shirley Horn, Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan. 

In 1973, Jones produced Aretha Franklin's Hey Now Hey (The Other Side of the Sky), which is neither as muscular as her peak work nor as luxurious as '80s albums like Jump To It. Regardless, that in-betweenness—and the strength of its material—makes Hey Now Hey an intriguing look at the Queen of Soul in a state of transition.

At the time, two members of Jones' band were George "Lightnin' Licks" and Louis E. "Thunder Thumbs" Johnson, known as The Brothers Johnson. Jones went on to produce four successful albums for the brothers. Three singles in particular—1976's "I'll Be Good to You," 1977's Shuggie Otis cover "Strawberry Letter 23" and 1980's "Stomp!"—all topped the Hot R&B Charts and remained classic examples of Jones’ contributions to Black music.

Enter Michael Jackson

Around this time, Jones was highly active in film. While working as a music supervisor and producer on 1978's The Wiz, a film adaptation of the Broadway musical of the same name, he was impressed by the precocious co-star Michael Jackson, who had already made waves in The Jackson 5.

After filming wrapped, Jackson told his label, Epic Records, and managers, Freddie DeMann and Ron Weisner, that he wanted Jones to produce for him.

"[T]his was 1977 and disco reigned supreme," Jones wrote in Q. "The word was, 'Quincy Jones is too jazzy and has only produced dance hits with The Brothers Johnson.' When Jackson approached Jones about this, he laid the young singer's anxieties to rest: "If it's meant for us to work together, God will make it happen. Don't worry about it." (In the meantime, Jones produced 1979's funk-soul gem Masterjam by Rufus and Chaka Khan.)

The music the pair made together may prove the existence of a higher power: Jones produced 1979's Off The Wall, 1982's Thriller and 1987's Bad.

"[W]orking with Quincy was such a wonderful thing," Jackson told Ebony in 2007, 25 years after Thriller’s release. "He lets you experiment, do your thing, and he's genius enough to stay out of the way of the music, and if there's an element to be added, he'll add it."

By now, all three albums have been codified into pop culture. "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" could compel a corpse to cut a rug, everyone who's watched TV has seen the "Thriller" video, and the exuberant "The Way You Make Me Feel" can still lift one out of a bedridden depression. Together, the three albums won more than a dozen GRAMMYs and were nominated for a pile of others.

Give Him The Night

While Jackson ascended in the pop world, the jazz guitar great George Benson began singing more and hewing more commercial, with Tommy LiPuma-helmed albums like 1976's Breezin', 1977's In Flight and 1979's Livin' Inside Your Love. In 1980, Jones partnered with Warner Bros. to form Qwest, a subsidiary label that gave him extraordinary creative freedom.

"Much to my luck, he still wanted to make a George Benson record," Benson said in 2014's Benson: The Autobiography. "Let me ask you this: Do you want to go for the throat?" Jones asked Benson. "Quincy, let's go for the throat, baby," he responded. "Let's go for the throat."

The result was 1980's career-making Give Me The Night, which garnered three GRAMMYs at the ceremony that year: Best Jazz Performance, Male for "Moody's Mood"; Best R&B Instrumental Performance for "Off Broadway"; and Best R&B Performance, Male for the title track.

Jones has been wildly active ever since. In 1993, he convinced Miles Davis to take a rare look back at his modal-jazz years with Miles and Quincy Live at Montreaux, recorded mere months before Davis's death. In the ensuing decades, he's produced concerts and TV, given no-holds-barred interviews, and soaked up his stature as a titan in the music industry.

In 2018, when Vulture asked Jones if he could snap his fingers and fix one problem in the country, one word flashed in his mind. "Racism," he responded. "I’ve been watching it a long time—the ’30s to now. We’ve come a long way but we’ve got a long way to go. The South has always been fucked up, but you know where you stand. The racism in the North is disguised. You never know where you stand.

"People are fighting it," he added, with Charlottesville in the immediate rearview. "God is pushing the bad in our face to make people fight back."

America may remain in the thick of a racial reckoning, but all the while, Jones has tirelessly facilitated and championed artists of color. He’s seemingly lived a hundred lifetimes and been a force for good in numberless ways. 

But when he brought the best out of his fellow Black American visionaries, that’s when he really went for the throat.

Recording Academy Announces Official GRAMMY Week 2021 Events

The Supremes

Mary Wilson (C)

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Remembering The Supremes’ Mary Wilson remembering-mary-wilson-of-the-supremes

The Supremes Were A Dream, And Mary Wilson Dreamt It

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The pop-soul vocal legends’ co-founder was the last original Supreme in the group—and the most devout believer in their original promise
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Feb 9, 2021 - 6:13 pm

The Supremes were still in high school when their star began to rise, and at the dawn of 1962, their co-founder, Mary Wilson, sat in a modern literature class pondering her relationship to others. For her final exam, she had to write an essay with a psychological bent. While addressing her chaotic childhood, Wilson inadvertently summed up her dynamic with the other Supremes—the wounded Florence Ballard and the dogged Diana Ross.

"I have developed a protective shell, which whenever I feel I may face a conflict, I draw into. Why? Is it because I subconsciously feel I might be snatched again?" Wilson wrote in her 1986 autobiography Dreamgirl: My Life As A Supreme. "I try to cover up my deficiency by developing a pleasing personality. Actually, underneath this, I am still a young and frightened girl."

Five years later in 1967, during a period where Ballard left the group in a tailspin, and Motown president Berry Gordy rebranded them Diana Ross and the Supremes, Wilson realized she was the last to hold onto the image of the group as a holistic triad. "I saw nine years of work and love and happiness fade away," she wrote. "The Supremes still stood in my mind as a dream from childhood, a wonderful dream that had come true. I believed The Supremes would last forever. Now I knew that even dreams that come true can change."

"With one look at Flo," she added, "I knew that dreams don’t die; people just stop dreaming."

Wilson went on to neither be a household name like Ross nor a tragic figure like Ballard, who wrestled with addiction until her 1976 death at only 32. Instead, she was the group’s nucleus, acting as a buffer between Ballard and Ross and soldiering on in their absences as the last original member. After The Supremes called it a day in 1977, she entered an inspiring second act, touring extensively, authoring books, stumping for artists’ trademark rights, and collaborating with the GRAMMY Museum on the Legends Of Motown: Celebrating The Supremes exhibit.

Tragically, two days after eagerly announcing new music on YouTube, Wilson died unexpectedly at her home in Henderson, Nevada on Feb. 8. She was 76. "I was extremely shocked and saddened to hear of the passing of a major member of the Motown family, Mary Wilson of the Supremes," Gordy said in a statement. "I was always proud of Mary. She was quite a star in her own right and over the years continued to work hard to boost the legacy of the Supremes. Mary Wilson was extremely special to me. She was a trailblazer, a diva and will be deeply missed."

Wilson’s journey to that burning, yearning dream—one of young infatuation on a Biblical scale—began on March 6, 1944, when she was born to a butcher father and homemaker mother in the sleepy town of Greenville, Mississippi. Hers was a long-delayed birth. "A little past midnight, I was finally born," she wrote in Dreamgirl. "I now wonder if my first appearance in life was somehow indicative of the path my life would later take. Even at my birth, I was a fence-sitter."

The family relocated from Saint Louis to Chicago before Wilson moved in with her aunt and uncle, Ivory "I.V." and John L. Pippin, who led her to believe they were her parents. When Wilson was six, she traumatically learned I.V. was, in fact, not her mother. "My whole world had been turned upside down," she wrote. "I'd trusted these people, and they had lied to me." Three years later, her father, Sam, lost his leg in a factory accident.

In 1956, with her birth parents in tow, Wilson moved to the Brewster Projects, a complex of government-owned apartment buildings. Despite the jarring change—and prevalent gang violence—Wilson viewed her new climes rosily. "It was quite crowded compared to suburbia, but I loved it," she wrote. "You had to learn to get along with all kinds of people." While auditioning to sing in a school talent show, a hurled insult from a classmate resulted in punches from Wilson.

"I was not a fighter," she wrote, "but I would fight to be part of a group."

One of the characters Wilson ran into in the projects was a young Diane Ross—she’d change it to "Diana" later. But she more immediately took to another neighbor, Florence Ballard, who she describes as a Hollywood-style beauty even then. After bonding over a shared love of singing—Ballard sang a mean "Ave Maria"—in early 1959, Milton Jenkins of the all-male vocal group The Primes approached her to form a female counterpart.

"Between her gasps for breath, I could see she was grinning from ear to ear," Wilson wrote. "She grabbed my arm and asked excitedly, ‘Mary, do you want to be in a singing group with me and two other girls—’ 'Yes!'  I replied before she even finished the question. It didn't occur to me to ask what the group was about, or who was in it, or anything." During a jittery rehearsal at The Primes’ bachelor pad, Wilson found herself next to Ballard, Ross, and a fourth girl, Betty McGlown. Their voices fell together effortlessly and gracefully. The Primettes were born.

With Jenkins as their manager, The Primettes pounded the pavement in local clubs until a series of connections—from Smokey Robinson to Gordy, who let them sing and clap on Mary Wells and Marvin Gaye recordings—led them to Hitsville, U.S.A.

Asked to come up with a new name, they pored over a list of them, suggestive of regality and class—The Royal-Tones, The Jewelettes. But the name Ballard settled on for the group telegraphed something else entirely: divinity.

As word of the Supremes extended outside town, Wilson noticed their similarities and differences more acutely. Ballard, who had survived a sexual assault by an acquaintance, had begun to psychologically fray. Meanwhile, Ross was pure quantum ambition.

"Flo, a Cancerian; Diane, an Aries; and me, a Pisces—three completely different, insecure people," Wilson explained. "What each of us saw in the other two were the parts of herself she lacked or couldn’t assert or tried to deny: Flo’s earthiness, my nice-guy demeanor, and Diane’s aggressive charm. We accidentally discovered that three separate, incomplete young girls combined to create one great woman. That was the Supremes."

"I saw the group as something bigger and more important than any one of us," she declared elsewhere in the book. "I was content to play on the team."

If the Supremes were a collective dream, the Supremes’ string of 1960s hits—most of them written by Motown's powerhouse Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting and production team—have a dreamlike quality. These are universal songs you hear at cookouts and supermarkets and in Ubers; thus, they tend to drift between life stages and experiences. And of their twelve No. 1 hits, Wilson appeared on each.

The group received two GRAMMY nominations—one for Best R&B Recording for "Baby Love," the other for Best Contemporary Rock & Roll Performance for "Stop! In the Name of Love." (In 1999, "Where Did Our Love Go" and "You Keep Me Hangin’ On" were added to the GRAMMY Hall of Fame, and in 2001, "Stop! In the Name of Love" followed suit.)

After Ballard left the band in 1967, Cindy Birdsong of Patti LaBelle & the Blue Belles took her place, and they continued as Diana Ross and the Supremes. In 1970, Diana Ross left the band to start a solo career, leaving Wilson as the final original member amid a succession of replacement singers and shifting band names, like "The New Supremes." They never recaptured the commercial success they once enjoyed.

However, Wilson remained their North Star, touring tirelessly, practicing yoga, and authoring Dreamgirl and its 1990 sequel, Supreme Faith: Someday We’ll Be Together. Her legacy also involves musicians’ rights; after non-founding members of the Supremes toured under the band name, she campaigned on behalf of artists’ trademark ownership. Wilson also fought for higher pay for musicians on streaming sites through her support of the Music Modernization Act. Her 2019 coffee-table book Supreme Glamour homed in on the iconic group's fashion, compiling images of their famous gowns.

Last Saturday, she appeared on YouTube with a blazing grin, vivaciously announcing new music through Universal Music Group, hoping it would come out before her March 6 birthday. Then, in her sleep, she slipped away.

But her dream remains, as long as there are listeners to make it their own.

GRAMMY Museum Announces Reopening Of "Motown: The Sound Of Young America" Exhibit

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