Diana Ernestine Earle Ross, popularly known as Diana Ross, is an American vocalist, music artist and actress. Ross first rose to fame as a founding member and lead singer of the Motown group, The Supremes during the 1960s. After leaving the group in 1970, Ross began a solo career that has included successful ventures into film and Broadway.
She received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her role as Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues in 1972, for which she won a Golden Globe award for most promising female newcomer. She has won seven American Music Awards, and won a Special Tony Award for her one-woman show, An Evening with Diana Ross, in 1977.
In 1976, Billboard magazine named her the “Female Entertainer of the Century.” In 1993, the Guinness Book of World Records declared Diana Ross the most successful female music artist in history due to her success in the United States and United Kingdom for having more hits than any female artist in the charts with a career total of 70 hit singles with her work with the Supremes and as a solo artist. Diana Ross has sold more than 100 million records worldwide when her releases with the Supremes and as a solo artist are tallied. In 1988, Ross was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as member of the Supremes alongside Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson.
Ross is one of the few recording artists to have two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame one as a solo artist and the other as a member of The Supremes. In December 2007, she received the Kennedy Center Honors. In 2012, Diana was finally honored by NARAS with a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in her 50th year in the music business.
Diana Ross was born at Hutzel Women’s Hospital in Detroit, Michigan on March 26, 1944. The second-eldest child of Ernestine née Moten, a schoolteacher, and Fred Ross, a former United States Army soldier, Ross would later say that she didn’t see much of her father until he had returned from service following World War II. Much has been made of whether her first name ends in an “a” or an “e”. According to Ross, her mother actually named her “Diane” but a clerical error resulted in her name being recorded as “Diana” on her birth certificate.
Her high school yearbook listed her as “Diana” and as early as 1963, when The Supremes released their first album, she was listed in the liner notes as “Diana”.
Despite her early life as a “tomboy”, upon her teenage years, Ross had dreams of being a fashion designer. She studied design, millinery, pattern-making and seamstress skills while attending Cass Technical High School, a four-year college preparatory magnet school, in downtown Detroit. In her late teens, Ross worked at Hudson’s Department Store where, it was claimed in biographies, that she was the first black employee “allowed outside the kitchen”. Ross graduated in January 1962, one semester earlier than her classmates. Around this same time, Ross was turned on by the emerging rock and roll music scene, and her early influences included Frankie Lymon and Etta James.
At fifteen, Ross was brought to the attention of music impresario Milton Jenkins, manager of the local doo-wop group the Primes, by Mary Wilson. Paul Williams, then member of The Primes, convinced Jenkins to include Ross in the Primettes, considered a “sister group” of the Primes. Ross was part of a lineup that included Wilson, Florence Ballard and Betty McGlown, who completed the lineup.
In 1968, Ross started performing as a solo artist mainly on television specials, including The Supremes’ own specials such as TCB and G.I.T. on Broadway. In mid-1969, Gordy decided to have Ross leave the group by the end of the year and Ross began sessions for her own solo work that July. One of the first plans for Ross to establish her own solo career was to bring in a new Motown recording act. Though she herself didn’t claim discovery, Motown pinned Ross as having discovered The Jackson 5. Ross would introduce the group to several public events, including The Hollywood Palace, though she added in “Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5”, which didn’t sit well with the Jacksons’ father, Joseph Jackson and Gordy. In November, Ross confirmed a split from the Supremes on Billboard. Ross signed a new contract as a solo artist in March 1970.
The album of the same name became Ross’s first non-soundtrack studio album to reach the top ten, peaking at #5. Later that year, the Diana & Marvin album, her duet album with Gaye, was released, and spawned five hit singles, including three released in the United States and two in Europe, gaining an international hit with their cover of The Stylistics’ “You Are Everything.” In 1973, Ross began giving out concerts overseas where she immediately sold out at every concert venue she performed at. That year, Ross became the first entertainer in Japan’s history to receive an invitation to the Imperial Palace for a private audience with the Empress Nagako, wife of Emperor Hirohito.
Ross’s next solo album, 1974’s Last Time I Saw Him featured the successful title track, but it was not as successful as Touch Me in the Morning. Ross didn’t have an album release in 1975, but was at work on the film Mahogany. She had an incident with Gordy on the set of the film when she struck him after the two had engaged in an argument. Ross returned on the musical scene in 1976 with another eponymous album, which saw her gain a dance audience after the release of the disco-tinged song, “Love Hangover,” which returned her to number-one. Will Smith later sampled the hook of “Love Hangover” for his song “Freakin’ It”.
Ross’s 1977 album Baby It’s Me faltered on the charts. Ross decided to try her hand at Broadway and in 1977 she starred in her own one-woman show entitled An Evening with Diana Ross. Her performance resulted in her winning a Tony Award, and a television special of the Broadway show was later aired on television.
In 1971, Diana Ross began working on her first film, Lady Sings the Blues, which was a loosely based biography on music legend Billie Holiday. Some critics lambasted the idea of the singer playing Holiday considering how “miles apart” their styles were. “Lady Sings the Blues” opened in theaters in October 1972, becoming a major success in Ross’s career. Jazz critic Leonard Feather, a friend of Billie Holiday, praised Ross for “expertly capturing the essence of Lady Day.” Ross’s role in the film won her Golden Globe Award and Academy Award nominations for Best Actress.
After the film, Ross returned to her music career, re-emerging with another film in 1975 with Mahogany, her second film, in which she starred alongside Billy Dee Williams and whose costumes she designed. Diana’s story is simply that of an aspiring fashion designer who becomes a runway model and the toast of the industry.