Diana Ernestine Earle 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.
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. 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. She always went by “Diane” at home and at school. 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”. At The Supremes’ first Copacabana engagement in 1965, she introduced herself to the audience as “Diane”, but later that year she started introducing herself as “Diana”, but all her intimates still call her “Diane”.
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 1960, following their win at a singing contest in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, the group auditioned for a spot on Motown Records after Smokey Robinson introduced the young group to Berry Gordy.
In January 1961, after having replaced McGlown with Barbara Martin, Berry Gordy agreed to sign the young act under the condition they change their name. Each member picked out various names from friends. Eventually they settled on The Supremes, though Ross initially had apprehensions toward the name she felt the name would mistake them for a male vocal group.
That changed in 1963 when Gordy assigned Ross, who had already sung lead on the majority of their early singles, as the main lead vocalist, considering that her vocals had potential to reach Gordy’s dreams of crossover success. Following this, they recorded their first hit single, “When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes”, later that year, where it peaked at number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100. Before this song, the Supremes were unfavorably pinned as the “no-hit Supremes”. Following this, the group reached number-one with “Where Did Our Love Go” and reached unprecedented success: between August 1964 and May 1967, Ross, Wilson and Ballard sang on ten number-one hit singles, all of which also made the UK top forty. The group had also become a hit with audiences both domestically and abroad, going on to become Motown’s most successful vocal act throughout the sixties.
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.
Ross was given movie offers over the years, which she reportedly rejected because of either contractual obligations or fears of typecasting. Ross had campaigned to portray pioneering entertainer Josephine Baker in a feature film even during her later years in Motown. However, in 1991, the feature film turned into a TV film with Lynn Whitfield playing Baker instead of Ross. Ross was also offered a role in an early adaptation of The Bodyguard with Ryan O’Neal. However, plans for this film fell through and it was never made. Years later, the script began circulation around Hollywood again and this time a film studio gave it the green light. Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner assumed the lead roles in the 1992 film. In 1993, Ross returned to acting with a dramatic role in the television film, Out of Darkness. Ross won acclaim for her role in the tv movie and earned her third Golden Globe nomination, although she did not win. In 1999, she and Brandy Norwood co-starred in the television movie, Double Platinum, which was aired prior to the release of Ross’s album, Every Day Is a New Day