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It’s hard to believe that a music icon of the stature of Diana Ross has never performed in Hawaii before.
The most successful female recording artist ever with 18 U.S. No. 1 hits, Ross will make her Maui debut on Sunday at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center.
According to news reports, she’s also heading to Hawaii to oversee a wedding ceremony for her daughter Chudney.
While Ross rarely gives interviews, she did supply the show’s promoter, Rick Bartalini, with some quotes.
“I am hoping that every one of my performances feels like a celebration,” Ross said. “It doesn’t matter to me if I am in a stadium with thousands of people or in a much smaller venue, my interaction is with the audience on a one to one.”
As to favorite songs she likes to sing in concert, Ross said, “I like the song ‘I Will Survive.’ I like ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.’ I like songs that give positive images that are positive totally in nature about the thoughts and thinking behind the song. With these songs, the energy that happens between the audience and myself is just phenomenal. It’s very positive, it’s exciting. I like to watch them enjoy what we are offering and it’s really very special.”
Commenting on the singer who is included in Rolling Stone’s list of “100 Greatest Artists of All Time,” producer/musician L.A. Reid said, “Diana Ross’ voice would come on the air and give you chill bumps. It had such presence, terrific tone and was so identifiable. She was captivating, romantic. She set the road map for the success of Janet Jackson, Madonna – anybody who could sing but wasn’t a real crooner like Aretha or Gladys Knight.”
Here are some interesting facts about the legendary “Divine Miss Ross.”
1. While in high school, she sang with the vocal girl group the Primettes, who earned about $15 a week from their performances.
2. When she was 14, Motown Records head Berry Gordy turned her away for being too young to join his label, so she worked as his secretary.
3. Teachers at her high school remember her as “the girl who said she would be a star.”
4. At their peak in the mid-1960s, the Supremes rivaled the Beatles in worldwide popularity. In 1964, Ross and the Supremes paid them tribute with the album “A Bit of Liverpool.” A few years later, the Supremes recorded a rather psychedelic version of the Beatles’ “Come Together.”
5. Touring Japan in 1973, Ross became the first entertainer in Japanese history to receive an invitation to the Imperial Palace for a private audience with the wife of Emperor Hirohito.
6. She left Motown in 1981 for RCA Records, signing a $20 million contract – the most lucrative deal in history at the time.
7. Around 450,000 fans massed in New York’s Central Park in 1983 to see Ross present a free concert.
8. She has a kids’ playground in Central Park named in her honor. The Diana Ross Playground, which she completely funded, was opened in 1986.
9. Ross’ long friendship with Michael Jackson led to the King of Pop including her in his will as a secondary guardian (if his mom, Katherine Jackson, died) of his three children.
10. And while she’s won a Lifetime Achievement Award, and has been nominated many times for a Grammy, she has never won one.
Like many African-American artists, Ross began singing in a church choir where she met future Supremes Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard. Signed to Motown in 1961, at the age of 16, Ross was surprised when the label’s founder, Gordy, wanted to change the group’s name from the Primettes.
“We made a list of names,” she recalled in a past interview. “We couldn’t agree. Florence picked the name the Supremes. I didn’t like the name at first.”
Employed at first as backup singers for established Motown artists such as Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells, the group hit the big time by 1964 with “Where Did Our Love Go,” their first No. 1, selling more than 2 million copies.
By 1965, they had made history, achieving five consecutive No. 1 hits (a feat that has never been topped) – with “Baby Love,” “Come See About Me,” “Stop! In the Name of Love,” “Back in My Arms Again” and “I Hear a Symphony.”
And in May 1965, the Supremes made the cover of Time magazine, a rare feat for black artists back then. America had fallen in love with them.
Unlike other “girl” groups, the Supremes had a mature, glamorous image. They had style, elegance and grace. And they were powerful symbols of black success.
In an interview in 2011, Oprah Winfrey told Ross how she had been an inspiration to “every little girl who dared to dream.” Almost choking on tears, Winfrey continued, “Watching you when I was a 10-year-old girl, I carried that dream inside for years, because there wasn’t anyone on television who looked like me. Our hearts lit up with possibility of what it meant to be a little black girl.”
“We created an image for girl groups,” Ross reported in a Rolling Stone interview. “The image that we created was very ladylike, very feminine. Our movements were never bumping and grinding – it was very smooth and rhythmic, and the music was the same.”
With Ross continually out front in the spotlight, by 1967, the group officially amended its name to Diana Ross and the Supremes.
Her transition to a solo career began in early 1970 after a final Supremes performance in Las Vegas. Thier final recording in 1969, “Someday We’ll Be Together,” was the group’s 12th No. 1 hit.
“I had spent 10 years building up a name and image and we had become successful,” Ross told Ebony magazine. “Walking away from a successful business, you wonder if you can have the same success. It was a change that just had to happen. I couldn’t have stayed where I was. So the fear was, will I be okay? Will my records be hits?”
She needn’t have worried. Even though it was a significant departure from the Supremes’ sound, her brilliant debut solo album, “Diana Ross,” was packed with memorable songs including “Reach Out and Touch Somebody’s Hand” and her extraordinary version of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” which hit No. 1 and was nominated for a Grammy. Slowly building to a crescendo, the six-minute-plus album version of “Mountain” is a pop masterpiece.
By 1972, Ross had branched out into acting with the Billie Holiday biopic “Lady Sings the Blues,” which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. The soundtrack for the film was a huge success and Ross went on to star in several more films, including “Mahogany” in 1975 and “The Wiz” in 1978.
In a Billboard interview, Ross was asked how “Lady Sings the Blues” and “Mahogany” affected her musical career.
“I started realizing that there was another way of giving my feelings out, you know through jazz,” she said. “I started doing research into jazz a little bit more. I wanted to know, what is jazz? What is improvising? I would go and listen to a lot of the old-time jazz artists.”
When disco hit, Ross embraced the dance phenomenon, scoring a No. 1 hit with the epic, Grammy-nominated “Love Hangover.” With its irresistible groove, it launched a disco diva.
Teamed with the legendary hit-making team of Chic’s Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, Ross released “diana,” the biggest-selling studio album of her solo career. Featuring classics like “Upside Down,” “My Old Piano” and “I’m Coming Out,” the album became internationally popular with massive dance and dance radio success. “I’m Coming Out,” which was supposedly inspired by Ross running into several drag queens in a club dressed as her, became an anthem for the LGBT movement, and she became one of its greatest icons.
Backed by an all-star list of jazz musicians, Ross scored again in 1993 with the critically acclaimed live recording “Stolen Moments: The Lady Sings Jazz and Blues.” In 2006, Motown finally released her “Blue” album, which had been recorded in the 1970s. It showcased how she was as gifted singing jazz standards as pop, soul and disco classics.
Her most recent album, “I Love You,” included covers of the Beatles’ “I Will,” Billy Preston’s “You Are So Beautiful” and Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day.” “This song makes me dance,” she reported. “Everyone wants a lovely day.”
Still delighting fans at the age of 71, Ross recently wowed audiences during a Las Vegas run. “Miss Ross is a perfectionist when it comes to music and she was absolutely perfect on opening night,” raved the Las Vegas Sun. “The applause was nonstop.”
Having lived a remarkable life and achieved so much, when Ross was asked on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” about the greatest highlight of her career, she immediately responded, “When I got to meet Nelson Mandela, just to see him. He said, ‘I love you,’ and I said, ‘I love you.'”
Asked by Winfrey if she would ever stop performing, Ross said, “Maybe if my voice changes. Then it’s time for me not to sing.”