The Supremes

Year:
1988
Inducted by:
Little Richard
Category:
Performers

Diana Ross
Florence Ballard
Mary Wilson

Introduction

Motown’s first and most commercially successful girl group.

The Supremes were more of a women group than a girl group. Beautiful, glamorous and mature, the Supremes were so popular that they rivaled even the Beatles.

Little Richard Inducts the Supremes

Little Richard Inducts the Supremes at the 1988 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

Little Richard Inducts the Supremes

00:07:17
Mary Wilson of the Supremes Acceptance Speech

00:05:42
"Floy Joy"

00:01:07

Hall of Fame Essay

1988

Michael Hill

“The girls” as The Supremes were known among the Motown family, were not considered a likely pick to click on the company roster when they first joined its ranks in 1961.

But Berry Gordy Jr. believed in them more strongly and for longer than did anyone else, and the girls rewarded his ample attention by coming to embody his dream of the Sound of Young America.

During the heat of the British Invasion in the summer of 1964, Motown released "Where Did Our Love Go?” and the hitherto commercially lukewarm trio of Diana Ross, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard was launched on its streak of five consecutive Number One hits.

And that was only the beginning.