For: Diana Ross (author)

Diana Ross (born March 26,1944) is an American twelve-time Grammy and Oscar-nominated singer, record producer and actress, whose musical repertoire spans R&B, soul, pop, disco and jazz. During the 1960s, she helped shape the sound of popular music and the Motown Sound as lead singer of The Supremes before leaving for a solo career in the beginning of 1970. Since the beginning of her career with The Supremes and as a solo artist, Diana Ross has sold more than 100 million records.

During the 1970s and through the mid 1980s, Ross was the most successful female artist of the rock era, crossing over into film, television and Broadway. She received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her 1972 role as Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues, garnered twelve Grammy Award nominations, and won a 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." The Guinness Book Of World Records declared Diana Ross as the most successful female music artist of the 20th century with a total of eighteen American number-one singles: twelve as lead singer of The Supremes and six as a soloist. Ross was the first female solo artist to score six number-ones. She is also one of the few artists to have two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame--one as a solo artist and the other as a member of the trio "The Supremes." In December 2007, she received a John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Honors Award.

Including her work with the Supremes, Ross has recorded 57 studio albums. In 1999, as a solo artist, she was ranked #38 on VH1's "The 100 Greatest Women in Rock and Roll", while The Supremes ranked #16.

Early years

Ross was born at Women's Hospital in Detroit, Michigan on March 26, 1944. For a time, the Ross family lived on Belmont Street in northern Detroit - directly off of Woodward Avenue - where Ross befriended neighbor Smokey Robinson. Ross' father moved his children to live with relatives in Bessemer, Alabama. Then, her family moved back to Detroit. When Diana was fourteen years old, the family moved into the Brewster-Douglass projects. The following year, Ross began her music career with neighborhood friends Mary Wilson, Florence Ballard, and Betty McGlown as the Primettes (later renamed The Supremes), a sister group to local act The Primes (later The Temptations).

The Supremes

main: The Supremes

After Martin's exit in 1962, the group would remain a trio throughout its tenure. In 1963, Motown CEO Berry Gordy made Ross the official lead singer of the group after several years of group mates trading leads, because he felt the group could crossover to the pop charts with Ross' higher, and appealing, vocal quality. Initially, this decision was not an issue by Ross' band mates, until a few years later, when it became obvious that Ross was the focal point of the group; Ballard, in particular, took extreme issue. Despite difficulties, after The Supremes hit number-one with "Where Did Our Love Go", the group found 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 40.