INTERVIEW: Mary Wilson still stands Supreme
Mary Wilson, an original member of The Supremes, will be one of the musical guests at this weekend’s Help Is on the Way benefit in San Francisco. The concert event, presented by the Richmond/Ermet Aid Foundation, benefits Meals on Wheels in San Francisco and the AIDS Legal Referral Panel. The 24th-annual gala will take place Sunday, Aug. 19 at the Herbst Theatre, and the festivities kick off at 5 p.m.
Wilson has carved out an impressive solo career, and, of course, she is fondly remembered for her time with The Supremes. Along with Diana Ross, Florence Ballard and others, Wilson was one of the voices behind some of the biggest musical hits of the 20th century, including “Stop! In the Name of Love,” “Baby Love,” “Come See About Me,” “You Keep Me Hanging On” and “I Hear a Symphony,” among countless others.
The group, whose members first met while living in Detroit’s Brewster-Douglass public housing, recorded 12 No. 1 hits in the late 1960s. They became the faces of the new Motown sound and could be found on everything from commercials to variety shows. After the the original members left, Wilson kept the torch alive and reformed a new version of The Supremes in the 1970s. The hits kept coming, with “Up the Ladder to the Roof” and “Stoned Love.”
Today, Wilson focuses her concerts on humanitarian causes, such as this weekend’s Help Is on the Way benefit in San Francisco.
“It’s one of those opportunities to help where help is needed,” Wilson said in a recent phone interview. “As you get older, I think things become more important to me — of what I want to say, leave behind, or give back, or be known for, or just something that feels good for me. And oftentimes I do certain things for children causes or homelessness, things that have a meaning for me, and I have an impetus for.”
Interestingly, Wilson said she does not regard herself as a singer. Instead, she prefers the title entertainer or performer. It is that unique of sense of performance and stage presence that she will bring to San Francisco and that has sustained her through The Supremes years and her successful solo career.
“I don’t really think of myself as a singer, yet my teachers always put me into music classes,” she said. “I remember always waking up singing, so I was always doing it. But I never really thought of myself as a singer, but when I got into it, I totally realized this is what I want to do for all my life. So that’s why I have done this my whole life because that’s kind of what I do, but it’s not something where I think of myself as a singer. I think of myself more as an entertainer or performer. … You have singers who are singers — Johnny Mathis, Whitney Houston — and then you have performers like Sammy Davis. I’m kind in that realm of just a performer.”
One of Wilson’s favorite parts of any concert is to look out at the audience and see their eyes. She loves witnessing their transformation while listening to the tunes. Recently she had the pleasure of going back to Detroit — the city where it all began more than 50 years ago — and performing for a crowd of people.
“I really was just thrilled because a lot of those people had not seen me perform in a long time,” she said. “They had seen me as a Supreme, but not really as Mary Wilson. It was a wonderful feeling seeing them out there, first of all, looking at me and just wondering, OK, now what is Mary going to do. We’ve known her for 50-some years, but we don’t know what she herself sounds like. And I could see on their faces those thoughts.”
She added: “I saw them being transformed and saying, ‘Oh my God, yeah, this is the Mary Wilson we thought we knew. We’re seeing her now.’ So all of that is very wonderful when you’re on stage, and you can see the reactions of people. [They] can come to a show not knowing what they’re going to see, and then you see them suddenly having fun. And you can see all this changing as you’re performing, and then they start joining in. They start singing the songs with you. It becomes a wonderful marriage between performer and audience, and everyone is enjoying it. I’m the kind of person that I don’t want to go a party, and no one’s there and no one is having fun. I like to go to a party where I’m having fun, they’re having fun, we’re all having fun. … That’s kind of who I am.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Mary Wilson will perform as part of Help Is on the Way 24 — Concert and Gala: Celebrating Music, Legends & Icons. The event is a benefit for Meals on Wheels in San Francisco and the AIDS Legal Referral Panel. The event takes place Sunday, Aug. 19 at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. Click here for more information and tickets.
