Cindy Birdsong

From 1963 until 1976, Cindy Birdsong's high, clear falsetto was a key ingredient in the sultry vocal harmonies of the legendary Supremes, Motown Records' greatest female pop and R&B group. She joined the trio after a stint in the Ordettes, which later became Labelle, and replaced the troubled Florence Ballard, who had been fired over personal issues in 1962. Birdsong's tenure in the Supremes was anything but harmonious; though she sang with Diana Ross and Mary Wilson in concert, she was kept off the group's recorded output until 1970. She left the group in 1972 to give birth to a son, but returned the following year, only to find that life in the Supremes had not grown any easier under the command of Mary Wilson, who had assumed leadership after Ross's departure in 1970. Birdsong left music altogether in the mid-1970s, working as a nurse and later secretary to Motown president Suzanne de Passe. There were occasional reunions with her former group mates throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but by the new millennium, Birdsong was concentrating on her solo career and memoirs. Though Ross and Wilson overshadowed her contributions to the Supremes, Cindy Birdsong deserved her place in the pop music history books for holding her own during the most contentious period of one of R&B's greatest vocal groups.