The Lost Supreme

In the months before she died, Florence Ballard, the spunky teenager who founded the most successful female vocal group in history—the Supremes—told her own side of the story. Recorded on tape, Flo shed light on all areas of her life, including the surprising identity of the man who raped her prior to entering the music business, the details of her love-hate relationship with Motown Records czar Berry Gordy, her drinking problem and pleas for help, a never-ending desire to be the Supremes’ lead singer, and her attempts to get her life back on track after being brutally expelled from the group. This is a tumultuous and heartbreaking story of a world-famous performer whose life ended at the age of 32 as a lonely mother of three who had only recently recovered from years of poverty and despair.

"An unmatchable snapshot of the exhilarating yet often ugly 1960s soul music scene."  —Kirkus Reviews

Peter Benjaminson is the author of Death in the Afternoon: America’s Newspaper Giants Struggle for Survival, Secret Police: Inside the New York City Department of Investigation, and The Story of Motown, and is the coauthor of Investigative Reporting. He is a former reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Detroit Free Press. He lives in New York City.