New Diana Ross Book Gets Back to Reality

During a career spanning half a century in which a skinny little girl from Detroit's Brewster Projects came to be a byword for style, professionalism and artistic integrity, Diana Ross has also become an icon for women, for black people, for disenfranchised individuals throughout the world.

Millions of words have been written about her - some of them true - as writers, commentators and fantasists have scrambled to define, package and fictionalise the person behind the achievements - to find some mystic shorthand explanation for it all.

Grateful though she might be for the attention, the lady herself is not the only person who thinks it's all been done to death. Wouldn't it be nice if someone concentrated on her music, her unique legacy, the breadth, the consistency and the quality of her artistic output? This view is certainly echoed by the studio professionals who have worked with her over those five decades.

'Diana: Queen of Motown' by Ian Phillips, just published in hardback by Motown specialists, Bank House Books, does exactly that.

Track by track, album by album, movie by movie and even through major concert dates, it draws together for the first time the sheer sum of what Miss Ross is all about - just what it is that has won over all those generations of fans and admirers.

And, though it is in no sense another biography, it also provides a somewhat more accurate picture of what she's been doing all these years, and the most convincing 'reasons' of all for her unique success.

Diana: Queen of Motown by Ian Phillips (ISBN 9781904408697) is available to order from all good book retailers, online stores and direct from the publishers at http://www.bankhousebooks.com

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos

 

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