So what happened was my brother decided that maybe he would join the Army because nothing was really happening in terms of the group. Maybe a month after that, an opportunity presented itself with Ronnie White's cousin finding out about an audition that was going to take place. As a result, the guy wanted a fifth voice and they rehearsed in our home basement. Smokey asked if I would go to the audition with them. We did a little practice on some of the tunes because Smokey had written a lot of the songs himself. We went over to the audition. The guy said that he wasn't really that thrilled with the group because of the fact that there was a girl in the background. He felt that there was a group already like that – that group happened to be The Platters. We were saying, "Well, we're not like The Platters. We're more like R&B. The girl's not going to be wearing fancy gowns and all that. She'll wear outfits like the guys except that she'll wear skirts."
I guess it didn't go over that well with him, but there happened to be a person walking around and listening. That person happened to be Berry Gordy. Mr. Gordy wanted to know if we had any more of those songs – actually, he was speaking to Smokey. Did he have any other original tunes? He said yes. Mr. Gordy said, "Well, I'd like to hear them." He was so very patient and listened to – I think he said – about 30 of them. After each song, he would give nice comments as to how a song is supposed to have a beginning, a middle and an end. You know, it has to make sense. As you go along, you can't start talking about the snow and end up talking about going to school or something. So his advice was well-taken by Smokey. As you well know, he ended up being one of the most prolific writers around.
After that, you know, Mr. Gordy said that he would like to sign a song as a group and work with us to see what he could produce. I was a bit surprised at that because I guess there had been so many times that we as a group – either the guys or myself being in a female group had been turned down. I didn't really think that much was going to happen with that. But I thought, "Well, let's give it a try. Stay in it for about a year or two and kind of see what happens." That's sort of what we did.
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