Cindy Birdsong: A Freeway Leap, a Las Vegas Debut and a Conservatorship

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Cindy Birdsong was born in 1939 in Mount Holly, New Jersey, grew up in Camden and was studying nursing in Pennsylvania when childhood friend Patsy Holt, later Patti LaBelle, asked her to fill a gap in her group in 1960. With Sarah Dash and Nona Hendryx added by 1962, the group was put on American Bandstand lip-syncing I Sold My Heart to the Junkman over a vocal actually recorded by the Starlets, and a lawsuit forced the name Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles. Known for reliability, Birdsong was recruited by Berry Gordy in 1967 to replace Florence Ballard in the Supremes. Arriving at Gordy's house, she saw Ballard leaving in tears, and in July 1967 she took the stage at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas the night after Ballard was fired.

Gordy used the Andantes for studio backing vocals, so Birdsong was a star on stage and absent from many records. In December 1969 the maintenance man from her Los Angeles building kidnapped her at knifepoint; she unlocked the car door and jumped onto the Long Beach Freeway, and he later got five years to life. After Diana Ross left, her voice was finally heard on Supremes albums with Jean Terrell. She stepped away in 1972 to have her son David, returned in 1973 and was fired in 1976, then worked at UCLA Medical Center. Strokes and a fight over her care followed, and in October 2023 a judge gave her family conservatorship.

• She joined the Ordettes at 20 as the older member of a group of mid-teens.
• The Bluebelles' 1964 You'll Never Walk Alone became a pop hit before the group moved to Atlantic.
• Her last TV appearance with Diana Ross in the Supremes came on The Ed Sullivan Show in late 1969.
• The post-Ross Supremes recorded with the Four Tops and covered River Deep, Mountain High.
• In 2021 Los Angeles police removed her from her apartment and placed her in a skilled nursing facility.