DETROIT — Peter Benjaminson lived in Detroit for just six years in the 1970s. But his tenure here has provided a full-time career.

With his new book, "Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Life of Motown’s First Superstar" (Chicago Review Press, $26.95), the former Detroit Free Press city reporter now has three Motown books to his name, including a 2009 biography of the late Florence Ballard. His 1979 work, "The Story of Motown," was the first book to chronicle the Detroit label, and he already has his sights on another Motown star: funk man Rick James.

It all started with a chance heads-up from his Freep editor in 1975: Ballard, the former Supreme, was on welfare. Benjaminson’s lengthy interview with the struggling star was his first foray into the Motown world, and became the impetus for his books.

With Wells, Benjaminson has produced the first biography of the late singer, who became Motown’s leading female star with hits such as "My Guy" in 1964. Her momentum was soon cut short, as Wells’ contract demands ultimately led to her Motown departure — and a series of stymied comebacks before her 1992 death.

Benjaminson, 67, who lives in New York, talked with the Free Press about his work.

Question: What made Mary Wells a compelling subject to tackle?

Answer: There were several reasons. First, she paved the way for all the other female stars at Motown. She showed the women who followed her how to be a success as a female at Motown.

Second, I admired her for her absolute determination, in everything. She was absolutely determined to be a big star, and wouldn’t let anything get in the way.

Third, here was this determined singer and pathfinder — and there had never been a book on her. There weren’t even very many (press) clips, in fact. She had just moved so fast, before Motown got its PR operation in full gear.

Q: That was bound to make your research a bit tougher.

A: I was getting really discouraged in the beginning. I called a lot of the people I’d dealt with on previous Motown books. "So, Miss Jones, you knew Mary Wells?" "Sure, I saw her backstage a couple of times. She was a very nice person." And that would be it. I had five of those interviews.

The dam broke when I discovered this guy named Steve Bergsman, who lives in Arizona. He had recorded four hours of interviews with Mary while she was on her deathbed. At that time — 1992 — he’d been unable to sell the book. There wasn’t much interest. We arranged so I could get the tapes, and so this is based in part on those deathbed tapes.

Then I ran into people like her third husband, Curtis Womack, who was a great source, and from him I got a lot of other names, so it became much easier.

There were very few people who knew Mary Wells for her entire life. It was a really interesting task stitching together all these recollections from different times and making it a smooth, flowing story about her growth and development.

Q: Mary Wells is an interesting character if only because of her rebellion against Berry Gordy — one of the few blotches on the public version of the Motown fairy tale.

A: From our perspective in 2013, it looks like a mistake to have left Motown, and I’m pretty sure it was. She would have taken all those songs that the Supremes made into hits, starting with "Where Did Our Love Go," on and on. She could have been not just a star, but a super-super-star.

She was the first major person to leave. In a way, she helped other Motown artists by showing them what they shouldn’t do.

Q: You’ve made a pretty fruitful career as a Motown author. But finding that niche was kind of happenstance, right?

A: I came to Detroit in 1970 and I was there through ’76. I wrote a book with David Anderson while I was at the Free Press — the first how-to book about investigative reporting. And it sold really well. Definitely a big book, in print 20 years, two editions. So I thought there’s got to be some other subject in Detroit for a book. The obvious thing was the auto industry, but that had been done to death already by other qualified people.

I was at the Free Press city desk one morning with nothing going on, and my editor assigned me to do a story about Florence Ballard being on welfare.

When I went to Grove Press trying to sell a biography of Flo Ballard, they pointed out that nobody had even written a book about Motown. I was really surprised. This was 1977. You know how well-known Motown was. I figured, here’s my big chance. And I wrote ("The Story of Motown").

I was still trying every few years to sell the Flo Ballard idea, but wasn’t successful until 2007 after "Dreamgirls" came out. And that did so well, it was easy to get a contract for this Mary Wells book.

Q: Who’s the audience for a Motown book in 2013?

A: It’s an interesting mix. There are a lot of older people who remember Mary and "My Guy." It’s still a very popular song, part of the American culture because it’s so well written, so well sung. It’s really punched through the time barricade.

Plus there are a lot of younger people who have heard about her and want to find out what happened to her.

And Motown is still so popular. "The Story of Motown" was the first book published in this country on Motown Records. There have been more than 180 since. And they’ve all sold — otherwise publishers wouldn’t continue. If you look at other record companies, there are probably one or two books on Atlantic Records, one or two on Stax, maybe one on Columbia. I’d bet my life there aren’t more than two books on any other record company in America.

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BOOK EXCERPT: THE RECORDING OF ‘MY GUY’

By Peter Benjaminson

Mary Wells had become a Motown goddess: its premiere female vocalist, a position she would hold without challenge from 1962 to 1964. Our story picks up there, as Wells and Smokey Robinson are collaborating on what would become Wells’ signature hit and one of the defining songs of Motown’s Detroit era.

Robinson and Wells, sensing they were on the roll of their lives, marshaled their best talents for a maximum effort. Robinson wrote the music and lyrics for Mary’s next song, which he called "My Guy." A rare upbeat and jaunty song about love and loyalty, its tune is light and catchy and its lyrics memorable. It’s hard to write more classic rock lyrics than these:

"Nothing you can say

"Can tear me away

"From my guy.

"Nothing you could do

"‘Cause I’m stuck like glue

"To my guy.

"I’m sticking to my guy

"Like a stamp to a letter.

"Like birds of a feather

"We stick together.

"I’m telling you from the start,

"I can’t be torn apart from my guy."

The remaining lyrics contained Robinson touches best described as "where polite language meets the street," including such lines as "You best be believing/ I won’t be deceiving my guy." Analyzing the appeal of the song, (songwriter-producer) Eddie Holland told (TV show) "Unsung" that "You know how women think especially when they’re young, there’s nothing you can tell those young girls about their boyfriend."

Mary’s delivery in "My Guy" was sweet and jaunty, sophisticated and assured, and decidedly feminine. Author David Ritz, referring to both the lyrics and to Mary’s style, memorably called the song "a fluttering study in fidelity."

Aiding the tune’s success was that while it was black music, it was far from raw soul. It was directly aimed at pop radio stations and pop record sales. This song, which became the template for most of the other Motown classics of the 1960s, was built on a strong melody, a noticeable beat and accessibility for all. The beat, a Motown trademark, was much stronger than those on the rhythm tracks used by white singers during these years. And the fact that Mary’s rendition of this song — like Diana Ross’s delivery of later Motown hits — was feminine, soft, sweet and romantic, added immensely to its appeal.

Gordy’s dream for Motown, after all, had been to produce not the sound of black America, but, in his words, "the sound of young America." In "My Guy," he certainly succeeded. "This song was the epitome of the Motown Sound," Mary Wilson said.

Over the years, the tune and lyrics of "My Guy" have come to be a symbol of what critics praised as the "spellbinding simplicity" of early Motown. "My Guy" also was boosted into semi-immortality by something the Motown house band added to it at the beginning, and a twist that Mary inserted at the end.

On the day of its recording, according to the book "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" by "Dr. Licks" (Allan Slutsky), the Motown studio musicians had been working all day. With only a half hour left in the session, they had become bogged down in the intro section. As time and patience ran out, trombonist George Bohanon turned to studio bandleader and keyboardist Earl Van Dyke and pointed out that the melody from the song "Canadian Sunset" fit right over the chord changes of the "My Guy" intro. Van Dyke not only took Bohanon up on his implied suggestion, but added the left hand from Eddie Haywood’s "Begin the Beguine." (The "Canadian Sunset" beginning is easily recognizable in "My Guy" once someone tells you about it; otherwise, it just sounds like an unusual intro to a great recording.)

"We were doing anything to get the hell out of that studio," Van Dyke said. "We knew that the producers didn’t know nothin’ ‘bout no ‘Canadian Sunset’ or ‘Begin the Beguine.’ We figured the song would wind up in the trash can anyway." Van Dyke was usually right with such predictions. This time he was way wrong.

Now came Mary’s part. As soon as Robinson had played the song on the piano for Mary, she told herself "I love this song. I hope it’s a Top 10. It’s a completely beautiful melody." She decided she loved it so much that she "had to put something real cute on the end. And I thought about Mae West."

Supported by the Andantes, Wells recorded the ending the way Mae would have sung it were she trying to entice a lover upstairs. She adopted a sexy musical stutter. "I was really joking," Mary said. But the producers said, "Keep it going, keep it going." She did:

"There’s not a man-n t-day (Mary stuttered)

"Who could take me away

"From my guy."

("Tell me more!") (from the Andantes)

"There’s not a man-n t-day (Wells stuttering again)

"Who could take me away,

"From my guy."

The stuttering aside, (Motown vocalist Brenda) Holloway insisted that Mary’s voice, especially in this song, "had something in it that no one has been able to come up with. It’s like Bette Davis. There’s not another Bette Davis. There’s not another Marvin Gaye and there never will be another Mary Wells."

Released March 13, 1964, "My Guy" rose to No. 1 on the Billboard and Cash Box pop charts, Wells’ first time at the very top of either of those charts. It remained among the Top 40 hits on the Billboard pop chart for 13 weeks. Billboard ranked it as No. 17 among the Top 100 Songs of 1964. Among the top 1,000 most popular single records released from 1955 through 1996, Billboard ranked it No. 437. (In 1999, the curatorial staff of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in conjunction with a group of rock critics and historians, voted it into the hall’s permanent exhibit of "The Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.") Not only did it become Mary’s signature song, it made her the nation’s most popular singer.

In April 1964, Motown issued Mary’s sixth album, "Mary Wells Greatest Hits," in an effort to capitalize on "My Guy." The effort was a success. Loaded with popular Wells tunes, including "My Guy," "The One Who Really Loves You," and "You Beat Me to the Punch," the album rose to No. 18 on the Billboard album chart, a high-water mark for Wells.

"My Guy" caught on so fast with white fans that Curtis Womack, who later became Mary’s long-term lover, was briefly troubled. As a musician trying to cross the racial barrier, Womack remembers thinking, "This song ain’t like ‘Bye Bye Baby’ and it ain’t like ‘You Beat Me to the Punch.’ It sounded just like something (white vocalist) Patti Page or one of them ladies would be singing, and I thought it wasn’t going to go with black people like it did. But it did. It went with everybody."

"My Guy" has remained stuck in the minds of millions over the years, even more so than other pop hits. Barney Ales, Motown’s vice president and director of sales, was quoted in 1992 as saying that there’s "no one age 30 through age 50 who doesn’t know the words to ‘My Guy.’ " For once, he was exaggerating only slightly.

"My Guy" remains a favorite backup tune in Hollywood movies and TV commercials to this day. It also remains the music to which thousands of people continue to fall in love. In 2010, one music business expert said that not 24 hours go by without "My Guy" being played on some radio station somewhere in the world.

From "Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Life of Motown’s First Superstar" by Peter Benjaminson. Reprinted, with slight trims for space, with permission of Peter Benjaminson and Independent Publishers Group.