Hank Ballard Ballard's 1969 album "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down". A 1972 single, "From the Love Side", credited to Hank Ballard and the Midnight Lighters, went to number 43 on the R&B chart. Ballard also appeared on Brown's 1972 album "Get on the Good Foot", in a track ("Recitation By Hank Ballard") that features Ballard describing Brown and the album. During the 1960s, Ballard's cousin, Florence Ballard, was a member of the Detroit girl group the Supremes. In the mid-1980s, Ballard re-formed The Midnighters and the group performed until 2002. On March 2, 2003, he died at age 75 of
Florence Ballard Bessemer, Alabama; after his grandmother was shot and killed, he was adopted by the Ballard family. Jesse Ballard left his adoptive parents at 13, and soon engaged in an affair with Ballard's mother, who was only 14, in Rosetta. The Ballards moved to Detroit in 1929. Jesse soon worked at General Motors. Jesse, an amateur musician, helped instigate Florence's interest in singing; he taught her various songs and accompanied her on guitar. Financial difficulties forced the Ballard family to move to different Detroit neighborhoods; by the time Florence turned 15 they had settled at Detroit's Brewster-Douglass housing projects, and the