Florence Ballard while she was on maternity leave. Before the release of their 1962 debut album, "Meet the Supremes", Barbara Martin, who had replaced Betty McGlown a year before they signed to Motown, left the group. Ballard, Ross and Wilson remained a trio. After the hit success of 1963's "When the Love Light Starts Shining Through His Eyes", Diana Ross became the group's lead singer. In the spring of 1964, the group released "Where Did Our Love Go", which became their first number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100, paving the way for ten number-one hits recorded by Ross, Ballard and Wilson
Hank Ballard doo-wop group the Royals, which had previously been discovered by Johnny Otis and signed to Federal Records (a division of King Records), in Cincinnati. Ballard joined Henry Booth, Charles Sutton, Sonny Woods and Alonzo Tucker in the group, replacing previous singer Lawson Smith. The Royals released "Get It" (1953), an R&B song with possibly sexually oriented lyrics, which some radio stations refused to play, although it still made it to number 6 on the "Billboard" R&B chart. The group then changed its name to the Midnighters to avoid confusion with the "5" Royales. In 1954, Ballard wrote a song called