At 75, Mary WIlson, co-founder of the Supremes, has a couple more boxes to check on her iconic career.

“I do have another book in me,” she said. It would be about, “losing my best friend (Florence Ballard) and losing my baby (son Rafael, 16, died in a 1994 car accident near Barstow when Wilson lost control of their vehicle.)

And she would like to see her collection of gowns from her Supremes shows end up in Las Vegas, where the dreamgirls held their last show.

“I’ve got all these gowns and they go from museum to museum to museum,” she said, ticking off the cities: Cleveland and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Liverpool, home of a Beatles attraction.

“Las Vegas would be the perfect place” with millions arriving every month, she said Sunday. She shared a lot during our one-hour interview, the 20th “Conversations with Norm” at Myron’s Cabaret Jazz at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts.

Mary Wilson with cookies bearing her likeness. She is appearing at The Smith Center March 28-29. Photo: Norm Clarke

One tidbit that had the audience buzzing was her hints that she and ex-lover Tom Jones remain close.

Life still moves at a frenetic pace for Wilson. She was at the “Dancing with the Stars” finale a few weeks earlier and she’s been promoting her latest book, “Supreme Glamour.” According to the book, it features the real stars of the show” -- the gowns and fashion of the Supremes.

It also charts the journey of the Detroit teens who exploded on the scene in 1964 after touring for three years with many of MoTown’s biggest names.

When “Where Did Our Love Go?” hit No. 1 in August of 1964, it was the first of five No. 1’s in a row. They quickly had five in a row twice, at the same time the Beatles were massive stars.

Her story starts in Greenville, Mississippi. Her father, Sam Wilson, a butcher, was working on a riverboat the day Mary was born.

At age 3, her mother, Johnnie Mae, and father, took her to Detroit to live with her aunt I.V. Pippin and uncle John L. Pippin, who were childless.

Within a couple years Mary forgot who her parents were. She never saw her dad again.

She credits her uncle for her love of music. “He had all this great music. R&B and blues. I listened to it all the time.”

Her aunt was a strict disciplinarian and a perfectionist. In her 1986 book, “Dreamgirl: My Life with the Supremes,” Wilson said aunt I.V. would punish her with a belt.

In 1950, at the age of eight, a young relative delivered some shocking news to WIlson. Aunt I.V. and uncle John were not her parents. It turned her world upside down, but she and her mother were soon reunited, along with two siblings Mary never knew she had.

They moved into the Brewster Projects, six 14-story buildings near downtown Detroit, where she would meet Aretha Franklin, many future MoTown stars and two teens who would change her life. Wilson considers it a turning point in her life, because she was suddenly in the company of kids her age.

They were barely in their teens in 1958 when Wilson, Florence Ballard and Diana Ross got a chance to be in a girl group called the Primettes, the “sister” act to the Primes, who would become the Temptations, and later, Smokey Robinson and the Temptations.

“I didn’t know Diane that well,” said WIlson. Diana Ross’ birthname was Diane Ernestine Earle Ross.

“They made me feel so complete,” said WIlson, “that when I knew that’s what I wanted to do the rest of my life.”

On July 4, 1960, the Primettes won a Detroit/Windsor amateur talent show. They won the $15 first prize.

“That’s what really made us dare to dream,” she said.

After winning the contest, several friends, including Robinson, helped them get a meeting with MoTown president Berry Gordy.

Gordy’s advice: Come back when you graduate from high school.

1960 took a nightmarish turn for the starry-eyed girls. Henderson, WIlson’s best friend, stopped answering her phone. When they finally made contact with her, Henderson poured out her story. She had been raped at knifepoint after leaving a dance with a 7-foot basketball star who was a year older. Reggie Harding, who later played in the NBA, was in and out of trouble throughout his life. He died at age 30, shot to death at a Detroit intersection.

When fame arrived in 1964, Henderson still wasn’t the same, said Wilson.

“I just felt once we became famous, you know, she would get over it. But she never got over it. The money, the fame… does not take away the pain. It was okay for a while but after that… She was internally destroyed. Her soul was totally gone,” said Wilson.

Henderson struggled with alcohol and was replaced by Cindy Birdsong in July 1967, when Gordy changed the group’s name to Diana Ross & the Supremes.”

“Thank God for this ‘Me Too’ movement that’s going on now,” said Wilson, “because people are able to talk about certain things that happened... and get some help, get support and all those kind of things that one needs when that happens. But poor Florence.”

Ballard died of a heart attack in 1976 at the age of 32. Her closest friends knew heartbreak was a contributing cause of death.

Diana Ross and the Supremes made their final appearance Jan. 14, 1970 at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. Wilson kept the Supremes going until 1977, when she had Rafael with her husband Pedro Ferrer, road manager of the Supremes. Wilson has thrown herself into many causes over the years.

She’s been in involved in the Truth in Music crusade which targets “fake groups.” Thirty six states have passed legislation “that really helps singers.”

Her charities include Figure Skaters in Harlem, Princess Diana’s landmine cleanup campaign and efforts to feed children in Sri Lanka.

Her “Dancing with the Stars” appearance lasted just two weeks, “but it wasn’t about winning. It was about performing. People say I got robbed, but I looked good doing,” she told me in a prep interview. “Thank God I have a life, a big life.”

Mary Wilson chats with guests Brandon Paul, a longtime Elvis tribute artist, Harmik, a prominent Tom Jones impersonator, and Joanne Downey, my assistant. Photo: Norm Clarke

I asked WIlson about the well-documented feud with Ross.

In her “Dreamgirl” book, written with the help of her religious diary jottings, WIlson disclosed some of the issues with Ross. The Supremes lead singer had craved attention early on, had a ruthless side and threw childish tantrums, Wilson wrote. At one point Ross flirted with WIlson’s fiance and had an affair with Smokey Robinson, who was married.

During Sunday’s interview, Wilson chalked it up to youth.

“A lot of that stuff, we were just kids. I wrote it because I was hurt.

“We were very young,” she said. “Even when I got older I dated people I should not have dated.” Laughter broke out in the audience. “No, no, not him,” she protested. Supremes fans in the room were pretty sure she was referring to Tom Jones. Their two-year affair didn’t stay secret very long.

“When you’re young, you do stupid things, but love is what it is,” she said. Later, in the show she volunteered that she had been in contact with him very recently.

At the end of the interview, as I was thanking her, she looked over and said, semi-sternly, “Oh, I’m not done yet.” She stood up and announced, “I’d like to end with a little something.”

Before an enraptured audience, she sang the classic jazz standard, “Here’s to Life,” first recorded by vocalist/pianist Shirley Horn in 1992.

The first seven lines sounded a lot like the anthem of Wilson’s life:

“No complaints and no regrets.

I still believe in chasing dreams and placing bets.

But I have learned that all you give is all you get, so give it all you got.

I had my share, I drank my fill, and even though I’m satisfied I’m hungry still

To see what’s down another road, beyond the hill and do it all again.

So here’s to life and every joy it brings.”

P.S. As I drove her back to her home in Henderson, she looked at her iphone and with the glee of a schoolgirl, blurted, “Oh, Tom texted during the show.”

MARY WILSON’S ‘BIG LIFE’ STILL INCLUDES TOM JONES