Rhonda Ross
is bringing her tour with mother Diana to the Dr. Phillips Center next week.
The title of Rhonda Ross’ album “In Case You Didn’t Know” has a double meaning. The name refers to a song on the 2016 record about the hidden miracles that surround people.
But it also refers to the singer herself, “the best kept secret of the Ross family,” she laughs.
Ross is the daughter of superstar Diana Ross and Motown founder Berry Gordy.
This summer, the Los Angeles native is touring with her mother on a circuit that is bringing the two vocalists to Orlando’s Dr. Phillips Center on Tuesday. (The tickets start at $49.50. drphillipscenter.org.)
At 45, Rhonda Ross has flown largely under the radar.
“People say, ‘Wow, you’ve been a professional for a long time; I’ve never heard of you,’ ” she says. “But that’s because I chose to go a different route than a lot of the record companies and producers would have liked in those early years. I decided to walk my own path and that’s the path of a songwriter.”
Last year was the first time Ross toured with her mother. “I do 20 minutes ahead of her and it’s my 20 minutes,” she says.
Traveling with Diana, the powerhouse singer behind “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “I’m Coming Out,” Rhonda Ross says she’s seen a different side of the woman who raised her.
“I’ve been watching my mother from the wings all of my life, but it’s got a different spin now that I’m in one dressing room and she’s in the other, she says. “I have a whole new respect for what she does and how she’s been doing it for over 50 years.”
One of those things Rhonda Ross admires about her mom is the way she treats her band when they’re on the road. “Her band and her crew is her family,” says Rhonda Ross. “You really see that.”
Diana Ross also taught her daughter how to take it slow. “She takes care of herself,” Rhonda Ross says. “She makes sure she gets her rest.
“Sometimes,” she says, “as a busy, working mother and wife still building my career, I have a tendency to push myself all the way to the limit. So that was a good lesson.”
Stories of family tension in celebrity households are fairly common, but Rhonda Ross says that isn’t the case with her mother or siblings, who include actors Tracee Ellis Ross and Evan Ross. “One way in which we’re atypical is that we really get along,” says Rhonda, the eldest.
Born Rhonda Suzanne Silberstein, Ross says her mother always found time for her children. “She has really figured out a way to, in the midst of her stardom … to still give us good fundamentals and good values and a love for each other,” she says.
Rhonda Ross, who starred on the soap opera “Another World” in the ’90s, doesn’t want to reach her mother’s level of visibility. “There is a level of fame I don’t want,” she says. “I don’t mind being recognized, but it would be a loss for me if I couldn’t walk with the people.”