Fourteen months earlier, the young and ambitious Beatles had auditioned for a recording contract with Decca. From L: George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and John Lennon. The photo below shows the Beatles in Decca Studios in March, 1963. Postman was a staple at their live concerts at venues such as Liverpool’s Cavern Club. Back in the days when “Beatlemania” was just beginning in the U.K., and before they were even noticed in the U.S., the Beatles’ cover of Please Mr.
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In recent years The Marvelettes have been nominated a couple of times for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but thus far have not yet been inducted.īefore the Beatles became a world-wide sensation, their playlist featured a combination of their own songs plus covers of their personal favorite tunes. The group later suffered the ultimate indignity when promoter Larry Marshak bought the rights to the name Marvelettes from Motown, then proceeded to form several different touring groups that called themselves “The Marvelettes,” but which had no members of the original group! The Marvelettes subsequently underwent several personnel changes, in some instances from mental breakdowns, and by 1969 the group had disbanded. As a result, the later Marvelettes records were released with virtually zero publicity or promotion from Motown. Although the Marvelettes had a later hit with Don’t Mess With Bill, other girl groups like Martha and the Vandellas and the Supremes eventually achieved supremacy at Motown.
However, Motown was an extremely competitive environment, and groups had to fight to get the best songwriters and studio backing. With Gladys Horton’s powerful vocals and the backing of Motown, it initially appeared as though the Marvelettes might become genuine superstars. The MC also refers to the Beatles’ cover of Please Mr. Still, the song delivers the unforgettable doo-wop lyric, “de-liver de letter, de sooner de better.”įollowing their appearance the group is interviewed by a bumbling MC, who incorrectly calls their song Shop Around, which was not a Marvelettes tune but was instead recorded by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles. The group is not actually singing but just lip-synching from the record, to tepid clapping from the studio audience. Note that by this point the group was a trio, with Gladys Horton on the right. Postman at a ‘live’ performance in the mid-60s. Here are the Marvelettes singing Please Mr. I’ve been standin’ here waitin’ Mister Postman, so patiently, The premise of the song is straightforward: a young girl’s boyfriend is a serviceman who is stationed overseas (these were the days of the military draft), and she is inquiring whether the postman has brought a letter from him. As an extra fillip, the drummer on this record (and on most of the Marvelettes’ records) was young session musician Marvin Gaye! The record features The Marvelettes with lead singer Gladys Horton, backed by the wonderful Motown house band The Funk Brothers. It became the first Motown record to score the top ranking on the Billboard Hot 100, and was one of the first smash hits by an all-girl group.
Regardless of the song’s authorship, it shot up to #1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Billboard R&B charts. The end result is that between various albums, boxed sets, the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame and the current song publisher (EMI Music Publishing), the songwriting credits are parceled out to at least six different combinations of these people (Berry Gordy even appears as one of the writers in the Beatles’ discography)! Dobbins re-cast Garrett’s tune as a doo-wop song, and at Motown it was handed over to songwriters Brian Holland, Robert Bateman and Freddie Gorman. Postman? The song was originally a blues tune written by William Garrett, who gave it to his friend Georgia Dobbins, a founding member of the Marvelettes who left the group before that song was recorded. Postman.Ī fascinating question is: who wrote Please Mr. Gordy changed their name from The Marvels to The Marvelettes, and their first big record for Tamla was the snappy pop song Please Mr. Embed from Getty Imagesįollowing some success in local singing competitions, the group was signed in 1961 by Berry Gordy to Motown Records’ Tamla division. The photo below shows The Marvelettes in the early 1960s, from L: Katherine Anderson, Juanita Cowart, Gladys Horton (seated), Wanda Young and Georgeanna Tillman.
Like many pop groups, the membership changed frequently as various people joined or left the group. Fifteen-year-old Gladys Horton enlisted fellow members of her glee club into the group. The Marvelettes started out as a girl-group quintet who were high school classmates in Inkster, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. We will review the original by the Motown girl group The Marvelettes, and covers of that song by the Beatles and Carpenters. Hello there! In this week’s blog we consider the pop song Please Mr.
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