Delivering Motown History
THE MARVELETTES: LOVED YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW
The Marvelettes always deserved to have their story told. What’s notable is how much it’s been told (and retold) over the years, especially in the current century.
This comes to mind, of course, in the wake of the death of Katherine (Kat) Anderson, one of the group’s founder members, and perhaps its most outspoken. She departed on September 20, at age 79.
Naturally, there were obituaries in the Detroit papers, but in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal, too. In Britain, there were substantial notices in the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, The Times and more. In addition, fans took to social media to mourn the loss.
Katherine Anderson: a voice not to be silenced
Recognition and appreciation of the Marvelettes’ career also appears in a new book, But Will You Love Me Tomorrow, by Laura Flam and Emily Sieu Liebowitz. This oral history of 1960s girl groups follows last year’s A Letter From The Postman, the memoir of Anderson’s fellow Marvelette, Gladys Horton, who died in 2011.
Both books demonstrate that it’s still possible to learn new facts about a well-documented life. The Flam/Liebowitz work contains material from interviews with Anderson, Horton and another original Marvelette, Georgia Dobbins, and their reminiscences are familiar, for the most part.
What seem to be fresh and insightful are first-hand memories from the group’s high school music teacher, Shirley Sharpley, and from its principal, Romeo Phillips. Provocatively, the latter claims to have argued with the husband of Motown’s Esther Edwards about his inappropriate pressure to have the Marvelettes’ teenage members quit school before graduation, to exploit the commercial opportunities offered by “Please Mr. Postman.”
Meanwhile, Horton’s memoir revealed — at least to this reader — that it was Kat Anderson who sang lead on the Casinyets’ entry at the Inkster High talent competition, a song called “Fine, Fine Baby.” (They failed to win, but their performance stirred Sharpley enough to help the group get in the door at Motown.) Despite that, Anderson subsequently never handled lead vocals on any of the Marvelettes’ hits.
CURFEW AFTER THE SHOW
The universal appeal of “Please Mr. Postman” and its significance in Motown history — the firm’s first Number One on the pop charts — almost guaranteed that the Marvelettes’ tale would be well-chronicled, and from early on. “The girls do not date on engagements,” illuminated the Pittsburgh Courier in a feature article published in January 1962, while their first hit was still on the charts, “for the simple reason their curfew is immediately after the last show.” Esther Edwards was the teenagers’ chaperone, the newspaper added. “Although the girls are earning more than $600 a week while on the road, they are allowed about $5 for spending money. A careful accounting is made of all their expenses.”
To illustrate how much the group’s history has been documented, here are excerpts from interviews which Kat Anderson – later known as Anderson Schaffner through her marriage to tour manager Joe Schaffner – gave over the past quarter-century. They are augmented by some others’ recollections.
The Marvelettes: hitmakers from Inkster
“I had pictured that Georgia Dobbins would lead the song we were going to sing, but she insisted that it might take away our chances of winning first place since she was out of school. They were looking for student winners, so Katherine volunteered to lead the song. It was an original song that Georgia had come up with just for the show. The song had a lot of harmony and unison singing involved.” Gladys Horton, A Letter From The Postman (Vaughn Thornton) 2022
“I thought they should have won. When I complimented them and told them that they should have won, they asked me if I would take them for the audition down at Motown. The kids had the telephone number and I followed through. I just called. It was Gladys who gave me the number. I called and got an appointment.” Shirley Sharpley, But Will You Love Me Tomorrow (Laura Flam, Emily Sieu Liebowitz) 2023
“I tried to get the girls to stay in school. We did not want the girls to be caught out there with no marketable skill. But then George Edwards went by their homes and talked about striking while the iron’s hot. I will never forgive him for that — he’s dead now. I’m very disappointed in him and I’m sure that fate would have taken a different turn for those young ladies had they stayed in school and graduated.” Romeo Phillips, But Will You Love Me Tomorrow (Laura Flam, Emily Sieu Liebowitz) 2023
“I sang the highest and was the tallest, at 5 foot, 7 1/2 inches. We’d be chaperoned by adults but I’d be responsible for things like picking out our uniforms and jewellery, and picking up the money at gigs. I’d count the bills and give them to our driver, who got the money back to Detroit after he took out some for our expenses. I never had a problem with the count because I always collected before the gig, so the money was always right.” Katherine Anderson, Jazz Wax (Marc Myers) 2011
“Every now and then there would be some confrontation about who sang better or who did this or who did that. We’d have to squash all that stuff because, basically, if one hadn’t done the lead on ‘Please Mr. Postman,’ there wouldn’t have been a ‘Don’t Mess With Bill.’ But, basically, through the years we never had a problem after we had that first little bit of trouble.” Katherine Anderson, Forever: The Complete Motown Albums, Volume 1 (Gary Graff) 2009
“I loved that song. When people ask me about my favourite Marvelettes tune, I have to say ‘Please Mr. Postman,’ because that’s where it all started, but I really like ‘When You’re Young And In Love.’ It was produced by William Weatherspoon and James Dean, so it seemed the group was being passed around. I think all of us were getting passed around.” Katherine Anderson, In The Basement (David Cole) 2011
“Contrary to popular belief, the final days of the Marvelettes were a bitch, and trying to make it seem like it wasn’t would be totally asinine. Wanda [Young] was just so out of control and to try to make it seem like it was good…it wasn’t good. It was a damn nightmare and I would never, ever want to be in that situation again, and never will.” Katherine Anderson, The Original Marvelettes: Motown’s Mystery Girl Group (Marc Taylor) 2004
“Motown has never recognised or has given the Marvelettes their just due, for the contribution that we made to the foundation and building of Motown. They have never, ever — and we’re damn near going into the year 2000. They’ve never given us credit, these little hick girls from Inkster, and we are the ones who officially have the first No. 1.” Katherine Anderson, Women of Motown: An Oral History (Susan Whitall) 1998
If Motown Records has failed to sufficiently acknowledge the group’s part in its legacy, the same cannot be said of Detroit. In 2005, the city’s highly-regarded Mosaic Youth Theatre staged an original musical, Now That I Can Dance – Motown 1962, written and directed by Rick Sperling. It featured the story of the Marvelettes and Motown’s early years, for which Sterling had the involvement of Anderson and other Hitsvillians. The show became the most popular in Mosaic’s 27-year history, with several revivals, including one in 2019 to help celebrate Motown’s 60th anniversary. (A Facebook video of Anderson talking to cast members can be found here.)
In later years: Shirley Sharpley and Kat Anderson
Some years after the first production of Now That I Can Dance – Motown 1962, Chicago’s Black Ensemble Theater staged The Marvelous Marvelettes, also a musical. Its characters were the quintet’s Kat Anderson and Juanita Cowart, both as retirees who met fictionally in an airport coffee shop in the 1980s – thus enabling the show to recreate events (and music) from two decades earlier.
Despite such theatrical tributes, another city has so far failed to honour the Marvelettes. Cleveland’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominated the group for 2013 and 2015 inductions, but its voters failed to deliver on both occasions.
Still, let’s close with recollections from the backroom believer whose arrival at Motown in 1961 helped to take “Please Mr. Postman” to the top of the charts. Barney Ales came on board that summer as national sales manager and promotion director. His extensive contacts in radio and retail gave the company additional heft, as did his acquaintance with the independent record distributors on whom Motown depended. Still, it was hard to get paid by them consistently – or paid at all, sometimes.
As the Marvelettes’ debut 45 began making an impact, they were booked onto Dick Clark’s American Bandstand TV show, taped in Philadelphia. Ales had to visit Inkster High for the principal’s approval to take the teenagers out of school for the trip (it helped that Ales was white). Later, there was an opportunity to have the group (and Eddie Holland) appear on a Cow Palace concert in San Francisco. “We flew – it would always be coach – and I took Gladys [Horton] and Eddie,” Ales told me. Local girls were recruited to sing behind Horton. “We didn’t have the money to fly the whole group from Detroit.”
On another occasion, in 1963, Ales attended the Detroit reception for Wanda Young’s marriage to Bobby Rogers of the Miracles, then he and others from Motown – including Diana Ross and then-boyfriend, Motown engineer Lawrence Horn – went on to a downtown restaurant. When Ross helped Ales remove the stain (with soda water) from a spillage on his tie, the executive was curious. “She said she used to work at a cleaners and that’s how they got stains out. And then she asked, ‘Barney, do you think we’ll ever be as big as the Marvelettes?’ ”