Gladys, Night and Day

A DIFFICULT LIFE, A FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT

The two Motown memoirs of 2022, Duke Fakir’s I’ll Be There: My Life With The Four Tops and Gladys Horton’s A Letter From The Postman, could hardly be more different.

      The Fakir book came from Britain’s Omnibus Press, an established, well-regarded publishing house, whose latest titles include the lauded, new Chuck Berry biography, An American Life by R.J. Smith. An earlier Omnibus title was Eddie and Brian Holland’s Come and Get These Memories, in 2019.

      Horton’s autobiography was self-published by Vaughn Thornton, the second son of the Marvelettes’ founder, and it finally delivers an account which she apparently was writing at least 30 years ago (the singer died in 2011). The book is a challenge at 617 pages, although that’s weighted up by the large typeface; Fakir’s tale is a crisper, 228 pages. Photographs in the latter are what you’d expect from a professional publisher; those in the former are few, with poor reproduction.

      The manuscript for A Letter From The Postman has been in circulation since 1998, judging by this detailed, positive review of the book from fellow Motown historian and friend, Sharon Davis. Thornton himself got in touch with me three years ago, soliciting my opinion of its content and prospects.

      I’ll Be There has taken its time, too. There was a book proposal (under the title of Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) and a chapter excerpt in circulation in 2013, with Peter Knobler as Fakir’s co-author. The Omnibus work was written with a different collaborator, Kathleen McGhee-Anderson, known as a TV and film writer/producer/playwright.

      The challenge for both memoirs upon publication is the familiarity of their stories, frequently told – in varying degrees of detail – over the past 60 years. The majesty of “Reach Out I’ll Be There” almost single-handedly ensured that the Tops’ career tale would be visited again and again in the media of popular culture, and beyond. The historic achievement of “Please Mr. Postman” as Motown’s first Number One pop hit had the same publicising effect.

      If anything, the Marvelettes’ experience – teenagers from an obscure Michigan town, helping to propel Berry Gordy’s company to new heights within three years of its founding – made them more attractive. As or soon after they topped the charts in December 1961, they were being written about in the press, and this at a time when rock ’n’ roll was still disregarded or looked down upon in the wider world. “Although the girls are earning more than $600 a week while on the road,” reported the Pittsburgh Courier, “they are allowed $5 for spending money.” It added, “The girls do not date on engagements for the simple reason their curfew is immediately after their last show.”

      The group’s contribution to Motown’s early success has delivered coverage ever since, and fans have been able to dig deeper into their story via music publications such as Goldmine and In The Basement, mainstream media such as the Wall Street Journal, and in author Marc Taylor’s near-forensic 2004 book, The Original Marvelettes: Motown’s Mystery Girl Group.

THOSE MARVELETTES MUSICALS

      Catalogue reissues have added to the sum of knowledge, arguably more for the Marvelettes than the Tops. Bolstered by thorough liner notes, there were Motown CD sets for the girls in 1993, 2009 and 2011, the last two of which corralled their entire album output – a blessing not bestowed on Levi, Duke, Obie and Lawrence.

      Then there were the musicals: not one, but two, in the case of the Marvelettes. Rick Sperling’s Now That I Can Dance – Motown 1962 was first produced in Detroit in 2005, involving the group’s Katherine Anderson, to a positive reception. It was revived there in 2019, while Reginald Williams’ The Marvellous Marvelettes played in Chicago in 2014. (The Four Tops’ musical, I’ll Be There, had been expected to debut in Detroit this autumn, but presumably is now due next year.)

The classic Marvelettes: Horton is front and centre

      Whether or not the Marvelettes’ story has been overtold, A Letter From The Postman must accept a high bar to be measured against – that is, the many previous Motown biographies and memoirs, including those about or by Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, Florence Ballard, Martha Reeves, Smokey Robinson, Otis Williams, Stevie Wonder, Mary Wells and Marvin Gaye. Those were professionally published and more skilfully edited than Gladys Horton’s book.

      That said, her voice is authentic and forceful, and her first-hand recollections add colour to the chronology of Motown. It’s interesting, for example, to read Horton’s take on Berry Gordy, from a meeting called to discuss temporarily replacing some Marvelettes members until they graduated from high school. “We all picked up from the very beginning that he demanded respect,” she writes, “and that is why he gave so much of it. So playing around with the artist needlessly and carrying on idle conversations was not part of his character.”

      On this occasion, Horton continues, Gordy was friendly and supportive – although she strains credulity when quoting the Motown founder as saying to the girls, “Well, just think about it this way. You aren’t going to learn any more [in school] in a year than you already know now.” But then Horton – who was adopted as a child – is disarmingly candid about herself in this situation. “For an orphan, opportunity sometimes only knocks once. I felt that if I could make enough money in this business, one day, I could further my education.”

      Elsewhere in A Letter From The Postman, the singer compliments two of Motown’s storied women, Raynoma Gordy and Claudette Robinson. She remembers the former taking the Marvelettes “downtown to buy us our first record hop uniforms. They were a two-piece skirt and jacket, emerald green with big gold buttons. She also made us realise that keeping your weight down was very necessary to be admired by your fans.” Of Robinson, Horton recalls, “Along with her smile being a key point, she was a perfectly well-groomed artist. Her size was also very neat, and her clean conservativeness was more than I could find the words to describe.”

‘A LACK OF RESPECT’

      Yet it must be noted that most of Horton’s memoir is devoted to her tumultuous personal life, including the travails of her first marriage, raising a disabled son, and seldom staying settled in one place for long. The type of Motown career detail that’s in other autobiographies is largely missing here, particularly after her first round of success with the Marvelettes. From time to time, Horton returns to matters of music, including later encounters with members of the group – her relationship with Katherine Anderson was clearly damaged – and efforts to regain star stature.

Gladys Horton in 1988

      This latter period saw a connection in Detroit with ex-Jobete songwriter Sylvia Moy, who helped Horton to advance her writing ambitions, and participation in a “Legendary Ladies” show in Los Angeles, in the company of Mary Wells and Martha Reeves, among others. There was also the unpleasantness of the “fake” Marvelettes, promoted by Larry Marshak, whom Horton claims obtained use of the group’s name from Motown after a soured investment deal with Smokey Robinson. “It demonstrated a total lack of respect for what we had done as a catalyst for Motown’s ascension in the world of music,” she states.

      When Horton isn’t writing about her children, disappointment and resentment seem to colour the final passages of A Letter From The Postman, and the book’s close includes a would-be letter to Berry Gordy, whom she criticises for ignoring the Marvelettes’ legacy and for hypocrisy in using the word “family” about Motown. “When family members go away or make a big mistake,” she asks, “when they do finally see the light and come back home, doesn’t a true loving father welcome them back in with open arms?”

      Gladys Horton is far from the only child of Hitsville to feel that way, for reasons good or ill. It’s an honest book, if self-indulgent, and it’s understandable why Vaughn Thornton would want to make public his mother’s perspective. Motown completists must have the result, whether or not they read all 617 pages, just as they must also acquire Duke Fakir’s late-in-the-day memoir.

      You might say it’s better late than never, to have these letters delivered.