Obituary - Gladys Horton

[Forever Motown]

Marvelettes co-founder Gladys Horton dies at 66
Susan Whitall / The Detroit News



Gladys Horton, who helped launch the girl group era of the '60s with her sassy, girlish lead vocal on the Marvelettes' "Please, Mr. Postman," has died in Los Angeles.

Horton, 66, was recovering from a stroke in a Los Angeles nursing home when she died Wednesday night, according to her son, Vaughn Thornton.

"She fought until the end, her son told me," said fellow Marvelette Katherine Anderson Schaffner. Schaffner had alerted friends and fans several weeks ago that Horton was ill.

"When I let everybody know on my Facebook page that she was ill, she was already in hospice," Schaffner said. "Even though you try to prepare, and know the inevitable is about to happen, I don't think you're ever prepared for (someone's) death."



They were just kids when Horton, 15, and Schaffner, 17, and several friends from Inkster High School's choir formed a group so they could enter a talent contest. Schaffner remembers that Horton was determined to get into the mix when she heard that the prize was an audition at Motown. They called their group the "Casinyets" (i.e. "can't sing yet"), and no, they didn't win the contest.

But a sympathetic counselor secured a meeting at Motown anyway for the group. They wowed Berry Gordy and his staff.

What happened to the raw Inkster teenagers over the next decade is both an inspirational story and a cautionary tale.

They hit in 1961 with "Please, Mr. Postman" and instantly were a national sensation, scoring Motown's first No. 1 hit on the pop charts. "Never in our wildest dreams did we figure that it would be 50 years later, and it would still be just as powerful as the day it was made," Schaffner said. "I can't understand that for the life of me."

It was still early in Motown's hit-making era, so the Marvelettes didn't have the benefit of the Motown grooming factory; the glamorous dresses and etiquette training that later girl groups such as the Supremes enjoyed.

Thrown into the music business at a vulnerable age, the group slept on the tour bus and performed wearing whatever matching dresses they could scrape together. They did their own choreography early on, before Cholly Atkins was hired to smooth out the rough edges. But they had an unpolished, engaging energy live that can be seen in a video on YouTube taken from film Motown shot at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.

Follow-up hits to "Postman" included "Playboy," "Beechwood 45789" and "Too Many Fish in the Sea." Horton was the sole lead singer early on, but with the addition of Wanda Rogers, the Marvelettes segued into a new era of hits in the late '60s with Rogers' lead voice on the Smokey Robinson-penned "Don't Mess with Bill" and "The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game," among others.

When the hits stopped coming and Motown moved to Los Angeles, the Marvelettes were among the acts who suffered the most. Although "Please, Mr. Postman" helped launch the company into the national spotlight as its first top-ranking hit, the group wasn't invited to the big Motown TV specials, or even mentioned. The group has yet to make it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, although they were the first of an early '60s tidal wave of girl groups.

The worst blow was that the original members of the group couldn't use their own name. Over the years, somehow the rights to the Marvelettes' name were picked up by a New York businessman, Larry Marshak. Marshak had a group of women in their 30s, much too young to have recorded in 1961, touring as "The Marvelettes."

"You want a sad story?" Gladys Horton told The News in 1998. "I'll give you sad."

While Schaffner and the rest of the group weren't interested in performing — Rogers couldn't, as she battled drug and alcohol problems — Horton wanted to tour. But she said she was prohibited from billing herself as even "Gladys Horton of the Marvelettes," or Marshak would sue.

"I told Marshak that I have a handicapped son I have to support, but he's heartless," Horton told The News. "I don't even know what you call it. … Every time he puts a group out there he's taking money out of my pocket."

The Marvelettes were honored in December when "Please, Mr. Postman" became part of the Grammy Hall of Fame collection, which honors "recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance that are at least 25 years old."

Schaffner isn't sure if Horton was well enough to know about the award. "I'm not sure if her son told her," Schaffner said. "But since I believe that Gladys is in heaven looking down on us, she knows."

Gladys Horton is survived by two sons, Sam and Vaughn, and two grandchildren. A Los Angeles memorial service will be organized at a future date.



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From The Detroit News: detnews.com/article/20110127/OBITUARIES/101270442/Marvelettes-co-founder-Gladys-Horton-dies-at-66#ixzz1CIN1fGPl

[Forever Motown]

Gladys Horton obituary

Lead singer for the Marvelettes on hits including Please Mr Postman, Motown's first No 1

* Richard Williams
* guardian.co.uk, Sunday 30 January 2011 13.22 GMT


For many young pop fans at the beginning of the 1960s, the voice of Gladys Horton represented their introduction to Motown music. Horton, who has died aged 65, was the 15-year-old lead singer of the Marvelettes when they recorded Please Mr Postman at their first session for Berry Gordy Jr's fledgling group of labels. The combination of her raw, girlish urgency and an extraordinarily catchy song gave the ambitious company the first of the many No 1 hits it would accumulate over the next decade.

The Marvelettes' overnight success briefly put the teenaged schoolfriends from a Detroit suburb at the top of Motown's highly competitive pecking order, and Horton went on to sing on further hits by the group, such as Playboy, Beechwood 4-5789, He's a Good Guy (Yes He Is) and Too Many Fish in the Sea. The lead vocals on their later hits, such as Don't Mess With Bill, The Hunter Gets Captured By the Game and When You're Young and in Love, were taken by Wanda Young, another member of the group, with a smoother, more intimate delivery.

Greater success might have been theirs, but for the fateful decision to reject a song written expressly for them by Lamont Dozier and the brothers Eddie and Brian Holland, who had formed themselves into one of Gordy's young in-house teams of composers and producers. At the founder's suggestion, Where Did Our Love Go was then submitted to the Supremes, who had yet to make an impact on the charts. After the breathy delivery of Diana Ross, Gordy's personal protege, made it a worldwide smash at the beginning of 1964, no more would the Marvelettes be able to see themselves as Motown's No 1 female vocal group.

Horton was born in Gainesville, Florida, orphaned before her first birthday and brought up in foster care in Inkster, a dormitory suburb for black workers at Detroit's Ford factories. It was while singing in the Inkster high school choir that she and four friends – Katherine Anderson, Georgia Dobbins, Wyanetta (Juanita) Cowart and Georgeanna Tillman – decided to form a group, inspired by the Chantels and the Shirelles and calling themselves the Marvels. At Horton's behest they entered a school talent contest; although they did not win, one of their teachers was so impressed that she secured them an audition at Motown and drove them in her car to the company's headquarters on West Grand Boulevard, later to be known as Hitsville USA.

When they were invited to come back with an original song, Dobbins remembered that a young pianist in Inkster, William Garrett, had been working on something that might do. They returned to Motown with Please Mr Postman, which was polished up by three company writers – Brian Holland, Robert Bateman and Freddie Gorman, the last-named adding expert knowledge to the lyric from his day-job delivering mail. The singers were quickly invited to record it with Motown's cadre of ace studio musicians, including the great drummer Benny Benjamin, who concocted the infectious beat that supported Horton's heartfelt cry of "D-liver D-letter D-sooner D-better!"

It was Gordy who prompted the change of name to the Marvelettes. By the time the record was released, less than a month later, Dobbins had already left the group, to be replaced by Young. Nothing, however, could hinder the runaway success of Please Mr Postman, which surpassed such previous Motown hits as the Miracles' Shop Around, Barrett Strong's Money and Mary Wells's Bye Bye Baby by crossing over from the R&B charts to win acceptance from the young white pop audience, thus doing more than any of its predecessors to lay the foundations for Motown's subsequent adoption of a wonderfully self-confident slogan: "The Sound of Young America." (Please Mr Postman would also prove to be an outstandingly valuable copyright for Gordy's publishing company when the Beatles included their version on their second album in 1963, and again in 1975 when the Carpenters recorded a version that took it back to the top of the charts.)

One of Gordy's sisters, Esther Edwards, had successfully applied to become the legal guardian of the parentless Horton. Since only one of the group had graduated from school, she also agreed to supervise the continuation of the girls' schooling while they were on tour. In preparation for their public debut, the Marvelettes were put through a rudimentary version of the grooming for which Motown later became famous. Coiffed, begowned, choreographed and rehearsed, they were sent out to perform at such venues as the Apollo in Harlem and the Howard Theatre in Washington DC with the other members of the company's travelling revue.

By the time they decided that Where Did Our Love Go was not the song for them, they were down to the trio of Horton, Young and Anderson, and were being rivalled in the company's affections by Martha and the Vandellas. But the sudden ascent of the Supremes, and the attention lavished by Gordy on his favourite star, cast all other female members of the Motown roster into the shadows, a fate which became the cause of lasting bitterness.

The Marvelettes also found it difficult to shake a conviction that being from Inkster, 35 miles from inner-city Detroit, they were seen as country bumpkins. Although they continued to have hits, particularly when Smokey Robinson wrote and produced a string of singles, neither Horton nor Young was able to establish the sort of individual identity that Gordy created for Ross.

Horton left the group in 1967 when she became pregnant with the first of three children of a marriage that was later dissolved. She was replaced by Ann Bogan, but after Gordy gradually moved the Motown operation to Los Angeles at the start of the 1970s, leaving many of the company's stalwarts stranded in Detroit, the Marvelettes called it a day. When Horton attempted to reunite the group in the 1980s, she discovered that their name had been sold by Motown to a New York businessman, Larry Marshak, who specialised in putting together ersatz groups to exploit existing reputations and was swift to protect his rights.

Unable to interest the other members in a resumption of activities, she sometimes performed as "Gladys Horton of the Marvelettes", accompanied by two younger singers. Not until Mary Wilson of the Supremes and other artists fought a successful legal action in 2006 was the right to the full use of the names of such groups restored to their original members.

Horton moved to southern California in the 1970s. Like most of Motown's second tier of artists, the Marvelettes had helped make the label rich without enjoying the rewards that might have been expected when Gordy persuaded them, barely out of school and at the dawn of their careers, to sign a personal management contract as well as a recording deal with his company. "A lot of acts were new," Horton said. "They were young and they were inexperienced. It was easy to take advantage of them."

She retired from performing in 2009. Following a lengthy period of declining health, she suffered a stroke last year and was admitted to a nursing home, where she died. She is survived by two of her three sons, Vaughn and Samuel, and by two grandchildren.

• Gladys Catherine Horton, singer, born 30 May 1945; died 26 January 2011

* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

The Marvelettes 'D-liver D-letter D-sooner D-better!':
Gladys Horton, right, with Wanda Young, left and Katherine Anderson in the Marvelettes, 1965. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives

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[Forever Motown]

Gladys Horton: Singer with the Marvelettes, who had Motown's first No 1 with 'Please Mr Postman'

Thursday, 3 February 2011

Gladys Horton was the lead singer with the Marvelettes, who topped the American charts with "Please Mr Postman" in December 1961. It was a key record for boosting morale during the Vietnam War. Although not a British hit, the record has become so familiar that it has obscured much of their later, equally fine work.

Although never adopted, Gladys Horton never knew her parents, but she was born in Gainesville, Florida on 30 May 1945 and was immediately put into foster care. As a teenager she was raised in Inkster, a housing project built by Henry Ford 35 miles from the centre of Detroit.

Berry Gordy Jr, who had had success writing songs for Jackie Wilson and Marv Johnson, had started a record company, Tamla-Motown, and was keen to sign local talent.Horton, with her school friends Katherine Anderson, Georgeanna Tillman and Juanita Cowart, plus an older girl, Georgia Dobbins, attended a school talent contest, mockingly calling themselves the Casinyets (can't sing yet). They learned songs by their favourite girl groups, the Shirelles and the Chantels. The prize was an audition with Motown, and although they didn't win their teacher insisted that they should be heard.

"Berry Gordy told us, 'You are so marvelous, you should be the Marvelettes,' Horton told me on a UK tour in 1990, "but we needed a song. Georgia knew William Garrett, who gave her a blues song, 'Please Mr Postman' [sings] 'Please please please, I want a letter from my baby.' That would suit BB King more than us but Georgia took the title and rewrote the song. She did that and then the producers added their names, so there are four writers on that record."

Dobbins had an ailing mother, so she was replaced by Wanda Young, who was planning to be a nurse. They recorded "Please Mr Postman" with Marvin Gaye playing drums. It was a slow climber but topped the US charts in December 1961, becoming Tamla-Motown's first No 1.

They followed it with the catchpenny "Twistin' Postman", but then had US Top 20 hits with "Playboy" (co-written by Horton and similar to"Postman") and "Beechwood 4-5789" (written by Gaye). Horton sang lead on "Too Hurt To Cry, Too Much In Love To Say Goodbye", a Phil Spector-styled production issued under the name of the Darnells.

Horton and Young shared the lead vocals on their albums, Please Mr Postman (1961), The Marvelettes Sing (1962) and The Marvelous Marvelettes (1963). One of Horton's best vocals is on "Too Many Fish In The Sea", a song they had favoured over "Where Did Our Love Go" This was ironic as they were to be overshadowed by the Supremes.

In 1963, "Please Mr Postman" was recorded by the Beatles on their second album, With The Beatles, and it was also a US No 1 and UK No 2 for the Carpenters in 1975. The Marvelettes themselves had further US hits with "The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game" (both written by Smokey Robinson), "Don't Mess With Bill" and "When You're Young And In Love", a revival of Ruby and the Romantics' doo-wop hit and the Marvelettes' only UK chart entry. A classic track, "My Baby Must Be A Magician" featured Melvin Franklin of Temptations.

By 1965, Cowart and Tillman had left, but the Marvelettes continued as a trio. Gladys Horton married one of Joe Tex's horn players and she stayed with the Marvelettes until her first child, Sammy, was born in 1967. As he had cerebral palsy, she knew she could not return to the group. She had two further children, and when the marriage broke down she raised the three children as a single mother.

The Marvelettes had a replacement in Ann Bogan, but the group disbanded in 1969. Horton revived the group in the 1980s, often working with Young. When I met her, she wanted to make a concept album about her life and was writing a book, Wait A Minute, Mr Postman, I've Got Something To Say, but neither materialized. She did however co-operate with a biography, The Original Marvelettes – Motown's Mystery Girl Group, written by Marc Taylor in 2004.

Spencer Leigh

Gladys Catherine Horton, singer: born Gainesville, Florida 30 May 1945; married (divorced; three sons); died Sherman Oaks, California 26 January 2011.

The Marvelettes in 1965, from left to right: Wanda Young, Katherine Anderson and Horton

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