“Wait a minute, Mr. Postman”

Above: The Marvelettes. Horton is second from the left.

FIFTY-THREE YEARS ago today (December 11, 1961), sixteen-year-old Gladys Horton and the Marvelettes delivered Motown’s first number-one single, “Please Mr. Postman.”

Sample lyrics:

Please Mister Postman, look and see
(Oh yeah)
If there’s a letter in your bag for me
(Please, Please Mister Postman)
Why’s it takin’ such a long time
(Oh yeah)
For me to hear from that boy of mine

Horton was the main force behind the first of Motown’s powerhouse girl groups. A student at Michigan’s Inkster High School, a suburb of Detroit, she and and recent Inkster graduate Georgia Dobbins gathered several classmates together to form a quintet called the Casinyets, a contraction of “can’t sing yets.” “We only started singing together because Gladys asked us,” Katherine Schaffner, nee Anderson, said.

Dobbins rewrote “Please Mr. Postman,” originally a blues tune by William Garrett, to give it more of a pop sound. She left the group before the song took off because her mother was ill and her father wanted her at home.

Horton sang lead vocals on “Please Mr. Postman” and is remembered for her emphatic rendering of the lyrics, “De-liver de let-ter, de sooner de bet-ter.”

“Please Mr. Postman” became the first of 55 Motown singles to reach number one on the Billboard singles chart. Fourteen years later, the Carpenters struck number one with a cover of the song.

The Marvelettes enjoyed moderate follow-up success to “Please Mr. Postman” before their standing as Motown’s top girl group was eclipsed by the Supremes, whose first smash hit, “Where Did Our Love Go?” had been initially offered to Horton’s group.