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.
I just wanna be myself and I want you to know / I am my hair
— Lady Gaga, “Hair,” 2001
THE PRECEDING LINE could have been written by King Louis XIV, who started losing his mane at seventeen and responded by donning wigs so large and outlandish that Lady Gaga might be tempted to say, “Hey, tone it down, dude.”
Teens have been obsessed with their hair for centuries, none more than the fictional Marcia Brady, who brushed her luscious locks 100 times a day. A modeling agent in The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) ignited her fury by suggesting she could make it in the fashion industry with a little work, like
“… cutting that mousy hair, capping those teeth, and losing about 30 pounds, my little sausage. How do you feel about breast implants?”
Outraged, Marcia slapped him and declared, “Cut my hair?”
Here are more teens, real and fictional, who made a statement with their hair:
POSTING ABOUT early rock songwriters Leiber and Stoller yesterday got me thinking about other teenage pop music composers. Are these the best songs pre-twenty-year-olds have ever written? You decide.
1. “Summertime Blues.” Eddie Cochran, co-writer (19), 1958
The tune about a frustrated kid who is “too young too vote” was ranked 73rd by Rolling Stone on its 2004 list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Blue Cheer, The Who, and country singer Alan Jackson have covered the song. Also, Olivia Newton-John and Alvin and the Chipmunks.
2. “Hound Dog.” Leiber and Stoller (both 19), 1952
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller preferred the Big Mama Thornton version of this tune over the Elvis Presley recording, and one can see why. Big Mama performed it with a thunderous fury. Elvis or his handlers changed some of the lyrics, which made it kind of silly. What does “you never caught a rabbit” signify?
3. “Why Do Fools Fall in Love.” Jimmy Merchant (16) and Frankie Lymon (13), co-writers, 1956.
Teenagers, naturally, should have written the biggest hit song for a group known as Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. There’s been dispute over who should be credited with the tune, although most stories say it started as something written by Jimmy Merchant, the band’s second tenor. The song was originally titled, “Why Do Birds Sing So Gay.” A 1998 movie about Frankie Lymon was titled Why Do Fools Fall in Love and starred Halle Berry, Vivica Fox, and Lela Rochon as the singer’s wives.
4. “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” Carole King, co-writer (18), 1960
The Shirelles had a number-one smash with this slightly risqué song — the singer wonders what will follow a night of sex. King was working as a secretary and Gerry Goffin, her songwriting partner and future husband, was employed as a chemist when publisher Don Kirshner gave them both a $10,000 advance for what became their first hit song.
5. “ By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” Jimmy Webb, 1965.
An Oklahoma native, Webb has said he was seventeen when he wrote “Up, Up and Away,” a huge hit for The Fifth Dimension, and seventeen or eighteen when he wrote “By The Time I Get to Phoenix,” which Glen Campbell recorded in 1967. Those two songs combined for eight Grammy awards in 1968. Webb also wrote the Campbell hits “Galveston” and “Wichita Lineman” as well as “MacArthur Park,” a number-two hit for actor-singer Richard Harris in 1968 and a three-week chart-topper for Donna Summer in 1978.
6. “Please Mr. Postman.” Georgia Dobbins, co-writer (16), 1961.
“De-liver de let-ter, de sooner de better,” sang Gladys Horton on “Please Mr. Postman,” a song that made the Marvelettes, briefly, Motown’s top girl group. Originally written by William Garrett, “Please Mr. Postman” was rewritten by Dobbins, who soon left the group. Horton and Dobbins were two of five friends from a Detroit-area high school who formed a group that they originally called the Casinyets, a contraction of “Can’t Sing Yets.” In December of 1961, “Please Mr. Postman” became the first of 55 Motown singles to reach number one on the Billboard singles chart.
7. “Walk Away Renee.” Michael Brown (17), 1966.
A blurry vocal quality to this hit by the Left Banke has made some listeners think the singer is saying, “Don’t walk away, Renee, / You won’t see me in my U.F.O.” (the second part is actually, “You won’t see me follow you back home”). The song was inspired by Brown’s infatuation for Renee Fladen, girlfriend of the band’s bassist, Tom Finn.
8. “I Was Made to Love Her.” Stevie Wonder, co-writer (16), 1967
This song begins with “I was born in Little Rock,” although some insist that Wonder is really singing, “I was bored and learned Bach.” Wonder has said that this song “kind of speaks of my first love to a girl named Angie.” One of the co-writers, Sylvia Moy, is thought to be responsible for most or all of the lyrics. She said it was inspired from stories she heard from her parents, which explains the “I was born in Little Rock” line — her mother was from Arkansas.
9. “ Come Go With Me.” Clarence Quick (19), 1956.
This song, which cracked Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, became a hit for the Del-Vikings, an integrated doo-wop group that included Quick as bass vocalist. It has appeared in several films, includingAmerican Graffiti (1973), Diner(1982), and Stand by Me(1986).
10. “ My Prerogative.” Bobby Brown, co-writer (19), 1988
“Everybody’s talkin’ all this stuff about me / Why don’t they just let me live?” Brown asks in “My Prerogative,” a number-one single from his Don’t Be Cruel album. The song is supposedly a response to the criticism he received for leaving the group New Edition. Britney Spears had a huge hit with her 2004 cover of the song.
11. “ Kansas City.” Leiber and Stoller (19), 1952
It took awhile for “Kansas City,” a song about a city with “a crazy way of lovin’,” to catch on. R&B singer Little Willie Littlefield recorded a version titled “K.C. Lovin’” in 1952 that didn’t do much. Seven years later, Wilbert Harrison changed “crazy way of lovin’” to “crazy little women” and had a number-one hit. There have been more than 300 versions of this song, including recordings by The Beatles, James Brown, Muddy Waters, Brenda Lee, and Tom Jones.
12. “Gloria.” Van Morrison (18), 1963
Humorist Dave Barry wrote a partially tongue-in-cheek column in 2014 calling this “one of the greatest works of music ever written” because it’s easy to play and “has excellent lyrics.” The song spells out the girl’s name — “G-L-O-R-I-A” — and measures her as “just about 5 feet 4, from her head to the ground.” An easy song to mock, it’s also an easy one to love.
13. “Stay.” Maurice Williams (15), 1953
Seven years after he wrote it, “Stay” became a hit for Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs. Williams said he wrote it after trying to convince a date to stay with him past her 10 p.m. curfew. At one minute and thirty-seven seconds, “Stay” is the briefest number-one single in Billboard history.
Those who’ve seen Silver Linings Playbook (2012) may forever associated “My Cherie Amour” with the Bradley Cooper character, who hears it at a doctor’s office and yells, “Is that song really playing?” Turns out, “My Cheri Amour” had accompanied his mental breakdown. A song with the simplest of choruses — “La la la la la la, / La la la la la la” — was first recorded two years before its 1969 release.
15. “ Complicated.” Avril Lavigne, co-writer (17), 2002
“I write my own songs,” Lavigne told USA Today the year she recorded “Complicated,” “and when I’m in front of a camera, I don’t try to act like something or someone I’m not.” That “be yourself” stance is the central message to her first hit single, which rails against someone “acting like you’re somebody else.” The song from her debut album Let Go, “Complicated” was nominated for two Grammy awards and brought Avril a Video Music Award for Best New Artist in a Video.
16. “And When I Die.” Laura Nyro (18), 1966.
One of the finest songwriters of her generation, Nyro wrote this tune and “Wedding Bell Blues” around the same time, with both songs flying up the charts in 1969 — “And When I Die” reached number two for Blood, Sweat and Tears and The 5th Dimension’s version of “Wedding Bell Blues” topped the chart for three weeks. She also wrote “Stone Cold Picnic” and “Eli’s Coming,” late-1960s hits for The 5th Dimension and Three Dog Night.
17. “ Poor Little Fool.” Sharon Sheeley (18), 1958.
Poor Little Fool” became the first number-one hit for eighteen-year-old Ricky Nelson and the first chart topper of the Billboard Hot 100 era. Sheeley, known for being Eddie Cochrane’s girlfriend when the rocker died in a 1960 taxi crash in England, is the youngest woman to write a number-one hit.
18. “Wuthering Heights.” Kate Bush (18), 1977.
If you’re an American, you’re probably thinking, “Huh?” This song, based on the Emily Bronte classic (duh!), was a number-one smash in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, but didn’t chart in the U.S. or Canada. It was the first number-one song in the UK written and performed by a female artist.
19. “Angel Baby.” Rosie Hamlin (14), 1959.
Hamlin has said this song started out as a poem for her first boyfriend. A year later, she recorded it with a band that called itself Rosie and the Originals. John Lennon in 1969 called Hamlin one of his favorite singers and recorded “Angel Baby” in 1973. The Originals version peaked at number five on the Billboard singles chart.
20. “Diana.” Paul Anka (15), 1957.
Not everyone loves this tune, written about a slightly older girl named Diana Ayoub, but it sure did sell a lot of records. Paul began “Diana” with the lines “I’m so young
and you’re so old,” sang it “at parties, at the choir, and in stage productions,” and decided, “Dammit, I like this thing.” Released shortly before his sixteenth birthday, “Diana” shot to the top of the U.S. singles charts on September 9, 1957, and spent nine weeks at number one in the U.K.
Above: Three of the four Marvelettes, with Gladys Horton on the right.
FIFTY-TWO YEARS ago today, sixteen-year-old Gladys Horton and the Marvelettes delivered Motown’s first number-one single, “Please Mr. Postman.” The 1961 chart-topper was distinguished by Horton’s emphatic vocals as she sang, “De-liver the let-ter, the sooner the bet-ter!”
Horton created the group with five friends from a Detroit high school, with one member leaving to make it a four-girl act. “We only started singing together because Gladys asked us,” recalled Katherine Schaffner, one of the founding members. Originally called the Casinyets, a contraction of “can’t sing yet,” the band was signed by Berry Gordy’s Detroit-based Motown label, changed its name to The Marvelettes, and recorded “Please Mr. Postman” a month before Horton’s sixteenth birthday.
The Marvelettes enjoyed moderate follow-up success to “Please Mr. Postman” before their brief reign 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. “Please Mr. Postman” was covered by the Beatles in 1963 and the Carpenters in 1975.
Above: The Marvelettes. Horton is second from the left.
BEST TEENAGERS EVER 