Martha still has us all Dancing in the Street (From Basingstoke Gazette)

Martha still has us all Dancing in the Street

3:40pm Monday 19th January 2009

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WITH a rattle of the drums and a ba da ba-ba da baaaa of the horn section, Martha Reeves is ingrained into the minds of millions and millions of people.

The opening to her signature hit Dancing In The Street is about as recognisable a musical motif as you're ever likely to hear.

Written in 1964 by some of Motown's finest writers - Marvin Gaye, the label's A&R director William 'Mickey' Stevenson and musician Ivy Jo Hunter - the song was originally intended to be a slow ballad.

"Marvin sang a demo of the song before I got it," Martha explains.

"He sang it all romantic, as if it were to a girl.

"It was something smooth, something intimate, but I wanted to identify with the song so I put myself out in the street, and I imagined people dancing to music. I asked if I had permission to sing it the way I felt it, not the way Marvin had done it, and they gave me the green light."

Had things worked out a little differently on the day, we might not have the angry, intense vocal that's set dance floors alight ever since.

"I sang it all the way through only to be told the machinery wasn't on, so they asked me to do it again," Martha says.

"I was mad when I did it the second time, and you can hear that."

Although born in Alabama in 1941, Martha's family moved to Motown's home of Detroit shortly afterwards.

Like many of the label's biggest stars, Martha was raised in a church-going family.

After singing with various groups, notably The Del-Phis who released a single on Chess records that failed to make an impact on the charts, Martha was determined to become a successful singer.

By the early 60s she found herself singing in various clubs around Detroit under the name Martha LaVaille, and after one performance in the now-famous Twenty Grand club, she was given a business card by Motown's chief talent scout William Stevenson.

She said: "William came in and asked me to go to [Motown's legendary studio at 2648 West Grand Boulevard, Detroit] Hitsville USA.

"I had a 9-5 job as a cleaner, but didn't go to work that next day, I went to the studio instead."

Martha went along to Hitsville, but after seeing the label's humble headquarters - a small house-cum-photographer's studio converted into a studio by Motown founder Berry Gordy - she very nearly turned around and went back home.

"I was expecting something much grander," she says.

"A voice in my head told me to carry on, though, and I went in and asked for William. He was only known as 'Mickey' to his friends, so there was another stumbling block," she adds, laughing.

After a brief conversation with Mickey, during which he told her to come back in three weeks' time, Martha indeed got some work, and had unwittingly landed herself the job as Motown's A&R secretary.

While in this role, she was responsible for auditioning the various acts that came through Hitsville's door.

In 1962, Berry Gordy gave Martha and her friends Annette Beard-Helton and Rosalind Ashford-Holmes, who had regularly sung backing vocals for other Motown artists, a contract of their own.

They were christened Martha And The Vandellas by Reeves, reportedly after her idol Della Rees, and the hits quickly started mounting up.

Early classics include Come And Get These Memories and (Love Is Like A) Heatwave, which gave the band their first million-selling single, and established them as the label's premier act.

More hits followed, including the aforementioned Dancing In The Street, Quicksand, Jimmy Mack and Nowhere To Run, which perhaps distilled their distinctive tough R&B sound better than any of their other tracks.

During a 12-year tenure with Motown, the group amassed more than a dozen chart smashes, mostly written by three-man hit factor Holland-Dozier-Holland.

While things didn't end nicely for Martha at Motown - aside from in-band fighting, she was institutionalised in the late 60s after falling victim to drug abuse and alcoholism - she looks back fondly on her time there.

"It's unbelievable to think Motown is 50," she says.

"Being one of the pioneers I've lived every moment of it, and enjoyed every moment of it, too.”

-Andy Welch

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