Martha & The Vandellas

During the 1960s, Martha & the Vandellas joined the Supremes in shaping the female dimension of Motown’s signature style. Standout singles such as “Heat Wave,” “Dancing in the Street,” and “Nowhere to Run” continue to rank among the decade’s strongest and most lasting dance tracks. Fronted by Martha Reeves, the ensemble originated in 1960 when she and fellow Detroit natives Annette Sterling Beard, Gloria Williams, and Rosalind Ashford formed the Del-Phis. After Reeves obtained a secretarial post at Motown Records headquarters, the Del-Phis were invited to cut a lone single for the label’s Melody subsidiary, releasing it as the Vels.

The release went nowhere, and Williams departed, leaving a trio. The singers supported Marvin Gaye on his standout 1962 single “Stubborn Kind of Fellow,” prompting a name change to Martha & the Vandellas, inspired by Detroit’s Van Dyke Street and Reeves’s idol Della Reese. When Mary Wells missed a booked session, union regulations required a substitute vocalist to honor the contract, so Reeves was summoned from clerical duties to record the group’s first release, 1962’s “I’ll Have to Let Him Go.”

The ballad “Come and Get These Memories” reached the Top 30 and drew the attention of Motown’s hit-writing team Holland-Dozier-Holland, who delivered the group’s next triumph, the stirring Top Five classic “Heat Wave.” That track crystallized the trio’s hallmark sound of impassioned call-and-response vocals, insistent rhythms, and lush horns. After another Top Ten entry, “Quicksand,” Beard stepped down and former Velvelette Betty Kelly joined. Kim Weston passed on the Marvin Gaye/Ivy Jo Hunter/Mickey Stevenson composition “Dancing in the Street,” sending it instead to Martha & the Vandellas; Holland-Dozier-Holland reshaped it to suit the group’s approach, and the resulting anthem became their biggest and most definitive hit, climbing to number two in summer 1964. A year later they scored another major success with the intense “Nowhere to Run,” followed by “I’m Ready for Love.”

Kelly left in 1967 and was replaced by Reeves’s younger sister Lois, after which the act was billed as Martha Reeves & the Vandellas. The 1967 singles “Jimmy Mack” and “Honey Chile” were the last Holland-Dozier-Holland productions before the team’s exit from Motown and also the group’s final notable hits. Reeves fell gravely ill in 1968, and Ashford departed the next year, with another former Velvelette, Sandra Tilley, taking her place. The lineup continued without major success until disbanding after a December 1972 farewell concert at Detroit’s Cobo Hall. Once Motown moved its offices to Los Angeles—a relocation Reeves stated she had never approved—the singer, already launching a solo career, sued to void her contract. In her 1994 autobiography, Dancing in the Street, she charged that “the Vandellas’ career, though highly successful in its own right, could have been even greater had Motown founder Berry Gordy, Jr. given their music the same obsessive attention he afforded to Diana Ross & the Supremes.”

Reeves released her debut solo album, Martha Reeves, on MCA in 1974. Later LPs included 1976’s The Rest of My Life and 1978’s We Meet Again, yet solo recognition stayed modest, and she endured two nervous breakdowns that led to brief institutionalization. Lois Reeves went on to work with Al Green, while Sandra Tilley retired from music and died in 1982 after surgery for a brain tumor. In 1989 Martha Reeves, Annette Beard, and Rosalind Ashford successfully sued Motown for back royalties and reunited occasionally in the 1990s. Reeves also sustained a solo career and performed with a Vandellas lineup that featured Lois and a third sister, Delphine. She issued the independent album Home to You in 2004. From 2005 through 2009 she served on Detroit’s city council. Afterward she aligned with a non-profit organization helping musicians collect royalties and remained an active performer with the Vandellas.