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.