#MR POSTMAN SERIES#

“I’d like to get some of that record,” said Texas distributor Pappy Dailey, calling Motown in Detroit.

The track was recorded and released in August 1961, and swiftly earned airplay in and round Detroit, then elsewhere as Motown’s promotion team got to work across the country. Additional input came from Freddie Gorman, a would-be singer whose day job was as…a postman. Bateman and colleague Brian Holland liked what they heard, reshaping it to suit the quintet’s lead vocalist, Gladys Horton. The Marvelettes had already gained a Motown audition with Robert Bateman, a fledgling producer (and sound engineer) for the young company now, they had a song to offer. I just hummed it over and over and changed it to the way it should be. “I was waiting for the postman to bring me a letter from this guy who was in the Navy,” she told Marc Taylor, author of The Original Marvelettes: Motown’s Mystery Girl Group. Dobbins elected to write music for those words. He was an acquaintance of Georgia Dobbins, one of the high school girls from Inkster, Michigan, who coalesced into the Marvelettes at the dawn of the 1960s. The original was created out of words put on paper by pianist William Garrett. Postman’ as a placeholder,” said the alt-rock band’s singer/songwriter John Gourley, “and it just stuck.”

#MR POSTMAN SERIES#

Postman” then have grandchildren who hear the song even today, whether through the soundtrack of the animated Netflix series Beat Bugs, or as the musical foundation of “Feel It Still,” the 2017 global smash by Portugal. “Deliver de letter, the sooner de better,” harmonised the Marvelettes on the seven-inch vinyl which, in the summer of 1961, marked their debut disc for Motown Records. PRODUCERS: Brian Holland, Robert Bateman.īACKSTORY: In a world of electronic mail and digital communication, a catchy song about a postman continues to hold universal appeal.

SONGWRITERS: Georgia Dobbins, William Garrett, Brian Holland, Robert Bateman, Freddie Gorman. DAY & DATE: Debuts on the Billboard Hot 100 in the issue dated Monday, September 4, 1961.

Mr postman