GLADYS HORTON PASSES

Gladys Horton, who gathered some of her high school friends into a singing group that became the Marvelettes and then sang lead vocals on “Please Mr. Postman,” which became Motown Records’ first No. 1 hit, died on Wednesday in Sherman Oaks, Calif.

Her son Vaughn Thornton said in an interview that her health had been in decline for several years. In a statement released by the Los Angeles chapter of the Motown Alumni Association (an independent group not associated with Motown Records, which is now an affiliate of Universal Music), he said she had not recovered after suffering a stroke.

Ms. Horton was in her mid-60s, but her precise age was uncertain. The statement said she was born in 1944, but Mr. Thornton gave his mother’s birthday as May 30, 1945, making her 65 at her death.

Ms. Horton was in a high school glee club in Inkster, Mich., outside Detroit, when she recruited three of her classmates — Katherine Anderson (now Schaffner), Georgeanna Tillman and Juanita Cowart — as well as a friend who had recently graduated, Georgia Dobbins, and formed a quintet. They called themselves the Casinyets — a contraction of the words “can’t sing yet,” an acknowledgment of their lack of experience.

Competing in a talent contest whose winners were to receive an audition for Motown, they didn’t win, but got the audition anyway. Motown executives, including Berry Gordy Jr., the label’s founder, were impressed but said they needed to come up with original material. A friend of Ms. Dobbins, William Garrett, had just written a blues song, and with his permission Ms. Dobbins rewrote the song, about a girl aching for mail from her far-away boyfriend, casting it in a pop vein, though she kept the title, “Please Mr. Postman.”

After Ms. Dobbins left the group because her mother was ill and her father wanted her at home, she was replaced by Wanda Young, another graduate of the same high school in Inkster, leaving Ms. Horton to sing the lead vocals, including the memorable line “De-liver de let-ter, de sooner de bet-ter.”

On Dec. 11, 1961, after three months on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, “Please Mr. Postman” reached No. 1. The song would later be recorded by the Beatles and, in 1975, the Carpenters, for whom it was also a No. 1 hit.
Smokey Robinson wrote several songs for the Marvelettes, who went through a number of personnel changes — becoming a quartet and later a trio — before disbanding in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Ms. Horton stayed with the group until 1967, when she became pregnant with her first child. She sang on a number of hit recordings, including “Playboy,” “Beechwood 4-5789” and Mr. Robinson’s tunes “Don’t Mess With Bill” and “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game.”

Precise information about Ms. Horton’s early life was not available. Most biographical sources say she was born in Detroit or in Inkster, but Mr. Thornton said she was born in Gainesville, Fla. By the time she was nine months old, her son said, she was an orphan and consigned to foster care, growing up mostly in different towns in Michigan. Her full name was Gladys Catherine Horton. She was married once and divorced, and had three sons. Besides Mr. Thornton, one other son, Sammy Coleman, survives her, along with two grandchildren.

The origin of the Marvelettes is variously recounted in music encyclopedias and other sources, and they usually describe Ms. Horton as a co-founder of the group. But in an interview on Thursday, Ms. Schaffner, one of the original Marvelettes, gave her full credit.

“We only started singing together because Gladys asked us,” she recalled. “Usually we’d go to Georgeanna’s house and play canasta.”