Martha Reeves brings memories of Motown to Hawaii

On a cold January morning in Detroit, Martha Reeves caught a cross-town bus to Motown’s Hitsville USA studios to meet executive Mickey Stevenson.

Reeves was 21 and working full-time for a drycleaner; Stevenson had heard her sing the night before at the 20 Grand club and given her his business card. The card got her into Hitsville, past the line of people standing outside in the cold trying to get in, but then she was told that artist auditions were only held every third Thursday.

Wasted trip? Maybe not. Since she was there anyway, and had some clerical training, Stevenson said he could use her help answering the phones. He didn’t have to ask twice.

Reeves answered phones, took notes, and generally made herself useful. When a recording session for an established artist fell through, Reeves stepped in. She was a member of a “girl group” that had done some recording but didn’t seem to be going anywhere, so she called the other members and they did the session.

When Marvin Gaye needed backing vocals on “Stubborn Kind of Fellow,” the song that would be Gaye’s break-though hit, Reeves and her friends were there for him too.

Eventually Reeves, Rosalind Ashford and Annette Beard became hit-makers as Martha & The Vandellas.

“Come and Get These Memories,” written and produced for them by the famed songwriting/production team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland, reached No. 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart early in 1963.

“Heatwave,” another Holland-Dozier-Holland creation, established Martha & The Vandellas as nation-wide hit-makers when it soared to No. 4 on the Hot 100 that summer. Eddie Holland had pulled them out of a Motown company Christmas party to record it.

“After ‘Come and Get These Memories,’ I knew it was going to be fantastic cause all I had to do was imitate Eddie Holland singing. He had one of the finest voices you’d ever want to hear,” Reeves said, calling from her Detroit home. “In the studio, he introduced me again to his brother, Brian, who was going to work with Rosalind and Annette (on the backing vocals). Lamont (Dozier) was playing the piano.”

“When I walked out of there I knew it was a hit,” she said. “I was excited just hearing Eddie Holland sing it, and the way Brian and Lamont came up with the timing of the backups.

“It’s like the backups part of the song is just as busy as lead, and the harmonies were fabulous. They figured out how to get the three of us to sing ‘heatwave’ in harmony. I knew it was a hit, and we were just privileged to get a song from them.”

REEVES IS bringing all those hits and all those memories along with the 2019 model Vandellas to Hawaii this weekend. Motown fans — who certainly know that Martha & The Vandellas actually recorded for one of Motown’s subsidiary labels — can look forward to hearing an evening’s worth of vintage hits.

Martha & The Vandellas’ biggest Hot 100 hit was “Dancing in the Street.” “Quicksand” and “Nowhere to Run” are other entries on a long list.

And there’s more. Reeves parted ways with Motown in 1971, was signed by MCA, and took off on a successful second career as a solo artist. With producer Richard Perry, she sang three songs for the soundtrack of “Willie Dynamite,” a 1974 blaxpolitation film starring Roscoe Orman as an ambitious pimp.

“What a wonderful thrill it was to work with (composer) J.J. Johnson, the top arranger in the world at that time, and to see the movie as I sang it,” Reeves recalled. “It was wonderful to be part of that project.”

Perry also produced her first full-length solo album, “Martha Reeves.”

“I met a lot of wonderful people doing that album,” Reeves noted. “I met Ringo Starr — Merry Clayton and I sang back-up on ‘Oh My My’ on his album.”

Perry also gets the credit for having Reeves open the “Martha Reeves” album with a rocking remake of Van Morrison’s 1971 pop hit, “Wild Night.” It became a fan favorite — probably her most popular recording of another artist’s hit. The remake got a second shot in 1992, when it was included on the soundtrack for “Thelma & Louise.”

IN THE present, Reeves said it will be “a thrill” to have four days in Hawaii. Her last visit was for a New Year’s show more than a decade ago, she said.

“It was absolutely marvelous,” she said. “You didn’t shoot guns (for New Year’s), you shoot fireworks. To have fireworks in Hawaii is a thrill.

“I would love the people here in Detroit to get the idea that instead of shooting guns for New Year’s, shoot fireworks. Ring some bells!”

Reeves is almost certainly the last of the A-List first-generation Motown hit-makers who experiences life in Detroit on a day-to-day basis.

Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr., decided in the late 1960s that Los Angeles was the place to branch out into television production and film-making, but when Motown left Detroit for LA in 1972, a lot of Detroiters took it personally.

Reeves took it upon herself to restore Detroit’s pride in its Motown years.

“Motown’s name was derived from Detroit being the ‘Motor City,’ and our history was being left out of the history of Detroit,” Reeves said, explaining why she ran for — and won — a seat on the Detroit city council in 2005.

“I felt that if I could get into the city council, where all of the issues are brought and the decisions are made, I could learn how to get Berry Gordy’s name on West Grand Boulevard,” she said. “I was able to get his street named (in 2007), get different citations and resolutions for Motown, and put us in the history of the city.

“I think I did well, but I’ll never do that to myself again.”

Mission accomplished, Reeves turned to another project dear to her heart and recorded a gospel album, “Jesus Is The Reason.”

“The sad part about it is that my musical director, Alonza McKenzie, who helped produce and arrange it, recorded it for me and helped me get it pressed, just passed away on my birthday (last month),” Reeves said. “God gives and He takes, so I have my album for proof that Al and I had a wonderful time in the studio, praising God.”

MARTHA REEVES & THE VANDELLAS

>> Where: Blue Note Hawaii

>> When: 6:30 and 9 p.m. Friday through Sunday

>> Cost: $45-$65

>> Info: 777-4890, bluenotehawaii.com