This post The Number Ones: The Marvelettes’ “Please Mr.
Postman” to soundtrack a brawl in a pool hall, helping to pioneer the way movies would use pop music in the years ahead.
#THE MARVELETTES PLEASE MR. POSTMAN MOVIE#
Postman” was a Trojan horse: a fun pop song that, however unintentionally, served as a fulcrum point and helped to introduce a whole lot of larger issues to the national conversation.īONUS BEATS: In his 1973 movie Mean Streets, Martin Scorsese used “Please Mr. In the years that would follow, pop music would reckon a whole lot more with Vietnam. Postman” we only hear that he’s “so far away.” It seems possible, at least, that the boyfriend was in a jungle somewhere across the world. We never hear where the absent boyfriend is in “Please Mr. American troops were already in the country, but those troop levels tripled in 1961. By 1961, President Kennedy had just started focusing on Vietnam. Postman,” but Motown Records would change things, polishing and professionalizing it (perfecting an assembly-line formula that bigger labels would struggle to replicate), and in the process producing a whole lot of eternally great art.Īnd maybe “Please Mr. Black pop music was doing just fine before “Please Mr. And while I’m sure you couldn’t tell at the time, the song would prove a harbinger. But the Motown pop takeover was inevitable, and it finally arrived in the form of four teenage girls from Inkster, Michigan and their plea about a letter that never seems to arrive. Motown Records should’ve scored its first #1 months earlier, with the Miracles’ pop masterpiece “Shop Around,” but Lawrence Welk and his accordion got in the way. Gladys Horton's sandpaper vocal is equal parts attitude and anticipation, and while the song.
Postman' tailors the girl group sound to label specifications, rejecting the polished sweetness typical of the genre in favor of a tougher-minded, more urbanized approach.
In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.Ī lot begins here. Motown's first number one single, the Marvelettes' 1961 blockbuster 'Please Mr.
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