The Marvelettes were never as successful or as famous as the Supremes, their Motown Records stablemates, but to many of their fans they offered a truer, more authentic incarnation of the label’s famous sound in a run of hits that started with Please Mr Postman in 1961. Among the five girls who formed the group at school in Inkster, a suburb of Detroit, was Katherine Anderson, who has died aged 79.
So keen was the fledgling Motown company to unearth local talent that the top five groups in a talent contest at Inkster high school were invited to an audition. Although the teenaged quintet jokily calling themselves the Cansinyettes – “can’t sing yet” – had finished only fourth in the competition, it was they who won a recording contract.
