Day 414: Martha and the Vandellas – Dance Party

I don’t think there’s much better feel-good music than ‘60s girl groups, and since I’m in the need for a bit of extra pep today, I though I should try Martha and the Vandellas. First order of business was to find out what a vandella is, and apparently it’s a made-up term that came from mixing the name of a street with the name of Martha’s favourite singer Della Reeves. Mystery solved, let’s listen to Dance Party.

Album cover courtesy of Gordy

Martha and the Vandellas was formed in 1960 as the Del-Phis, consisting of a group of high school friends. Their singer, Martha Reeves, was working as a secretary at Motown Records at the time, and they got a few lucky breaks through that role – they sang backup for emerging Motown artist Marvin Gaye when his regular backup singers couldn’t attend a recording session, and when another group couldn’t attend a recording session due to an illness, they went in to record a demo for themselves. Motown boss Barry Gordy heard the demo and signed them to the Motown subsidiary Gordy.

Dance Party was released in 1965 as the group’s third studio album. As you can probably deduce from the title, the album consisted mainly of party songs, with most of the songs written for the group by Motown’s Ivy Jo Hunter, Mickey Stevenson and the songwriting team Holland–Dozier–Holland, with a few cover songs added at the end of the album. Even though it had some of their bigger singles, most notably the evergreen "Dancing in the Street," the album wasn’t a major commercial success when it came out, peaking at number 139 on the Billboard 200.

I had a bit of a sluggish evening, and this album definitely helped put a bit of pep into my step. It’s soulful, upbeat and fun, and Martha Reeves’ vocals are a joy to listen to. But at the same time, I can see why it didn’t sell that much more. It’s a perfectly pleasant album, but aside from the aforementioned evergreen hit, it suffers from the fact that none of it is particularly memorable. It’s one of those that’s enjoyable to have on but you know that it’s not something you’ll really ever put on again.

I’m glad to have heard it, but once was enough. Dance Party is a perfectly reasonable 7/10.