Deliver the Letter, the Sooner the Better

On the way to Culver's Fall Festival on Saturday morning, I was listening to a Motown's Greatest Hits double-cd I had bought a little over a year ago in anticipation of djing a wedding. Although I bought the cd for party purposes and was bringing it to church for largely that very reason, it works on a pure listening basis as well. The ubiquity of the songs might tempt one to give the songs short shrift, but it would be perilous to do so. These are pop hits in the best sense of that term: incredibly catchy and danceable tunes communicating universal (popular) sentiments. And that brings me to hearing "Please Mr. Postman" by the Marvelettes this past Saturday morning.



There are almost too many remarkable things about this song and recording to mention, so I'll rather inarftfully list what I love about Please Mr. Postman:

(1) The opening snare blast and "Wait!" There's something so urgent in this abrupt and direct beginning. I guess they're shouting at the postman, but as a listener you feel your attention immediately turn to the Marvelettes and, in a second, Gladys Horton.

(2) Gladys Horton's lead vocal has a rasp that is almost the antithesis to that other Motown icon, Diana Ross. I see her in the isolation booth sleep-deprived from tossing and turning at night and stressfully taking drags from a cigarette while the Marvelettes sing. And her rasp gets more pronounced as the song goes along, her pleading intensifying and becoming more and more desperate. This nuance would likely be lost in the modern pop music recording process; aside from the effects that would inevitably alter the original lead vocal recording, most tracks today aren't captured in a single take but are a cobbled-together assemblage of numerous takes. I could be wrong about this, but I'm inclined to think that what you hear on this recording is one take with minimal-to-no editing. And that makes sense; this song is a frustrated outburst to an innocent third party. She couldn't give a shit about self-editing - she wants to vent.

(3) Again, unlike the Supremes, the background vocals are almost comically shrill. And I could be wrong about this, but I don't hear any guitar; it sounds like pure bass, drums, handclaps, and piano. Nothing's overthought or manicured (except for that mysterious moment of reverb around 2:12 - odd).

(4) This song is sad. Now, there's a whole different critique to be written about how creepily dominant it is that five men wrote this song about a girl pining for a letter from her boyfriend, but let's give these guys the benefit of the doubt and assume they just happened to write from the female perspective. This is, after all, a universal feeling: waiting impatiently to hear from someone, wondering what they're going to say and how they're going to say it. I guess I don't have a lot of experience waiting for letters in the mail, but in a mid-90s (and now hopelessly antiquated) twist, I traded facsimiles with a girl who had just moved to China. Although I eagerly anticipated getting the faxes and was pleasantly surprised when she started augmenting them with ink stamps of the Beatles, I most looked forward to the language immediately preceding her signature. Would she profess her love or her cold sincerity? How did it compare to earlier salutations? Had she cooled on me or were we still an item? I had to know, and I sent my fax sometimes for the very purpose of provoking a reply. It makes me wonder if the girl in "Please Mr. Postman" had written this guy or if she was just hoping for a spontaneous letter. If the latter, wow, that's really the pits - just waiting, hoping, praying for someone to call or write on his/her own initiative. She may not even want good news - she just wants to feel worth the effort of a letter.