YEAR
1995
INDUCTED BY
Fred Schneider & Kate Pierson (B-52s)
CATEGORY
Performers
The brazen Motown girl group with an unyielding R&B edge.
Martha and the Vandellas were the Supremes’ tougher, more grounded counterpart. With her cheeky, fervent vocals, Martha Reeves led the group in a string of dance anthems that are irresistible to this day.
Martha Reeves
Annette Sterling-Helton
Betty Kelley
Lois Reeves
Rosalind "Roz" Ashford-Holmes
HALL OF FAME
ESSAY
By Susan Whitall
If you had a pulse in the summer of 1964 and heard Martha Reeves’ piercing cry — “Calling out, around the world, are you ready for a brand-new beat?” — you might have recognized it as the siren sound of Berry Gordy Jr.’s Motown Records.
When you are inside that song, Motown’s Sound of Young America is happening, and all is well in the world. As Reeves sings, “Summer’s here, and the time is right for dancing in the street,” to one of the most irresistible riff Motown’s Funk Brothers ever concocted, for that moment you are young and wild and utterly without a care.
