Gladys Horton and Georgia Dobbins, from Inkster, Michigan, couldn’t sing – or so they thought. Along with three classmates, they called themselves The Casinyets (“can’t sing yet”), and took their ...

And now a page from our “Sunday Morning” Almanac: August 21st, 1961, 55 years ago today ... a musical date worth writing home about. For that was the day the Motown label released “Please Mr. Postman.

“Although they’re the hottest female rock’n’roll quartet in the nation with their Please Mr. Postman record, The Marvelettes can only work at weekends,” babbled Jet magazine in early December 1961.

Long before the Mavelletes, the Beatles or the Carpenters sang “Please Mr. Postman”, those three words played silently in the minds of lovers almost daily as they eagerly awaited a letter from their ...