Motown legend Martha Reeves tells Tim Hughes that, more than six decades on, she will continue to spread her musical message

If there's one word that sums up Motown legend Martha Reeves, it is dedication.

Dedicated to her dream of becoming a singer, she blagged her own way into a singing job by answering the phones in the record label’s Hitsville USA office.

Dedicated to her home city, she was one of the only Motown stars to return to Detroit when everyone else shipped out to the Californian sun – taking a job with the city council which has helped spearhead the bankrupt city’s slow renaissance.

Dedicated to her fans, she continues to perform across the world, refusing to slow down.

The fact she is a 73 year-old great-grandmother makes her irrepressible energy even more remarkable.

“I’m having the time of my life,” she says cheerily.

“I am so lucky and am having such a good time.

“We are still playing that Motown sound and loving it.”

This month she returns to Oxfordshire for a set at the county’s Cornbury Festival. And she is looking forward to it.

“I’ll be singing all the hits; the A sides and also the B-sides as some of them were as good as the A-sides. So there are a lot of songs recognised by UK audiences which I don’t play in America. We always have a good time – and there’s going to be more of the same.”

The day before, she was exercising her vocal chords at a free concert in the nearby city of Ann Arbor, Michigan. “It was wonderful,” she says. “So many people all having a good time.”

Born in Alabama, Martha was the third of 11 children, but it was Detroit which shaped her, the family moving to the Motor City before her first birthday. As members of a strong churchgoing family, the Reeves children were brought up surrounded by music, her father Elijah – a minister at Detroit’s Metropolitan Church – and her mother Ruby both singing and played guitar.

“My mother had a great voice,” she says. “Sometimes when I’m singing, I can hear her voice saying ‘sing it like Momma taught you to!”

She adds: “I made her very proud.”

Raised in gospel and soul, she was taught to sing at high school by Mary Wilson’s voice coach, then joined her first band The Fascinations followed by the Del-Phis.

While singing in a club one night, she was spotted by Motown A&R director Mickey Stevenson, who gave her his business card and told her to come for an audition. She went the next day – a Tuesday – not having realised that the label only auditioned on a Thursday. She stayed though – working as his secretary.

It was while helping out in the office that her group got the break they needed.

When a rival group of singers failed to turn up for a recording session she called in her own friends – cutting backing vocals for Marvin Gaye’s hit single Stubborn Kind of Fellow.

It wasn’t long before they were offered a contract, and when the group’s Gloria Williams left, they changed their name to Martha and the Vandellas – a reference to Martha’s childhood home on Van Dyke Street and as a tribute to the singer Della Reese.

They went on to score a string of hits with such tunes as Heat Wave, Jimmy Mack, Nowhere to Run, Quicksand, In My Lonely Room, Live Wire, and their signature hit Dancing in the Street.

When the Motown label, and virtually all its artists, shipped out to Los Angeles, Martha came back, remaining among the steadily decaying ruins of what had once been the USA’s most prosperous metropolis, but which is now a byword for post-industrial desolation – once prosperous streets lined with burned out homes and closed down factories, and a population struggling to cope with endemic levels of crime and one of the country’s highest murder rates.

“I moved to LA, but it was too hot,” she chuckles. “So I returned and made my mind up to stay here with my family.”

Despite Detroit’s well documented decline, she has remained loyal to her birth city, and still refuses to leave. For four years she served on the city council, campaigning for improvements to its crumbling infrastructure.

She now works once again as a full time artist.

“It has taken a lot of hard work and politicking to get the city refurbished,” she says, acknowledging that much still needs doing. “We found people getting more involved and got to see new endorsements for repairing the roads, which were full of potholes.

“It was a great experience, but I’m glad to be back. I still live here though, and am involved in issues today – and not just in Detroit but all over the world.”

With many of her Motown labelmates now gone, she is one of the last legends standing. “I don’t feel sad though,” she says. “We all have to make a transition. We all have to find an effective way to live a good life so that life means something.”

Among her closest friends was Ben E King, who died earlier this year.

“I respected him as a performer but also as a man who did great work in helping to get kids into school (through his Stand By Me Foundation) – and also as the man who taught me to play golf – which is one of my passions.

“I golf for fun and get enjoyment from being on a good course.”

But, she says, music remains her biggest joy – along with family.

“I’m glad I’m still able to sing the songs we recorded, and able to travel around and share those songs with others.”

And does she have a favourite? “All the songs I sing are like children – you don’t have a favourite,” she says.

The lyrics to her 1964 anthem Dancing in the Street have often been cited as a reference to the race riots which racked US cities at the time. She denies this though. “That’s something that’s been put on to that song,” she says.

“I didn’t sing that song about riots though. It’s about people being free and having a good time.

And is she tired of travelling? “No, because it’s taken me to places I’ve been welcomed. I love travelling. I still have lots to see and I enjoy being able to perform – before I’m put in a museum!”

So does she have any ambitions? “I’d love to see the Changing of the Guard,” she laughs, saying she is planning a trip to Buckingham Palace while in England. “And I want, sooner or later, to perform for the Queen. I always have something to look forward to!”

Martha and the Vandellas play Cornbury Festival at Great Tew. The festival runs from July 10-12.
Tickets from cornburyfestival.com