Growing up, I knew this song as a hit single for The Carpenters in 1975. For older pop fans, it’s Motown’s first number one single by one of the first girl groups, The Marvelettes, from 1961.

Formed by a 15-year-old orphan called Gladys Horton and four of her friends from high-school glee club in a suburb of Detroit, they were Berry Gordy’s first successful act after The Miracles, and his first successful female group.

It was all thanks to this song, which features a young Marvin Gaye on drums, and has an unusual genesis dating back to the group’s audition for Gordy’s Tamla label – a prize from their school talent show – back when they were called The Marvels.

Georgia Dobbins sang lead vocals on a rewritten doo-wop song composed by a friend of hers, William Garrett, but despite the successful audition she left the group straight after and was replaced.

Gordy, meanwhile, had the song reworked by some of his in-house songwriters, one of whom moonlighted as a postman (Freddie Gorman) and another of whom was Brian Holland (soon of Holland-Dozier-Holland), and renamed the group The Marvelettes.

Released as their debut single, it topped the charts in the summer of 1961 and had a new lease of life when The Beatles recorded it for their second album in 1963 before its third with The Carpenters a decade later.

The Marvelettes, featuring two strong lead singers in Gladys Horton and Wanda Young, never managed to emulate its success but had several hits throughout the Sixties during an ongoing rivalry with The Supremes.

They had help from rising singer-songwriters including Smokey Robinson who wrote and produced many of their singles, and Marvin Gaye who was working as a session drummer after the failure of his own debut album in 1961, as well as Holland-Dozier-Holland, Berry Gordy, Mickey Stevenson and Ashford-Simpson.

Their hits included Too Many Fish In The Sea – a song they chose after turning down Where Did Our Love Go, which was piced up by their rivals – as well as the Smokey-penned Don’t Mess With Bill and The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game (memorably covered later by Grace Jones) and near misses like I’ll Keep Holding On.

Sadly they struggled with poor promotion from Motown, who had promised them tutors when they first joined the label and had to leave school to go on tour – but never got them – as well as health issues and substance abuse and stopped performing together in 1969, disbanding a year later.