A dozen years on, The Carpenters came up with their own version of the song written by Georgia Dobbins, William Garrett, Freddie Gorman, Brian Holland, and Robert Bateman. It was a No 1 hit in the US, followed two years later by The Beatles. Getting back to the headline, The Marvelettes, four young black women whose publicity photos of the day has them sporting beehive hairdos, first recorded Please, Mr. More recently Australian lyricist Nick Cave penned ‘ Love letter’, kissing the seal on a letter and sending it off, having regretted something he said: “Love letter, love letter, go get her, go get her.” Listen mister, can’t you see I got to get back Said she couldn’t live without me no more The song was famously re-invented by Joe Cocker in his Mad Dogs and Englishmen phase, relishing the song’s evocative, if ungrammatical bridge: In ‘The Letter’, the man gets a letter (‘ my baby she wrote me a letter’) and drops everything, saying ‘ gimme a ticket for an aeroplane…’. Motown group The Boxtops had a hit with ‘The Letter’, a song which is the polar opposite of Please, Mr. “ Enterprising stamp collectors put Elvis stamps on letters that day and mailed them off with false addresses so they would be sent back marked “Return To Sender” and become collector’s items.” , my go-to source when writing about hit records, notes that this song led to the US Postal Service issuing a commemorative Elvis stamp in 1993, marking what would have been The King’s 58 th birthday. Not that anyone cared – Return to Sender went Platinum in the US (one million copies sold) and was used in the soundtrack of Girls, Girls, Girls in 1962. Writers Otis Blackwell (who also wrote Great Balls of Fire) and Winfield Scott were not to know the US Postal Service would change its delivery system of zones to zip codes the following year, making the lyric redundant. But the letter keeps coming back (to that circular chorus – “she wrote upon it…”). Our romantic protagonist persists, as romantics do, sending it again by special delivery and even hand-delivered. The man writes to his estranged love and instead of reading the letter, she writes upon it, “Ret urn to sender, address unknown, no such number, no such zone.” So you wrote a letter, didn’t you, and fruitlessly waited for a reply.Įlvis Presley had a massive hit with that earworm of a song, Return to Sender. Many of you may recall that angst-ridden time when you broke up with someone and then regretted it. There has been speculation by reviewers and music historians that the song is a not-so subtle commentary on the Vietnam War. (Since I heard from this boyfriend of mine) (Is there a letter in your bag for me?) Please, Please Mister Postman Postman, a number one hit for the Motown group the Marvelettes. My music historian pal Franky’s Dad (aka Lyn Nuttall), put together this Spotify playlist ,which includes three versions of Please, Mr. The last verse goes quite close to the man saying that if he does not get a letter he will end it all. There is no limit to the mawkishness of sentiments expressed in letter songs, as exemplified in Bill Carlisle’s 1938 tune No Letter in the Mail Today, covered by Roy Acuff, Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers and others. In the heyday of the US Postal service, hundreds of pop songs were written, exploiting the emotions engendered by (a) receiving a love letter or (b) conversely waiting for a letter which probably isn’t going to arrive. When was the last time you got a personal, hand-written letter in the mail? People do still write letters, but by and large, personal communications have been overtaken by SMS, Messenger, email and PMS (private messages) on social media. I found that person’s email address and sent an electronic card, which I probably should have done in the first place. Several weeks elapsed between the posting and the return. My most recent experience of return-to-sender was the return of a Christmas card to someone who moved and didn’t let me know. What I didn’t say was the letter being posted was a return-to-sender a marketing letter to a person who no longer lives here. Not terribly original and a bit out of focus but it got some attention. You may have noticed I had a month off social media and re-introduced myself with a selfie posting a letter (above). So far, the items have arrived on time (as alerted by text), although the first parcel took eight days to get here (including a weekend and a public holiday). What’s got me on Postie-alert is a series of online purchases, all of which offered free delivery via Australia Post. I’ve been hanging out every day for the Postie to arrive. A Leunig calendar mailed to a friend in London in early December still has not arrived! Well may they call it that, with packages mailed to my sister in New Zealand taking up to 12 days to arrive. So goes the refrain of a much-covered song from a now-defunct genre of love songs involving ‘snail mail’.
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