While Martha Reeves and Diana Ross were acting out their fierce rivalry for the title of Queen of Motown during the Detroit record label’s early years of success, the other members of their groups, respectively the Vandellas and the Supremes, socialised happily together during the tours that took them back and forth across the US.

Among them was Rosalind Ashford, a founder member of Martha and the Vandellas, who sang on hits including Heat Wave, Dancing in the Street, Nowhere to Run and Jimmy Mack.

Ashford, who has died aged 83, was a participant in the label’s golden era, when it became, as its own slogan claimed, “the Sound of Young America”, attracting white teenagers to Black music and helping to create a soundtrack to the 1960s civil rights movement.

If Ross ultimately won the battle to be the label’s principal female star, helped by her affair with its founder and president, Berry Gordy Jr, many Motown fans believed the recordings of Martha and Vandellas to be truer to the label’s core sound, retaining something of the raw fervour of the gospel music with which they had grown up.

Born in Detroit, to Mary (nee Buckley) and John Ashford, respectively a teacher and a worker at the Ford Motor Company, Rosalind sang in church and in choirs at Wilbur Wright high school.

In 1957 she took part in a talent audition at the local YMCA, where her soprano voice impressed an agent, Edward “Pops” Larkins, who put her together with two other girls, Annette Beard and Gloria Williams, to form a vocal group he called the Del-Phis, with Williams as the lead singer.

After Ashford had graduated from school in 1961, they made their first records for two Chicago labels, Checker and Checkmate, without success. Williams left to start a family and Reeves took over the lead vocals.

The group’s fortunes were drifting when Reeves joined Motown as secretary to Motown’s A&R chief, Mickey Stevenson. But the temporary absence one day in the summer of 1962 of the label’s regular female backing singers, a trio known as the Andantes, prompted her to summon her own group to sing the harmonies on what proved to be Marvin Gaye’s first hit, Stubborn Kind of Fellow.

Gordy offered them a contract of their own and within weeks they were recording their own debut single, a Stevenson song called I’ll Have to Let Him Go, under their new name, which Reeves invented by combining the Van from Detroit’s Van Dyck Street, where her family lived, and Della from Della Reese, a singer she admired.

That first effort was not a hit, but six months later they worked with the writing and producing team of Lamont Dozier and the brothers Eddie and Brian Holland on a song called Come and Get These Memories, whose combination of danceable rhythm and poignant words took them into the US R&B Top 10 and the pop Top 30. Soon, in the Motown way, they were being groomed in deportment by Maxine Powell, the head of the artists’ personal development department, and in dance steps by the renowned teacher Cholly Atkins.

It proved to be the prelude to a magnificent run of success with the Holland-Dozier-Holland team. Their next release, Heat Wave, defined the Motown Sound: a driving rhythm, strong gospel piano chords, ecstatic singing and a wailing baritone saxophone solo took it to No 1 and No 6 in the R&B and pop charts respectively in the autumn of 1963. The combination of ingredients was so powerful that their next two releases, Quicksand and Live Wire, were virtual carbon copies.

In 1964 Stevenson, Gaye and Ivy Jo Hunter wrote a song for them called Dancing in the Street. Tacitly addressing the rising temperature of the civil rights summer, with a backbeat reinforced by Hunter lashing a tyre chain against a piece of timber, it reached No 2 in the pop charts and became one of the label’s immortal successes.

Ashford was present for further hits, including Nowhere to Run in 1965, I’m Ready for Love in 1966 and Jimmy Mack in 1967. But having taken over from the Marvelettes as Motown’s top female vocal group, the Vandellas had in turn been eclipsed by the Supremes and were no longer among Gordy’s top priorities.

Beard had left in 1964 to raise a family, replaced by Betty Kelly in time for the group’s arrival in the UK in the spring of 1965 along with fellow Motown artists the Supremes, the Miracles and Stevie Wonder. A national tour included a Ready Steady Go! TV special hosted by Dusty Springfield.

In 1969 Ashford was abruptly invited to leave, apparently at Reeves’s instigation, and received a severance payment. While many of her Motown associates moved with the label to Los Angeles, a relocation prompted by Gordy’s desire to conquer Hollywood, she stayed in Detroit and took an office job with the local telephone company.

In later years Ashford and Beard occasionally toured as the Original Vandellas. Once ill-will had been overcome – and Motown had been sued for unpaid royalties, leading to a settlement out of court – they were sometimes rejoined by Reeves, and in 1989 the trio recorded several tracks for the British disc jockey Ian Levine’s Motorcity label. The members of Martha and the Vandellas were collectively inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.

Ashford was married and took the surname Holmes. She is survived by her son, Damon Holmes, and four grandchildren.

• Rosalind Lee Ashford-Holmes, singer, born 2 September 1943; died 15 September 2026