The Velvelettes
American musical group
The Velvelettes were an American singing girl group, signed to Motown in the 1960s. Their biggest chart success occurred in 1964, when Norman Whitfield produced "Needle in a Haystack", which peaked at number 45 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 27 in Canada.
History
Early years and establishment
The group was founded in 1961 by Bertha Barbee-McNeal (June 12, 1940 – December 15, 2022) and Mildred Gill Arbor, students at Western Michigan University. Mildred recruited her younger sister Carolyn (also known as Cal or Caldin), who was in 9th grade, and Cal's friend Betty Kelly, a junior in high school. Bertha recruited her cousin Norma Barbee, a freshman at Flint Junior College. Cal was chosen as the group's lead singer.
A classmate at Western Michigan University, Robert Bullock, was Berry Gordy's nephew, and he encouraged the group to audition for Motown. The group signed to Motown in late 1962 and started recording in January 1963. They recorded at the Hitsville USA studio and "There He Goes" and "That's The Reason Why", produced by William Stevenson, was released as a single via the IPG Records label (Independent Producers Group). The recordings included a young Stevie Wonder playing harmonica.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 7, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q474979. VIAF identifies the subject as 150280753. The Library of Congress control number is n2002076294. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964, 1961, 1940 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Velvelettes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.