Rosalind Ashford, an original member of Motown’s Martha and the Vandellas, died of natural causes on Tuesday, September 15, 2026, at her home in Redford, Michigan, a Detroit suburb. She was 83. Hers was the soprano whose high harmony rides above “Dancing in the Street,” “Heat Wave” and “Nowhere to Run.”
Friends called her Roz, and she was also known as Rosalind Ashford-Holmes. Born in Detroit on September 2, 1943, she had turned 83 less than two weeks before she died.
Ashford was one of the three original members of a group that helped carry the Detroit label to national success. Martha Reeves sang lead. Ashford took the top line, the soaring soprano sitting above the vocal blend on the 20-plus records the group landed in the Top 40 of Billboard’s R&B rankings. Plenty of listeners know that voice without ever knowing whose it was.
Church Choirs, the Del-Phis and Hitsville
As a girl she sang in church and school groups. In 1957, while attending Wilbur Wright High School, on Detroit’s west side, she joined the Del-Phis, a teenage vocal group put together by Edward “Pops” Larkins, alongside Annette Beard and Gloria Williams. Martha Reeves, the Detroit singer who would become the group’s leader and front woman, came aboard in 1960.
The singers also performed and recorded as the Vels, putting out a few singles on Chicago’s Chess Records. Back home, they picked up backing work on early Motown sessions for Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells. They signed with the label in September 1962, and Motown chief Berry Gordy installed Reeves as the front woman of a trio billed as Martha and the Vandellas.
The Hits That Carried Her Voice
Success came almost immediately. “Come and Get These Memories” broke the group through in 1963, and “(Love Is Like a) Heat Wave” and “Quicksand” followed. Betty Kelly replaced Beard in 1964, the same year the Vandellas cut the record that outlasted everything else in the catalog: “Dancing in the Street,” which climbed to No. 2 and became the group’s signature song.
The run kept going with “Nowhere to Run,” “I’m Ready for Love” and “Jimmy Mack,” and Martha and the Vandellas grew into one of Motown’s A-list acts. Other artists carried the songs far beyond the label: Linda Ronstadt and Phil Collins both recorded “Heat Wave,” while The Mamas & the Papas, Van Halen and the Grateful Dead took up “Dancing in the Street.”
Ashford stayed on from the group’s beginnings until she left in 1969.
A Second Act and the Honors
She married and largely stepped away from the music business, taking a job at the Michigan Bell Telephone Co., where she worked as a computer systems specialist during the 1980s. The songs never left her entirely. Ashford reunited with Reeves and Beard for tours and recordings in the mid-1980s, and in 1989 the original Vandellas cut the single “Step Into My Shoes” for the label Motorcity Records. Over the years, she and Beard performed as The Original Vandellas with lead vocalist Roschelle Laughhunn.
Along with Beard and Kelly, Ashford also pursued legal action against Motown over unpaid royalties.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Martha and the Vandellas in 1995, honoring Ashford as a member of the group — the second all-female group to be enshrined. “Dancing in the Street” itself has been placed in the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry. A commemorative U.S. postage stamp issued in 2000 carried her image alongside those of Reeves and Beard.
Reeves Mourns Her Bandmate
“Rosalind played an important part in the early days of Martha and the Vandellas,” Reeves, 85, said in a statement. “Her voice will forever be with us through our great recordings together, and she will be missed but never forgotten.”
She continued: “Our Motown family has just gotten a little smaller. My heart is heavy.”
For decades after the Vandellas years, the two singers had a strained relationship, though they had reportedly reconciled recently.
Out of the spotlight, Ashford liked to travel and to spend time with family and friends, said her son, Damon Holmes. She was part of a circle of Motown veterans who gathered regularly at a Southfield restaurant to trade stories, according to Pat Cosby, a former Motown staffer and longtime friend. “The memories are still precious,” Cosby said.
Ashford is survived by her son Damon, her daughter-in-law and four grandchildren. Services will be held at the James H. Cole Funeral Home on Detroit’s Schaefer Highway, though arrangements had yet to be finalized.
