One of jazz's all-time great vocalists, a jazz singer to the core.  ~ The Guardian     

Released in the summer of 1964, "Dancing in the Street," by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, emerged at an explosive time in American history. John F. Kennedy had been killed the year before. The U.S. was on the brink of major combat in Vietnam. Racial tensions continued burning hot in the Deep South, and "race riots" were causing chaos in urban areas from coast to coast.

...According to Martha Reeves and the Motown staffers who wrote "Dancing in the Street," the song was little more than a party anthem, a nice ditty about celebrating wherever one feels.

To others, however, "Dancing in the Street" was understood to be a protest song about airing one's grievances in the middle of America's large and unequal metropolises: "Philadelphia P-A / Baltimore and D.C. now / Can't forget the Motor City ..."

Civil rights activists began playing "Dancing in the Street" at rallies before they spoke to excite their audiences. In 1965, following another summer of urban racial clashes, an article in the black activist magazine Liberator read, "We are coming up! And it's reflected in the riot-song that symbolized Harlem, Philly, Brooklyn." The song to which Liberator was referring, of course, was "Dancing in the Street."

It wasn't long before reporters were asking Martha Reeves if her tune was "a call to arms," a query that would bring Reeves to tears. Reeves was deeply saddened by the idea that her music was ever associated with violence, righteous or not.