Rosalind Ashford, an original member of Motown’s Martha and the Vandellas whose soprano floats above “Dancing in the Street,” “Heat Wave” and “Nowhere to Run,” died of natural causes on Tuesday, September 15, 2026, at her home in Redford, Michigan, a Detroit suburb. She was 83.
Friends called her Roz, and she also went by Rosalind Ashford-Holmes. She was born in Detroit on September 2, 1943, and had turned 83 less than two weeks before she died.
Three singers started the group that helped carry the Detroit label to national success, and Ashford was one of them. Martha Reeves sang lead; Ashford handled the top line, the soaring soprano that sits above the vocal blend on the group’s 20-plus records that reached the Top 40 of Billboard’s R&B rankings. Plenty of listeners know that voice without ever knowing whose it was.
From the Del-Phis to Hitsville
As a girl, Ashford 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, joined in 1960.
The singers worked as the Vels as well, putting out a few singles on Chicago’s Chess Records. At home in Detroit, 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 Records That Carried Her Voice
Hits arrived almost immediately. “Come and Get These Memories” broke the group through in 1963, trailed by “(Love Is Like a) Heat Wave” and “Quicksand.” 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.
Then came “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 material far beyond the label: Linda Ronstadt and Phil Collins later recorded “Heat Wave,” while The Mamas & the Papas, Van Halen and the Grateful Dead took up “Dancing in the Street.”
Ashford had been there from the group’s beginnings, and she left in 1969.
Honors and a Second Act
She married, largely stepped away from the music business and went to work for the Michigan Bell Telephone Co., where she was a computer systems specialist during the 1980s. The songs never let her go 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.
Ashford, Beard and Kelly 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 Remembers 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 recently reconciled.
Out of the spotlight, Ashford liked to travel and to spend time with family and friends, said her son, Damon Holmes. She belonged to 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.
Survivors include her son Damon, her daughter-in-law and four grandchildren. The James H. Cole Funeral Home on Detroit’s Schaefer Highway will host the services, though arrangements had yet to be finalized.