‘Beechwood 4-5789’: Did this Motown hit dox someone’s phone number?
Back in the 1960s, in a glorious age before everybody carried a telephone in their pockets, address books, district codes and landlines reigned supreme.
Still, if you found yourself dialling ‘Beechwood 4-5789’ in the hopes of reaching Motown heroines The Marvelettes, you were going to be hanging on that telephone for a very long time.
It was commonplace, up until the 1970s, for telephone numbers across the United States to be prefixed with a district code. In 1962, The Marvelettes exemplified that system in their iconic track ‘Beechwood 4-5789’, detailing a blossoming romance starring a young woman living in Beechwood, Michigan. While that particular number didn’t lead anywhere exciting, for the curious few who chose to dial Beechwood 4-5789 upon hearing the beloved Motown hit, the number wasn’t plucked out of the ether at random, either.
Originally penned by a typically eclectic team of Motown songwriters, including Marvin Gaye as well as Mickey Stevenson and George Gordy, the chosen phone number within the song was based on the simple sequence of numbers, 23456789. Beechwood, an area some 200 miles East of Motown’s home base in Detroit, Michigan, had the exchange code BE, which turned into 23 when dialled on an old-school rotary telephone.
Although nobody really knows whether Beechwood had a greater songwriting significance than its ‘23’ exchange, the chosen telephone number did, at least, keep the song rooted in Motown’s Michigan surroundings. What’s more, the song helped to keep The Marvelettes a regular fixture of the pop and R&B charts during the early 1960s. After all, the vocal group from Inkster, Michigan (not Beechwood) had earned Motown its very first number-one single in the form of ‘Please Mr Postman’, and they were keen to keep on top of the pop charts.
Ultimately, ‘Beechwood 4-5789’ didn’t allow The Marvelettes to recapture the success of their ode to the postal service, reaching 17 in the US singles chart in 1962. However, the telephone-oriented track became an essential part of Motown’s early sound and successes. With its infectiously upbeat tale of teenage romance, the track perfectly balanced relatability with the earworm nature of the Motown sound.
In the years that followed, the single – and, arguably, The Marvelettes in general – were eclipsed by the insurmountable success of Motown acts like The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, and Marvin Gaye, who dominated the pop charts for much of the 1960s.
Still, the Inkster outfit formed a key part of Motown’s early roster, and it was pop hits like ‘Beechwood 4-5789’ which helped to make them into the kind of pop power that went on to inspire the likes of The Beatles, among various others.
Today, ‘Beechwood 4-5789’ remains, not only a stunning example of the early output of Motown, but a relic of its time. The song’s title is virtually meaningless to the younger generation today, many of whom have never seen a rotary phone, let alone dialled a regional telephone exchange. Still, although the titular telephone number itself never led anywhere, it remains perhaps one of the most iconic telephone numbers in the cultural history of the United States, up there with the likes of ‘Pennsylvania 6-5000’ and ‘6060-842’.
