The Andantes were an American female session group for the Motown record label during the 1960s. Composed of Jackie Hicks, Marlene Barrow, and Louvain Demps. The trio sang background on more than 20,000 Motown songs, upward of 90 percent of the company’s output before its 1972 move to Los Angeles.
The group was most prominently used on all of the Four Tops’ Holland–Dozier–Holland-produced hits, including “Baby I Need Your Loving“, “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)“, “Reach Out I’ll Be There“, and more.
But did you know….The Andantes were used as vocal substitutes for Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong on many of the Supremes’ recordings done in 1968 and 1969. They were also called upon to overdub and smooth out the Marvelettes‘ background vocals records beginning in 1965.
Theirs are the voices you can hear responding to Mary Wells in her 1964 hit “My Guy” (“What you say? Tell me more — ”). They testified on Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” And, significantly, they provided the oohs and ahs and baby-babies — the depth and sweetness on countless tracks where their separate voices can’t even be picked out, except maybe by the women themselves. To this day, Hicks says, she hears herself on the radio every single day.
(neither Cindy Birdsong nor Mary Wilson sang on this song at all)
When Motown stars and songwriters try to describe the musical debt they owe to the Andantes, they get downright religious. “They could sing together like angels,” says Martha Reeves, lead singer of Martha and the Vandellas. Ivy Jo Hunter, who wrote songs for Marvin Gaye, the Spinners, and Gladys Knight & the Pips, says, “It was a heavenly gift that they had. It’s something that you really can’t manufacture.” Mickey Stevenson, Motown’s first A&R man, describes their talent as a “gift that’s given by God.”
This reference to divinity is no coincidence. In the classic sound of the African American church, the interplay between a lead singer and the rest of the choir — the call and response — creates a powerful structure that has tremendous emotional resonance. Motown’s arrangers built on that structure, which originated in West Africa and is found in many genres of African American music. Unlike in the white pop recordings of the same era, background vocalists at Motown didn’t just harmonize on a song’s choruses; they created a back-and-forth with the whole melody that deepened the listening experience. Berry Gordy may have sought to present a safe, apolitical version of his performers to appeal to a crossover audience, but he couldn’t take the church out of their voices.
The Andantes sang on “Baby I Need Your Loving” by the Four Tops, “Love Child” by Diana Ross and the Supremes, “For Once in My Life” by Stevie Wonder, and countless other classics. “They were on every song,” Stevenson says. “All the ones that were hits.” In fact, the group was so critical to Motown’s sound that if they weren’t available, Stevenson would stop the session. “If one of them wasn’t feeling well, we would hold that tune until she felt better. I couldn’t have done it without them.”
Like the label’s house band, known as the Funk Brothers, whose distinctive grooves were always heard but never credited on early Motown records, the Andantes provided anonymous support for the label’s biggest stars.
For years, the three young women practically lived at the studio, called upon to record something new almost every day. “They gave us a cozy office upstairs, where we would stay overnight if we needed to,” Demps recalls. Eventually, they were paid upward of $10 an hour — it was considered good money.
Early in 1972, rumors were flying that the label was planning a move to Los Angeles. “We had heard it in the air,” Barrow recounted in the 2007 book Motown from the Background. “We would ask them repeatedly if it were true. They would deny it.” But when she and Hicks went to pick up their mid-January paychecks, there weren’t any checks there for them. The two called Demps in the middle of the night in a panic, and the following day, Demps went down to Motown to find out whether the label was leaving. When she was told that it was, she was outraged. She demanded that checks be cut for all three Andantes, and she had the head of the label’s quality control department drive her to the bank to make sure hers cashed.
“That’s how we found out,” Demps says. “I guess if they hadn’t owed us money, they might not have said a word!”
Barrow and Hicks took the loss in stride. “They were trying to go into the movie thing,” Hicks says of Berry Gordy’s motivation. “They were going in a different direction.” Hicks eventually landed a job at the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, and Barrow found employment with the Michigan Department of Labor. Demps took it much harder. She was a divorced mother of two young boys, and she feared, rightfully, that her dreams of stardom were ending. “For me it was devastating,” she says. “I just couldn’t adjust. Our songs would come on the radio and I’d cry.”
Demps left her hometown, moved to Atlanta and found work at a Georgia state center for children with intellectual disabilities. “I loved working with the children,” she points out. She was able to identify some nondisabled children at the center who had been caught up in the system, and she helped to get them out. “That softened my heart and kind of pulled me out of the dumps. There’s a little passage in the Bible that says, ‘and when he came to himself …’ You know, when I came to myself, that’s when I realized that I’ve wasted time being depressed when I should have been happy.” Eventually, Demps began to sing again, doing commercial jobs as well as performing in church.
In recent years the Andantes have begun to receive the notice that many feel they ought to have had all along. Reissued Motown records now bear the Andantes name if the women sang on them. After being paid a flat hourly fee during their recording years, the women are now receiving some residuals for their work. And in 2013, while Barrow-Tate was still living, all three Andantes were able to visit an exhibit at the Motown Museum that celebrated the Supremes, the Vandellas, the Marvelettes and — right alongside them — the Andantes.
While she appreciates the belated recognition, Hicks says she would have been just as happy remaining in the background. “I’ve always been proud of myself and thankful to the Lord to have allowed me to do that,” she notes. “I don’t care how high anybody goes, it does not lower me any lower. Because I know what I did.”