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The Andantes, Jackie Hicks, Marlene Barrow and Louvain Demps, were Motown’s in-house female session singers through the 1960s, credited with roughly 20,000 recordings and seven Billboard No. 1 hits while remaining anonymous. On three- and four-track tape, producers needed singers who could sight-read a chart and lock a three-part harmony in one or two takes. Under Holland-Dozier-Holland they became the uncredited high voices on Four Tops hits such as Baby I Need Your Loving, I Can’t Help Myself and Reach Out I’ll Be There, their sopranos set against Levi Stubbs’ baritone so the records cut through AM radio.

From 1965 Motown used them as substitute or supplemental voices on records credited to its girl groups: the Marvelettes in 1965, Martha and the Vandellas around 1966, and the Supremes in 1968 and 1969, including Love Child. Their own releases were handled strangely. A 1963 single with the Marvelettes came out under the invented name the Darnells, and their 1964 single Like a Nightmare, finally credited to the Andantes, had Anne Bogan singing lead instead of any member.

• They also sang behind Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Stevie Wonder’s For Once in My Life and Jimmy Ruffin’s What Becomes of the Brokenhearted.
• With Pat Lewis in place of Louvain Demps, they backed Jackie Wilson’s Higher and Higher and much of its album.
• From 1989 to 1992 they recorded their own material for Ian Levine’s Motorcity Records, with Pat Lewis as a full member.
• Louvain Demps released the solo album Better Times in 1992.
• They entered the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame in August 2014; Marlene Barrow died in 2015 and Pat Lewis in September 2024.