Listening to Legacy: The Background Voice As Aural Archive

Although perhaps a ubiquitous presence across many pop recordings, what we might consider the history of the background and the background vocalist remains largely overlooked and under-heard. Often anonymised on recordings, and coded out of center labels the backing, back-up, and background voice is a distinctly aural archive dependent on it being heard rather than being seen. The history of the background voice across pop remains ultimately unstable and ever unfolding. I discuss the background voice as a distinctly aural encounter considering how we might begin to identify its archive. Working with Brook’s instruction of listening hard and Ouzounian’s work with ‘counter listening’ the paper seeks to signal the role of listening in relation to archival work with undefined and unstable archival material. Focusing on The Andantes and their work with labels such as Motown I discuss how we might understand and articulate both the legacies and archive of the background. Used extensively on recordings between 1961 and 1970 the work of Louvain Demps, Marlene Barrow, and Jackie Hicks, as The Andantes, remain a core characteristic of what we understand as the Motown ‘sound’ but also signal ways in which the background voice plays a crucial yet anonymised role within pop. In listening for the background, we are reminded how the background not only signals a distinct narrative parallel to dominant pop histories, but also how this narrative is situated within the archives of others.