Would they still have used the Andantes if Flo stayed?

[TheMotownManiac]

Ran I agree with a lot of what you said, but I don’t believe that mary was told she flat out couldn’t sing. Probably something like her voice wasn’t suited for the kind of records he wanted to do that kind of thing. If she couldn’t sing, she wouldn’t have been given people, and subsequent solos. Although I’ve heard those things happened over his dead body. Florence may not have been fat, but she was getting bigger and bigger and bigger. look how much bigger she is in the tami show versus Andy Williams. That’s two years and two months on an upward trajectory. There was no reason to be cruel about it, and I think that if he had given them a decent amount of time off, even a month, that might’ve been enough to at least recharge, and maybe work on some things. Had flow, stayed in the groove and continued to gain weight, she would’ve looked horrible in all those super tight gowns like the black. But you can’t nag people into losing weight anymore than you can nag them to quit drinking or anything else.

is another aspect to group unity that I’ve been reticent to bring up because I don’t want to start anything big, but I believe that Mary encouraged some dissent in the ranks. I’ve always wondered if she was resentful or jealous of Flos popularity. And I know that she wasn’t encouraging group unity when Cindy joined, because she told me that not long after she joined the group Mary was trying to get her on “her side“ and Cindy hadn’t realized that there were sides. I believe that it’s very possible that, in some fashion, Mary might have encouraged Florences already present dissatisfaction with the group direction.

I will find the source Or sources for Diana being told the success of the company arrested on her back. I believe it’s real, enough people from the company have commented on that over the years, but all of that was after the fact.