Dozier was the center identify of the celebrated Holland-Dozier-Holland staff that wrote and produced “You Can’t Hurry Love,” “Warmth Wave” and lots of different Motown hits.
NEW YORK — Lamont Dozier, the center identify of the celebrated Holland-Dozier-Holland staff that wrote and produced “You Can’t Hurry Love,” “Warmth Wave” and dozens of different hits and helped make Motown a vital document firm of the Sixties and past, has died at age 81.
Dozier’s demise was confirmed Tuesday by Paul Lambert, who helped produce the stage musical “The First Wives Membership” that Holland-Dozier-Holland wrote for.
In Motown’s historic, self-defined rise to the “Sound of Younger America,” Holland-Dozier-Holland stood out even in comparison with such gifted friends as Smokey Robinson, Stevie Surprise and Barrett Robust. Over a four-year interval, 1963-67, Dozier and brothers Brian and Eddie Holland crafted greater than 25 prime 10 songs and mastered the mix of pop and rhythm and blues that allowed the Detroit label, and founder Berry Gordy, to defy boundaries between Black and white music and rival the Beatles on the airwaves.
For the 4 Tops, they wrote “Child I Want Your Loving” and “Attain Out (I’ll Be There),” for Martha and the Vandellas they wrote “Warmth Wave” and “Jimmy Mack,” for Marvin Gaye “Child Don’t You Do It” and “How Candy It Is (To Be Beloved by You).” The music lived on by numerous soundtracks, samplings and radio airings, in cowl variations by the Rolling Stones, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor and lots of others and in generations of songwriters and musicians influenced by the Motown sound.
“Their constructions have been easy and direct,” Gerri Hirshey wrote within the Motown historical past “Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music,” revealed in 1984. “Typically a tune barreled to primary on the sheer voice of repetitive hooks, like a fast-food jungle that lurks, subliminally, till it connects with actual starvation.”
Brian Wilson, Ron Wooden and Mick Hucknall have been among the many many musicians providing tributes Tuesday. Carole King, who with then-husband Gerry Goffin was one other main hitmaker of the ’60s, tweeted that that “striving to maintain up with them made us higher songwriters.”
The polish of H-D-H was ideally fitted to Motown’s signature act, Diana Ross and the Supremes, for whom they wrote 10 No. 1 songs, amongst them “The place Did Our Love Go,” “Cease! Within the Identify of Love” and “You Can’t Hurry Love.” Expectations have been so excessive that when “Nothing However Heartaches” didn’t make the highest 10 in 1965, Gordy despatched an organization memo demanding that Motown solely launch chart toppers for the Supremes, an order H-D-H obeyed with “I Hear a Symphony” and several other extra data.
Holland-Dozier-Holland weren’t above formulation or carefully repeating a earlier hit, however they labored in numerous moods and kinds: the informal pleasure of “How Candy It Is (To Be Beloved by You),” the escalating need of “Warmth Wave,” the urgency of “Attain Out (I’ll Be There).” Dozier’s focus was on melody and preparations, whether or not the haunting echoes of the Vandellas’ backing vocals on “Nowhere To Run,” flashing lights of guitar that drive the Supremes’ “You Preserve Me Hanging On,” or the hypnotic gospel piano on Gaye’s “Can I Get a Witness.”
“All of the songs began out as sluggish ballads, however after we have been within the studio we’d decide up the tempo,” Dozier informed the Guardian in 2001. “The songs needed to be quick as a result of they have been for youngsters – in any other case it might have been extra like one thing on your dad and mom. The emotion was nonetheless there, it was just below cowl of the optimism that you simply acquired from the up-tempo beat.”
The prime of H-D-H, and of Motown, resulted in 1968 amid questions and authorized disputes over royalties and different points. H-D-H left the label, and neither facet would recuperate. The 4 Tops and the Supremes have been among the many acts who suffered from not having their most reliable writers. In the meantime, H-D-H’s efforts to start out their very own enterprise fell far wanting Motown. The labels Invictus and Sizzling Wax each light inside a couple of years, and Dozier would recall with disbelief the Hollands’ turning down such future superstars as Al Inexperienced and George Clinton. H-D-H did launch a number of hits, together with Freda Payne’s “Band of Gold” and Honey Cone’s “Need Advertisements.”
Holland-Dozier-Holland have been inducted into the Songwriters Corridor of Fame in 1988 and the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame two years later. On his personal, Dozier had a prime 20 hit with “Attempting to Maintain on to My Girl,” helped produce Aretha Franklin’s “Candy Ardour” album and collaborated with Eric Clapton and Hucknall amongst others. His largest success was co-writing Phil Collins’ chart-topping “Two Hearts,” from the 1988 film “Buster,” a mid-tempo, Motown-style ballad that gained a Grammy and Golden Globe and acquired an Oscar nomination.
H-D-H reunited for a stage manufacturing of “The First Wives Membership,” which premiered in 2009, however their time again collectively was temporary and sad. Dozier and the Hollands clashed typically and Dozier dropped out earlier than the present launched. “I can’t see us ever working with Lamont once more,” Eddie Holland wrote in “Come and Get These Reminiscences,” a memoir by the Hollands that got here out in 2019, the identical 12 months Dozier revealed the memoir “How Candy It Is.”
Dozier acknowledged that his early success conflicted together with his household life, however he finally settled down with Barbara Ullman, who died in 2021 after greater than 40 years of marriage. His youngsters included the songwriter-record producer Beau Dozier and composer Paris Ray Dozier.
Like so many Motown artists, Dozier was born in Detroit and raised in a household of singers and musicians. He sang within the choir of his Baptist church and his love for phrases was affirmed by a grade faculty instructor who, he recalled, appreciated one among his poems a lot she saved it on the blackboard for a month. By the late Fifties, he was knowledgeable singer and finally signed with Motown, the place he first labored with Brian Holland, after which Eddie Holland, who wrote a lot of the lyrics.
A few of Motown’s largest hits and catchiest phrases originated from Dozier’s home life. He remembered his grandfather’s addressing girls as “Sugar pie, honey bunch,” the opening phrases and ongoing chorus of the 4 Tops’ “I Can’t Assist Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch).” The 4 Tops hit “Bernadette” was impressed by all three songwriters having troubles with girls named Bernadette, whereas an argument with one other Dozier girlfriend helped encourage a Supremes favourite.
“She was fairly heated up as a result of I used to be fairly the women’ man at the moment and I’d been dishonest on her,” Dozier informed the Guardian. “So she began telling me off and swinging at me till I stated, ‘Cease! Within the identify of affection!’ And as quickly as I’d stated it I heard a money register in my head and laughed. My girlfriend didn’t suppose it was very amusing: we broke up. The one ones who have been pleased about it have been the Supremes.”
