Re: RIP Motown Songwriter Lamont Dozier

gertrudecloset · ‎02-13-2021

@piperbay wrote:
You Keep Me Hangin On, great song also done by Vanilla Fudge and Rod Stewart.

This is not actually the first rendition. The song was done by the Supremes First. The Supremes were a Motown group @piperbay

A Negative Mind ~ Will give you a Negative Life

gertrudecloset · ‎02-13-2021

@PickyPicky3 wrote:
Heatwave
How Sweet It Is
Stop in the Name of Love
You Keep Me Hangin On
Nowhere to Run
Bernadette

and many more.....

@PickyPicky3 thank you for posting this. I was unaware. RIP.

A Negative Mind ~ Will give you a Negative Life

gertrudecloset · ‎02-13-2021

Lamont Dozier, the prolific songwriter and producer who was crucial to the success of Motown Records as one-third of the Holland-Dozier-Holland team, died on Monday at his home near Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 81.

Robin Terry, the chairwoman and chief executive of the Motown Museum in Detroit, confirmed the death but did not specify a cause.

In collaboration with the brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, Mr. Dozier wrote songs for dozens of musical acts, but the trio worked most often with Martha and the Vandellas (“Heat Wave,” “Jimmy Mack”), the Four Tops (“Bernadette,” “I Can’t Help Myself”) and especially the Supremes (“You Can’t Hurry Love,” “Baby Love”). Between 1963 and 1972, the Holland-Dozier-Holland team was responsible for more than 80 singles that hit the Top 40 of the pop or R&B charts, including 15 songs that reached No. 1. “It was as if we were playing the lottery and winning every time,” Mr. Dozier wrote in his autobiography, “How Sweet It Is” (2019, written with Scott B. Bomar).

Nelson George, in his 1985 history of Motown, “Where Did Our Love Go?” (named after another Holland-Dozier-Holland hit), described how the youthful trio had won over the label’s more experienced staff and musicians. “These kids,” he wrote, “had a real insight into the taste of the buying public” and possessed “an innate gift for melody, a feel for story song lyrics, and an ability to create the recurring vocal and instrumental licks known as ‘hooks.’”

“Brian, Eddie and Lamont loved what they were doing,” Mr. George added, “and worked around the clock, making music like old man Ford made cars.”

In his memoir, Mr. Dozier concurred: “We thought of H.D.H. as a factory within a factory.”

Lamont Herbert Dozier — he was named after Lamont Cranston, the lead character in the radio serial “The Shadow” — was born on June 16, 1941, in Detroit the oldest of five children of Willie Lee and Ethel Jeannette (Waters) Dozier. His mother largely raised the family, earning a living as a cook and housekeeper; his father worked at a gas station but had trouble keeping a job, perhaps because he suffered from chronic back pain as a result of a World War II injury (he fell off a truck).

When Mr. Dozier was 5, his father took him to a concert with an all-star bill that included Count Basie, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald. While the music excited the young boy, he was also impressed by the audience’s ecstatic reaction, and resolved that he would make people feel good in the same way.

As a high school student, Mr. Dozier wrote songs, cutting up grocery bags so he would have paper for the lyrics, and formed the Romeos, an interracial doo-wop group. When the Romeos’ song “Fine Fine Baby” was released by Atco Records, a subsidiary of Atlantic, in 1957, Mr. Dozier dropped out of high school at age 16, anticipating stardom. But when Atlantic’s Jerry Wexler wanted a second single, Mr. Dozier overplayed his hand, saying the group would only make a full-length LP. He received a letter wishing him well and dropping the Romeos from the label.

After the Romeos broke up, Mr. Dozier auditioned for Anna Records, a new label called founded by Billy Davis and the sisters Anna and Gwen Gordy; he was slotted into a group called the Voice Masters and hired as a custodian. In 1961, billed as Lamont Anthony, he released his first solo single, “Let’s Talk It Over” — but he preferred the flip side, “Popeye,” a song he wrote. “Popeye,” which featured a young Marvin Gaye on drums, became a regional hit until it was squelched by King Features, owners of the cartoon and comic-strip character Popeye.

After Anna Records folded in 1961, Mr. Dozier received a phone call from Berry Gordy Jr., brother of Anna and Gwen, offering him a job as a songwriter at his new label, Motown, with a salary of $25 a week as an advance against royalties. Mr. Dozier began collaborating with the young songwriter Brian Holland.

“It was like Brian and I could complete one another’s musical ideas the way certain people can finish one another’s sentences,” Mr. Dozier wrote in his memoir. “I realized right away that we shared a secret language of creativity.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/09/arts/music/lamont-dozier-dead.html

A Negative Mind ~ Will give you a Negative Life