Holland – Dozier – Holland

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Lamont Dozier, 2009

Holland – Dozier – Holland is a very successful American songwriter and producer trio from the 1960s. Brian Holland (* February 15, 1941 in Detroit ), his older brother Edward "Eddie" Holland (* October 30, 1939 in Detroit) and Lamont Herbert Dozier (* 16 June 1941 in Detroit).

The beginnings

Marvelettes - Please Mr. Postman

The trio's employer was the music publisher "Jobete Music Publishing", which, like the record label Motown Records, belonged to Berry Gordy . At first, each of the three began on their own, often together with other composers, their first attempts at composition for the interpreters of the still young record label. Brian Holland wrote with Robert Bateman for the girls' quintet Marvelettes Please Mr. Postman , published on August 7, 1961. The song gave the label owner Gordy (he appears as co-composer) the first No. 1 placement for Tamla -Motown (the piece was covered by the Beatles and the Carpenters , among others ).

Eddie Holland began as an interpreter for the "Company", as Motown was called by his employees. His piece Jamie from January 1962 had only moderate success. They were then joined by Dozier, and HDH's first composition was Come and Get These Memories for the girls' trio Martha & the Vandellas in February 1963. The song, only No. 29 on the pop charts, was with its chord - Switching and a slight shuffle rhythm proves that the Motown sound didn't exist yet. With their next joint composition, Heatwave for the Vandellas, in July 1963 they took up a current heat wave in the USA and applied the term to love. After all, they achieved fourth place in the charts. HDH wrote the follow-up single for the group according to the same scheme. Now the quicksand (was Quicksand ) tried in November 1963 the love affair. This also made it into the top 10 (No. 8).

The trio still delivered over a dozen average compositions (the Miracles and Marvin Gaye also benefited from this in addition to the Vandellas ).

The time of the supremes

HDH had meanwhile perfected their division of labor: Eddie Holland mostly wrote the lyrics and arranged the voices, Dozier and Brian Holland composed the music and produced the song in Motown Recording Studios (Detroit) . Brian Holland then watched the session from the recording room. In this way, Shining Through His Eyes was created for the still unknown black girl trio Supremes When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes , which only made it to 23rd place after its publication in November 1963. But already the follow-up single Where Did Our Love Go set the standards that were commonly associated with the Motown sound: a hard beat , reinforced by the " rimshot technique" on the drums, light violin background and the call and response - Singing style. Released June 17, 1964, the record shot to number one on the US hit parade and also reached number three in the UK. With the same concept, HDH created another four consecutive number 1 hits for the Supremes, namely Baby Love (October 1964, also in GB No. 1), Come See About Me (November 1964), Stop in the Name of Love (February 1965 ) and Back in My Arms Again (May 1965). All five achieved million seller status. "In fact, all the big Supremes hits are the children of Where Did Our Love Go ", Lamont Dozier later summed up. They all had the same cyclical song structure, were underlaid with a tambourine-emphasized 8/8 time and were accompanied by a clear bass guitar by James Jamerson .

While the follow-up hit Nothing But Heartaches , published in July 1965, unexpectedly only made No. 11, with I Hear a Symphony (No. 1, October 1965) things were normalized again. Two more HDH compositions then only made the top 10, before the Supremes were able to reach US No. 1 again with four more singles released one after the other: You Can't Hurry Love (August 1966), You Keep Me Hanging On (October 1966), Love Is Here and Now You're Gone (January 1967) and The Happening (April 1967), all published every three months and programmed to be short-lived. With this, HDH achieved an unprecedented and so far not repeated record as songwriters and the Supremes a record flood of ten number one placements in just under three years.

Hits for others

Four Tops - Reach out I'll Be There

HDH were by no means fixated on the Supremes, as the above catalog might suggest. The male quartet Four Tops , initially just as unsuccessful as the Supremes, was assigned the romantic baby I Need Your Loving in July 1964 . The song, which only reached No. 11 in the charts, deviated significantly from the successful Supremes arrangement. He was neither rhythmic nor dominated by the rimshot technique. After two badly placed singles, HDH had also found their concept for the Four Tops. I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch) (April 1965) became a million seller, reached No. 1 and replaced Back in My Arms Again from the Supremes as No. 1. After three more HDH songs, the Four Tops took over the trend-setting Reach Out I'll Be There , again a million seller and transatlantic No. 1 released on August 18, 1966. The emphatic call-and-response technique was accompanied by flutes and lives off constant change between major and minor. A similar style was used in other HDH songs for the Four Tops, self-critically satirized in It's the Same Old Song (July 1965).

The collaboration between HDH and the Temptations or the Miracles was less successful . For the Temptations Eddie Holland provided the lyrics to the songs Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue) (August 1964), Ain't Too Proud to Beg (May 1966) and, with a No. 3, the best placement for Eddie Holland, Beauty Is Only Skin Deep (August 1966).

The process

Tamla-Motown had risen to one of the great successful record labels in the USA, not least because of HDH hits. HDH knew how other record companies paid their home producers and tried to get Berry Gordy to pay higher. Tensions increased and eventually escalated to the legal battle. On August 29, 1968, the trio of writers was sued by Jobete Music for four million US dollars in damages for breach of contract. Ironically, the trio that delivers hits in high quantities is said to have not delivered a composition or production since the end of 1967. HDH responded to this in December 1968 with a counterclaim for fraud and fraudulent misrepresentation in the amount of 22 million US dollars, because, according to the composers, Jobete should not have given a sufficient account of the royalties to be paid for the sum mentioned . On January 3, 1972, the mutual complaints were settled through an out-of-court settlement - with mutual confidentiality.

separation

This destroyed the trust between HDH and the Motown group. The trio founded their own record label Invictus / Hot Wax Records in May 1969 , for which they were able to win some performers with short-lived publicity. However, by court order, their previous employer forbade them to offer their new compositions to another music publisher during their contract with Motown music publisher Jobete . To avoid this, HDH hid behind the pseudonym Edith Wayne.

Approximation

For the LP Just Being Myself by Dionne Warwick , released in February 1973, they wrote five other pieces in addition to the title track. The approach to the Motown group was first achieved in 1975 when the Holland brothers wrote We're Almost There (January 1975), Take Me Back and Just a Little Bit of You (both May 1975) for Michael Jackson . The trio then produced the final LP of the Jackson Five Moving Violation in August 1975 before the group left the Motown Corporation and moved to Epic Records . The personnel changed Supremes had two albums produced by the trio in the following year, namely Merry, Scherrie and Susaye (February 1976) and High Energy (June 1976). Lamont produced the LP Sweet Passion (May 1977) for Aretha Franklin , who was under contract with Atlantic Records .

In November 1982, Phil Collins brought out You Can't Hurry Love, the most successful cover version of an HDH song, as it achieved the top position in Great Britain and a tenth place in the USA. With Two Hearts , Collins wrote a typical Motown song together with Lamont in November 1988, which proved that this style was viable. It was used as a score for "Buster," which earned a Grammy Award for best song of the year.

In 1988 they were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame . In January 1990, the HDH team was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for its services. In May 2003 they received the title of "Icons" for their work from Broadcast Music Incorporated .

Hit statistics

It would go beyond the scope of this article to take an inventory of the 266 BMI- registered compositions of the HDH team. Between 1963 and 1968, 39 of the total of 91 US top 20 listings of the Motown Group (42%) came from the pen of HDH or at least from a member of this trio. Their balance is even clearer if you examine the group's 17 top hits during this period. Of these, twelve (or 70%) were registered for HDH by copyright. In total, they were responsible for 70 top 10 hits and 50 top hits. These top hits included 13 consecutive top hits. Between 1961 and 1967 they received 24 Songwriter Achievement Awards from Broadcast Music Incorporated. The Motown corporation, which is otherwise so reluctant to publish figures, had to disclose during the trial that HDH had received royalties of 2.2 million US dollars between January 1965 and June 1968.

Trivia

In the song “The Fifth Four Top” from The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, the band pays homage to the Motown sound and Northern Soul in general and the producer trio Holland – Dozier – Holland specifically. In the chorus it says: "And if the world were perfect and if it were a song, it would be from Holland / Dozier / Holland or Barrett Strong ".

In 2015, Rolling Stone listed the trio as 15th of the 100 best songwriters of all time .

Compositions

Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Singles
Why Can't We Be Lovers
  UK 29 October 28, 1972 (5 weeks)
  US 57 09/30/1972 (10 weeks)
Don't Leave Me Starvin 'For Your Love (Part 1)
  US 52 01/06/1973 (6 weeks)

The Supremes

  • When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes , Motown, 1963
  • Where Did Our Love Go , Motown, 1964
  • Baby Love , Motown, 1964
  • Come See About Me , Motown, 1964
  • Stop! In the Name of Love , Motown, 1965
  • Back in My Arms Again , Motown, 1965
  • Nothing but Heartaches , Motown, 1965
  • I Hear a Symphony , Motown, 1965
  • My World Is Empty Without You , Motown, 1965
  • Love Is Like an Itching in My Heart , Motown, 1966
  • You Can't Hurry Love , Motown, 1966
  • You Keep Me Hangin 'On , Motown, 1966
  • Love Is Here and Now You're Gone , Motown, 1967
  • The Happening , Motown, 1967
  • Reflections , Motown, 1967
  • In and Out of Love , Motown, 1967
  • Forever Came Today , Motown, 1968
  • Supremes-LP: Supremes Sing Holland-Dozier-Holland , Motown, 1967

Four tops

  • Baby I Need Your Loving , Motown, 1964
  • I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) , Motown, 1965
  • It's the Same Old Song , Motown, 1965
  • Something About You , Motown, 1965
  • Shake Me Wake Me (When It's Over) , Motown, 1966
  • Reach Out I'll Be There , Motown, 1966
  • Standing in the Shadows of Love , Motown, 1966
  • Bernadette , Motown, 1967
  • 7 Rooms of Gloom , Motown, 1967

Martha & the Vandellas

  • Come and Get These Memories , Gordy, 1963
  • Heatwave , Gordy, 1963
  • Quicksand , Gordy, 1963
  • Live Wire , Gordy, 1964
  • In My Lonely Room , Gordy, 1964
  • Nowhere to Run , Gordy, 1965
  • I'm Ready for Love , Gordy, 1966
  • Jimmy Mack , Gordy, 1967

Marvin Gaye

  • Can I Get a Witness , Tamla, 1963
  • You're a Wonderful One , Tamla, 1964
  • How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You) , Tamla, 1964
  • Little Darling (I Need You) , Tamla, 1966

Other

  • The Miracles: Mickey's Monkey , Tamla, 1963
  • Kim Weston: Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While) , Gordy, 1965
  • The Miracles (Come 'Round Here) I'm the One You Need , Tamla, 1966
  • Isley Brothers: This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You) , Tamla, 1966

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Vibe, September 1998, Motown Illy , p. 216
  2. ↑ Gerald Posner, Motown: Music, Money, Sex, and Power , 2005, p. 223
  3. ↑ Billboard Magazine, June 20, 2009, p. 29
  4. ↑ Lyrics to the song The Fifth Four Top from the League of Ordinary Gentlemen
  5. ↑ The 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. Rolling Stone , August 2015, accessed August 6, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Chart sources: UK US