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Lamont Dozier, the prolific songwriter and producer who was essential to the success of Motown Information as one-third of the Holland-Dozier-Holland staff, died on Monday in Arizona. He was 81.
Robin Terry, the chairwoman and chief government of the Motown Museum in Detroit, confirmed the demise. She didn’t specify a trigger.
In collaboration with the brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, Mr. Dozier wrote songs for dozens of musical acts, however the trio labored most frequently with Martha and the Vandellas (“Jimmy Mack”), the 4 Tops (“Bernadette”) and particularly the Supremes (“You Can’t Hurry Love”). Between 1963 and 1972, the Holland-Dozier-Holland staff was accountable for greater than 80 singles that hit the High 40 of the pop or R&B charts, together with 15 songs that reached No. 1. “It was as if we have been enjoying the lottery and profitable each time,” Mr. Dozier wrote in his autobiography, “How Candy It Is” (2019, written with Scott B. Bomar).
Nelson George, in his 1985 historical past of Motown, “The place Did Our Love Go?” (named after one other Holland-Dozier-Holland hit), described how the youthful trio had received over the label’s extra skilled employees and musicians. “These youngsters,” he wrote, “had an actual perception into the style of the shopping for public” and possessed “an innate reward for melody, a really feel for story track lyrics, and a capability to create the recurring vocal and instrumental licks often known as ‘hooks.’”
“Brian, Eddie and Lamont liked what they have been doing,” Mr. George added, “and labored across the clock, making music like previous man Ford made automobiles.”
In his memoir, Mr. Dozier concurred: “We considered H.D.H. as a manufacturing facility inside a manufacturing facility.”
Lamont Herbert Dozier — he was named after Lamont Cranston, the lead character within the radio serial “The Shadow” — was born on June 16, 1941, in Detroit the oldest of 5 youngsters of Willie Lee and Ethel Jeannette (Waters) Dozier. His mom largely raised the household, incomes a dwelling as a cook dinner and housekeeper; his father labored at a fuel station however had bother retaining a job, maybe as a result of he suffered from continual again ache because of a World Warfare II damage (he fell off a truck).
When Mr. Dozier was 5, his father took him to a live performance that includes Rely Basie, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald. Whereas the music excited the younger boy, he was additionally impressed by the viewers’s ecstatic response, and resolved that he would make folks really feel good in the identical manner.
As a highschool scholar, Mr. Dozier wrote songs, chopping up grocery baggage so he would have paper for the lyrics, and shaped the Romeos, an interracial doo-wop group. When the Romeos’ track “Effective Effective Child” was launched by Atco Information, a subsidiary of Atlantic, in 1957, Mr. Dozier dropped out of highschool at age 16, anticipating stardom. However when Atlantic’s Jerry Wexler wished a second single, Mr. Dozier overplayed his hand, saying the group would solely make a full-length LP. He obtained a letter wishing him nicely and dropping the Romeos from the label.
After the Romeos broke up, Mr. Dozier auditioned for Anna Information, a brand new label known as based by Billy Davis and the sisters Anna and Gwen Gordy; he was slotted into a bunch known as the Voice Masters and employed as a custodian. In 1961, billed as Lamont Anthony, he launched his first solo single, “Let’s Discuss It Over” — however he most well-liked the flip aspect, “Popeye,” a track he wrote. “Popeye,” which featured a younger Marvin Gaye on drums, grew to become a regional hit till it was squelched by King Options, house owners of the cartoon and comic-strip character Popeye.
After Anna Information folded in 1961, Mr. Dozier obtained a cellphone name from Berry Gordy Jr., brother of Anna and Gwen, providing him a job as a songwriter at his new label, Motown, with a wage of $25 every week as an advance in opposition to royalties. Mr. Dozier started collaborating with the younger songwriter Brian Holland.
“It was like Brian and I may full each other’s musical concepts the way in which sure folks can end each other’s sentences,” Mr. Dozier wrote in his memoir. “I spotted straight away that we shared a secret language of creativity.”
They have been quickly joined by Brian’s older brother Eddie, who specialised in lyrics, and started writing songs collectively — though hardly with all three events in the identical room. Mr. Dozier and Brian Holland would write the music and supervise an instrumental recording session with the Motown home band; Eddie Holland would then write lyrics to the observe. When it got here time to report vocals, Eddie Holland would information the lead singer and Mr. Dozier would coach the backing vocalists.
In his memoir, Mr. Dozier summed it up: “Brian was all music, Eddie was all lyrics, and I used to be the thought man who bridged each.”
Generally he would have an thought for a track’s really feel: He wrote the 4 Tops’ “Attain Out I’ll Be There” fascinated by Bob Dylan’s phrasing on “Like a Rolling Stone.” Generally he concocted an attention-grabbing gimmick, just like the staccato guitars at first of the Supremes’ “You Maintain Me Hangin’ On” that evoked a radio information bulletin.
And generally Mr. Dozier uttered a real-life sentence that labored in track, as he did one evening when he was in a Detroit motel with a girlfriend and a distinct girlfriend began pounding on the door. He pleaded with the interloper, “Cease, within the title of affection” — after which realized the efficiency of what he had stated. The Holland-Dozier-Holland staff rapidly hammered the sentence right into a three-minute single, the Supremes’ “Cease! Within the Title of Love.”
In 1965, Mr. Gordy circulated an audacious memo to Motown staffers that learn partially: “We are going to launch nothing lower than High Ten product on any artist; and since the Supremes’ worldwide acceptance is bigger than different artists, on them we are going to launch solely #1 information.” Holland-Dozier-Holland stepped up: Whereas they didn’t hit the highest each time with the Supremes, they wrote and produced an astonishing 10 No. 1 hits for the group.
“I accepted that an artist profession simply wasn’t within the playing cards for me at Motown,” Mr. Dozier wrote in 2019. “I nonetheless wished it, however I used to be continuously being bombarded with the demand for extra songs and extra productions for the rising roster of artists.”
When Marvin Gaye, who had turned himself from a drummer right into a singing star, wanted to report some materials earlier than he went on an prolonged tour, Mr. Dozier reluctantly surrendered a track he had been saving to relaunch his personal profession as an artist: “How Candy It Is (To Be Liked by You).” Mr. Gaye confirmed up for the session together with his golf golf equipment, late and unprepared, and nailed the track in a single good take.
Mr. Dozier and the Holland brothers left Motown in 1967, on the peak of their success, in a dispute over cash and possession, and began two labels of their very own. “Holland-Dozier-Holland left and the sound was gone,” Mary Wilson of the Supremes lamented to The Washington Put up in 1986.
Mr. Dozier wrote some extra hits with the Hollands (many credited to the collective pseudonym Edythe Wayne due to ongoing authorized disputes with Motown) and struck out on his personal in 1973, resuming his singing profession.
He launched a dozen solo albums throughout the years, however with out attaining stardom as a singer; he had essentially the most chart success in 1974, most notably with the track “Making an attempt to Maintain On to My Girl.” One among his songs, “Fish Ain’t Bitin’,” with lyrics urging Richard Nixon to resign, grew to become a minor hit when his label publicized a letter it had obtained from the White Home asking it to cease selling the track.
Mr. Dozier had better success collaborating with different artists within the Nineteen Eighties, writing songs with Eric Clapton, the Merely Crimson frontman Mick Hucknall (who puckishly launched “Infidelity” with the credit score “Hucknall-Dozier-Hucknall”) and Phil Collins, who hit No. 1 in 1989 with their track “Two Hearts.”
Info on survivors was not instantly accessible.
Mr. Dozier served as an artist-in-residence professor on the College of Southern California’s Thornton College of Music and as chairman of the board of the Nationwide Academy of Songwriters, imparting his hard-won knowledge to youthful writers.
“All the time put the track forward of your ego,” he wrote in his memoir. And he revealed the key to his relentless productiveness: “Author’s block solely exists in your thoughts, and in case you let your self have it, it’ll cripple your potential to perform as a artistic particular person. The reply to so-called author’s block is doing the work.”
Jenny Gross contributed reporting.
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