Lamont Dozier, the center identify of the celebrated Holland-Dozier-Holland group that wrote and produced "You Cannot Hurry Love," "Warmth Wave" and dozens of different hits and helped make Motown a necessary document firm of the Nineteen Sixties and past, has died at age 81.
Dozier's dying was confirmed Tuesday by Paul Lambert, who helped produce the stage musical "The First Wives Membership" that Holland-Dozier-Holland wrote for. He didn't have further particulars.
The music icon's passing was additionally confirmed in an Instagram submit by his son Lamont Dozier Jr., who wrote: "Relaxation in Heavenly Peace, Dad!!!"
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 will Be There)," for Martha and the Vandellas they wrote "Warmth Wave" and "Jimmy Mack," for Marvin Gaye "Child Do not You Do It" and "How Candy It Is (To Be Cherished 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 plenty of others and in generations of songwriters and musicians influenced by the Motown sound.
"Their buildings have been easy and direct," Gerri Hirshey wrote within the Motown historical past "Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music," printed in 1984. "Typically a track barreled to primary on the sheer voice of repetitive hooks, like a fast-food jungle that lurks, subliminally, till it connects with actual starvation."
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 Cannot 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 a number of other extra information.
H-D-H additionally wrote "When The Lovelight Begins Shining Via His Eyes" for the Supremes -- which turned the group's first hit in 1963.
Holland-Dozier-Holland weren't above formulation or carefully repeating a earlier hit, however they labored in varied moods and types: the informal pleasure of "How Candy It Is (To Be Cherished by You)," the escalating want of "Warmth Wave," the urgency of "Attain Out (I will 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 would choose up the tempo," Dozier advised 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 in your mother and father. The emotion was nonetheless there, it was slightly below cowl of the optimism that you just bought from the up-tempo beat."
The prime of H-D-H, and of Motown, led to 1968 amid questions and authorized disputes over royalties and different points. H-D-H left the label, and neither facet would get well. 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 begin their very own enterprise fell far wanting Motown. The labels Invictus and Scorching Wax each pale 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 Lady," helped produce Aretha Franklin's "Candy Ardour" album and collaborated with Eric Clapton and Merely Purple's Mick Hucknall amongst others. His greatest success was co-writing Phil Collins' chart-topping "Two Hearts," from the 1988 film "Buster," a mid-tempo, Motown-style ballad that received a Grammy and Golden Globe and obtained 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 usually and Dozier dropped out earlier than the present launched. "I am unable to 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 yr Dozier printed the memoir "How Candy It Is."
Dozier acknowledged that his early success conflicted together with his household life, however he ultimately 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 considered one of his poems a lot she saved it on the blackboard for a month. By the late Fifties, he was an expert singer and ultimately 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 greatest 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 Cannot 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 might been dishonest on her," Dozier advised the Guardian. "So she began telling me off and swinging at me till I mentioned, 'Cease! Within the identify of affection!' And as quickly as I might mentioned it I heard a money register in my head and laughed. My girlfriend did not suppose it was very amusing: we broke up. The one ones who have been completely happy about it have been the Supremes."
