Tuesday, August 9, 2022

Lamont Dozier RIP

The middle man in Holland-Dozier-Holland has died. 

Lamont Dozier, born 16 June 1941, sang lead in his local church choir in Detroit (his grandmother was the choir director at the Spiritual Israel Church), was taken by his dad to see Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan at Detroit's Paradise Theatre, and then joined local group The Romeos, and wrote Fine Fine Baby aged 16.  Then came a move to Gwen Gordy's label, Anna, with The Voice Masters, and as Lamont Anthony, with "Benny The Skinny Man".

Berry Gordy signed him up - here's Lamont's words on how the songwriting team met up. 

Eddie was a singer, Brian was a writer, engineer and producer, he’d sung with The Satintones, but had much more success writing/producing Please Mr Postman. One day I was in the studio playing the piano, trying to finish Forever for M arvin Gaye. Brian came in, said, “That’s a pretty song, but what are you going to do with it?” I said I needed a bridge. He sat down beside me at the piano, stuck in a bridge and that’s how we started. Eddie was still singing, but he suffered stage fright. He asked Brian to ask me if we’d give him a shot at lyric-writing. It made sense and we became a factory within a factory.

The team's first big hit came with Martha and the Vandellas' Come And Get These Memories, which Lamont said was written with Loretta Lynn in mind. The follow-up was the majestic Heatwave, which went to No 1. 

The team gave The Supremes their first of 10 US Pop/R&B No 1s with Where Did Our Love Go? – a song no one wanted to record.

"Brian and Eddie didn’t think much of it, but I wanted to place it with The Marvelettes and it was written in [lead singer] Gladys Horton’s key. We played it to them, they thought it was a mess. Gladys said, “We don’t do this kind of stuff, baby.” I’d cut the song and didn’t want to be charged for it if we didn’t use it [Berry Gordy's business techniques ?] so I looked to the bottom of the roster, saw 'The “no hit” Supremes' and I eventually convinced Mary [Wilson] to get them to attempt it. Diana sang higher than Gladys but Eddie persuaded her to give it a go. She was really pissed off, she couldn’t stand the song, but that came through in her delivery which was exactly what it needed. She ran off crying to Berry straight after. He came down to listen to it, said this could be a hit, and it went to No 1 so fast it scared all of us."


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