Lamont Dozier, the successful producer re-recorded by Phil Collins, Rod Stewart and Michael Jackson, died

Lamont Dozierby the celebrated Holland-Dozier-Holland team of pop songwriters, died at 81. He has written and produced hits like You can’t be in a hurry, love, heat wave and dozens of other hits that helped establish the Motown label as an essential record company in the 1960s.

Dozier’s death was confirmed on Tuesday by Paul Lambert, who helped produce the stage musical. The first wives club, with tracks from the Holland-Dozier-Holland team. He did not provide further details.

The importance and validity of Lamont Dozier’s songs are confirmed every year with new releases, samples, remixes and re-recordings, beyond the worldwide fury that the original releases reached in the 1960s.

The list of artists who have re-recorded their songs since the 1980s includes Michael Jackson (Love is here and now you are gone), Phil Collins (You can’t rush love Y love like yours), Rod Stewart (You keep me hanging on), I who (Starting from here, heat wave) and Gloria Gaynor (Stop! In the name of love and Revery out i will be there). The Rolling Stones did it too Can I have a witness?

The Motown Fury

For the Motown label, whose slogan was “The Sound of Young America”, the Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriter trio also stood out among talented peers such as Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder and Barrett Strong.

Over a four-year period, from 1963 to 1967, Dozier and the Holland brothers created more than 25 Top 10 songs and mastered the mix of pop and R&B that allowed the Detroit label and founder Berry Gordy to challenge boundaries between black and white music and compete with the Beatles in the airwaves.

For the Four Tops, for example, they wrote Honey, I need your love Y Reach Out (I’ll be there); for Marta and the Vandellas heat wave Y Jimmy Mack; for Marvin Gaye Honey, don’t do this Y How sweet it is (to be loved by you).

The music they produced has survived through countless soundtracks, playlists and radio shows, even today.

“Its structures were simple and straightforward,” wrote Gerri Hirshey in the book on Motown Nowhere to Run: The History of Soul Musicreleased in 1984. “Sometimes a song reached number one thanks to the pure voice of repetitive choruses, like a jungle of fast food lurking, subliminally, until it connects to true hunger.”

Their refined music proved ideal for Motown’s flagship group Diana Ross and the Supremes, for whom they wrote 10 No. 1, including Where has our love gone, stop! In the name of love Y You can’t hurry love.

Expectations were so high that when Nothing but distress failed to make the Top 10 in 1965, Gordy sent a memo asking that Motown only release the # 1 hits. 1 for the Supremes, an order that HDH happily complied with. I hear a symphony and many others.

Holland-Dozier-Holland were not above formulas or closely repeating a previous success, but they worked with different moods and styles: the casual playfulness of How sweet it is (to be loved by you)the growing desire for heat wavethe urgency of Reach Out (I’ll be there).

Dozier focused on the melody and arrangement, regardless of whether they were the haunting echoes of Vandellas’ choruses in Nowhere to escapethe intermittent guitar that drives You keep me hanging on of the Supremes or the hypnotic gospel piano in I can have a witness by Gaye ”.

“All the songs started out as slow ballads, but when we were in the studio we hit the beat,” Dozier told The Guardian in 2001. “The songs had to be fast because they were for teenagers; otherwise it would have been more like something for your parents. The excitement was still there, it was just overwhelmed by the optimism you gave from the fast pace. ”

Awards and acknowledgments

Holland-Dozier-Holland were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1988 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame two years later. On its own, Dozier had a Top 20 hit I’m trying to hold on to my womanhelped produce the album Sweet Passion by Aretha Franklin and has collaborated with Eric Clapton and Mick Hucknall of Simply Red, among others.

His greatest achievement in the 1980s was writing the hit with Phil Collins Two hearts of the film debunters 1988, a Motown-style ballad that won a Grammy and a Golden Globe and received an Oscar nomination.

The beginnings of Dozier

Like many Motown artists, Dozier was born in Detroit and raised in a musical family. She sang in her Baptist church choir and his love of lyrics was reaffirmed by an elementary school teacher who, he recalled, liked one of her poems so much that she kept it on the board for. a month.

In the late 1950s, he was a professional singer, later signing with Motown, where he worked first with Brian Holland and then with Eddie Holland, who wrote most of the songs.

Some of Motown’s biggest hits and hits have originated in Dozier’s home life. He remembered his grandfather who addressed women as “Sugar cake, honey bouquet”, the opening words and the refrain. I can’t help myself (sugar cake, bunch of honey) of Quattro Cime.

Another success of the Four Tops, Bernadettewas inspired by the three songwriters’ problems with the women named after him, while a discussion with another of Dozier’s friends helped create a favorite of the Supremes.

“She was pretty sexy because I was a womanizer at the time and I cheated on her,” Dozier said. “So she started scolding and beating me until I said, ‘Enough! In the name of love!’ (Stop! In the name of love.) And as soon as I said it, I heard a cash register in my head and laughed. My girlfriend didn’t find it very funny: we broke up. The only ones who were happy of this were the Supremes “.

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