Holland-Dozier-Holland: S & D

RIP

RIP

"Dozier is the “idea man,” the one who takes the lead with song titles and concepts, partial lyrics and also some music. "

https://nysmusic.com/2022/03/12/motowns-top-songwriter-dozier-shares-his-creative-struggles-and-secrets/

Working off of a Wikipedia list of Dozier's songwriting credits, I made an Apple Music playlist. Not everything is here--Chairmen of the Board's catalogue doesn't appear to be available at the moment, and a few of the Dozier solo albums are missing--but 178 songs in 10 hours.

https://music.apple.com/ca/playlist/lamont-dozier/pl.u-b3b8Y08syvb467

Man this tops any of the songwriting stories in the Eagles thread, including the fake ones posted as a joke:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/09/arts/music/lamont-dozier-dead.html

And sometimes Mr. Dozier uttered a real-life sentence that worked in song, as he did one night when he was in a Detroit motel with a girlfriend and a different girlfriend started pounding on the door. He pleaded with the interloper, “Stop, in the name of love” — and then realized the potency of what he had said. The Holland-Dozier-Holland team quickly hammered the sentence into a three-minute single, the Supremes’ “Stop! In the Name of Love.”

That's great, up there with David Porter shouting "Hold on, I'm comin'" at Issac Hayes when he tried to get him out of the restroom at Stax.

I like this about Dozier's childhood:

It is his first unrequited crush at age 10 with an Italian-American classmate named Bernadette that connects him to his romantic soul and the need to express his emotions in words.  This inspires him to write a poem which wins a school contest, then to write his first song at age 12.  His skill with words is appreciated by the boys at his school who will hire him to write love and/or apology letters to their girlfriends (50 cents apiece) and even to impersonate them in phone calls ($1 each).  By high school, he is writing lyrics on his brown paper lunch bags. By 15, he has dropped out and begun to pursue a career in music, landing a small deal with Atlantic Records as a part of a vocal group called The Romeos. 
<a href="https://nysmusic.com/2022/03/12/motowns-top-songwriter-dozier-shares-his-creative-struggles-and-secrets/";>Read more at NYS Music... </a>

I was wondering when that Bernadette story would come up again. I seem to remember it as the punchline to a Mojo profile or something, which ended "And her name? Bernadette."

xp That's pretty awesome. I can imagine one of the unknowing recipients of his letters listening to the radio years later and being like "HEY! That's what so-and-so wrote ME!"

Going through my Dozier playlist, I don't think I'd ever heard this one before. Pretty cool!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKkGKLQoKrY