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Honeycone
Holland/Dozier/Holland
Freda
Payne
Chairman of the Board
-----------------------------------------------------------------THE MOTOWN
YEARS-------------------------------------------------------------
A partial list of H-D-H-penned and produced Motown classics
illustrates the magnitude of their achievement: "Come and Get These Memories,"
"Heat Wave," "Nowhere to Run "I'm Ready for Love," and "Jimmy Mack" (all for
Martha and the Vandellas); "Mickey's Monkey" (for the Miracles); "Can 1 Get a
Witness" (for Marvin Gaye); "Where Did Our Love Go," "Baby Love," "Come See
About Me," "Stop! In the Name of Love," "Back in My Arms Again," I Hear a
Symphony," "Love Is Like an Itching in My Heart," "You Can't Hurry Love," "You
Keep Me Hangin'On,"---LoveIs Here and Now You're Gone," "The Happening,"
and-Reflections" (all for the Supremes); "Baby 1 Need Your Loving," I Can't Help
Myself," 1t's the Same Old Song," "Shake Me, Wake Me (When It's Over)," "Reach
Out, I'll Be There," "Standing in the Shadows of Love," "Bernadette," and "7
Rooms of Gloom" (all for the Four Tops); "Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little
wile) (for Kim Weston); "Heaven Must Have Sent You" (for the Elgin's); This Old
Heart of Mine (is Weak for You (for the Isley Brothers); and "(I'm a) Road
Runner" and "How Sweet It W' (both for Junior Walker and the All-Stars). while
their work for others is widely known, Holland, Dozier, and Holland's recordings
as artists in their own right are much less so. Yet before coming together as a
team at Motown, each member of the Detroit-born threesome had been primarily a
vocalist. Lamont was the first to make records, in 1956 with a Detroit doo-wop
group called the Romeos for the Fox label, then around 1960 as "Lamont Anthony-
for both Anna (a company run by Gwen and Anna Gordy with Billy Davis) and
Mel-O-Dy (a short-lived Motown subsidiary). Eddie, whose strong, flexible tenor
resembled that of early Berry Gordy, Jr. protégée Jackie Wilson, scored a Top 10
R&B hit in 1962 with
"Jamie" on Motown, but stopped
performing following an Apollo Theater engagement in the record's wake due to
his intense dislike of singing in front of an audience. Younger brother Brian
didn't begin recording as a vocalist until after the trio was well-established,
and then cut only one obscure Motown single.
-------------------------------THE HOT WAX,INVICTUS, MUSIC MERCHANT
YEARS----------------------------
Following their much-publicized departure from Motown in
1968, H-D-H set up their own production company in Detroit and launched two
labels-Hot Wax (distributed by Buddah) and Invictus (distributed by
Capitol)-that quickly yielded hits for the likes of Laura Lee, Chairmen of the
Board, 100 Proof (Aged in Soul), Honey Cone, Freda Payne, Flaming Ember, 8th
Day, Glass House, and Parliament. None of the early sides by these artists was
written or produced by H-D-H, however. They instead featured such talented
songwriters and producers as Ronald Dunbar, Edith Wayne, William Weatherspoon,
Angelo Bond, General Johnson, Greg Perry, George Clinton, and Ruth Copeland.1n
order to give the labels a much wider creative flow and a different identity, we
used the other people because we felt they had talent and they wrote differently
than we wrote," Eddie Holland explains. "Over at Motown, most of the artists
didn't really write for themselves, and what 1 was really trying to do was to
develop them into writers. If they had some ability, then 1 wanted those singers
to be able to write for themselves because 1 felt it had much more longevity to
it." A lthough tied down to the administrative chores of running two
labels,H-D-H eventually found time to write and produce again, including
"Cherish What Is Dear to You (While It's Near to You)" by Freda Payne in 1971,
"Chairman of the Board" by Chairmen of the Board in 1971, and 1f You Can Beat Me
Rockin' (You Can Have My Chair)" by Laura Lee in 1972. And, in 1972, they began
recording a series of singles for Invictus as vocalist under the Holland-Dozier
banner, with Eddie, Lamont, and Brian taking turns leading on individual
releases. The trio's decision to resume singing came as an afterthought. Eddie
explains: "Brian might do a demo of a song and I'd listen to it and say, 'Sounds
good on you. 1 don't know of anybody that could do it any better. Why don't we
put it out on you?' And once in a while Lamont would do something and we would
have a feeling that, 'Hey, it sounds pretty good. Let's put it out,' No more
reasons than that. 1 don't think we necessarily took the records that Lamont,
Brian, and 1 did as seriously as we would have another artist. This was just
something we did almost off the cuff. It was more of a fun thing than anything
else." Because H-D-H didn't take their own sides as seriously as they did those
of others on the roster, their records were given little promotional push and no
album was assembled. Yet their group efforts were so artistically compelling
that several managed, even without label support, to garner airplay, most
significantly the wonderfully loping "Why Can't We Be Lovers," featuring
Lamont's church-emoting tenor, and Brian's elastically angelic reading of "Don't
Leave Me Starvin'." Others went unnoticed, including the hauntingly beautiful
"Where Did We go Wrong," which opens and closes this set, first as an Eddie
Holland solo, then as a duet with Eloise Laws. Although there were several
uptempo numbers, including the intensely burning "Hijackin'," the emphasis of
the H-D-H group creations was on ballads, both slow and medium. "The people at
Motown wanted only certain types of songs for the most part," Eddie states, "and
because our up tempo songs were so exceptional, we just never did any of the
other things that we were capable of doing or were interested in doing." If
Eddie and Brian didn't attach much weight to singing again, Lamont must have. By
the end of 1973, he had signed as a solo artist with ABC/Dunhill (where he
scored three Top 10 R&B hits over the course of a year), thus ending a
musical relationship with the Holland's that had begun a decade earlier at
Motown. because of the rarity of these sides, many have mistakenly assumed that
Holland, Dozier, and Holland's creative flow came to an end when they stopped
writing and producing at Motown in 1967.
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