Category: Holland-Dozier-Holland

RECORD WORLD | DOZIER, HOLLANDS: THEY’RE THE TOP . . . JANUARY 15, 1966

Three Years in the Making, Holland, Dozier, Holland, Established Top Hit Makers at Motown Records Today

 

 

Eddie Holland

The team of Lamont Dozier-Brian and Eddie Holland produced nine releases in 1965 and “8-eight-8,” I said eight of these records, made the Top 10, both pop and R&B.

In the last three years, they have produced (and written) a minimum of “15 fifteen-15 Top 10″ pop and R&B” records. The sales on “I Can’t Help Myself” by the Four Tops are over one million, four hundred thousand; sales on “Where Did Our Love Go” by the Supremes are over one million-two hundred thousand. Berry Gordy himself, who scored in the poll, did one hit on his own last year – “Shotgun.” So now Motown made Brian Holland a Vice President – to me, it’s all three together. I just went out to Detroit and they told me how they do it.

Lamont Dozier

Brian and Lamont sit down at a piano to riffle a taste. They keep thinking and thinking, and reaching and searching for a definite melody line – the “handle.” They usually work together this way for about a half an hour. They will discard quite a few ideas, and then will take out anything that they feel is extraneous. Their goal is always naked simplicity, and when they achieve that, then they strip that down even more, if possible. The basic criterion is always “pleasantness to the ear.” Then they turn the melody and a “working title” over to Holland. Different situations will vary from time to time.

The soul emanates from within them as they write. The soul is the quintessence of all they ever were and are. They draw upon a “Soul Fund” that includes: familiarity with ALL classical and semi-classical music; their cultural heritage as Negroes; and much of the Hebraic-Judaic musical literature.

As children, they sang in church choirs, and thus know almost all the spirituals and work and folk song of their people. They benefited from a cultural enrichment program that has existed in the Detroit school system for years. Their teachers took them to many classical concerts.

Brian Holland

I was reminded of the great autobiographical play by the Welsh actor, Emlyn Williams, “The Corn Is Green,” when Eddie Holland said to me, “Kal, the first time I heard Brahms and Beethoven, I felt as if a giant force had lifted me up from the poverty and misery around me, up a steep wall, until I could see stretching out in front of me an expanse of green grass and a whole new world of beauty.”

They will thrill all their lives to the greatness and genius of these music titans of centuries past. They cannot pinpoint any particular melody of theirs to any one source. However, the emotional mainspring that drives their creativity is evolved from the “most hurtin’, tore-up peoples that the world has ever known.” I asked VP Brian Holland which of their songs move them the most. He told me that he is still moved to tears by: “I Can’t Help Myself”; “Stop In The Name Of Love”; and especially “I Hear A Symphony.”

I asked them who is their favorite writing team. I knew before they answered that they would say “Music by Burt Bacharach and words by Hal David.“

KAL RUDMAN’S ‘MONEY MUSIC‘

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Information, credit and news source: Record World, January 15, 1966

THE MOTOWN HIT MAKERS, 1965: L-R Eddie Holland, Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland, and Florence Ballard. Standing: Berry Gordy, Jr. (Click on image 2x for largest detailed PC view, tap and ‘stretch’ across image for digitized Mobile device view)

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’61 MOTOWN SNAPSHOT FLASHBACK! EDDIE HOLLAND

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EDDIE HOLLAND circa 1961
EDDIE HOLLAND circa 1961
EDDIE HOLLAND MOTOWN LP, 1962
EDDIE HOLLAND’S debut Motown LP, 1962
BRIAN HOLLAND, LAMONT DOZIER, EDDIE HOLLAND. H-D-H penned many of Motown's hit makers in the early, mid-1960s.
BRIAN HOLLAND, LAMONT DOZIER, EDDIE HOLLAND. Best known as the songwriting trio, Holland-Dozier-Holland, at Hitsville, they wrote many of Motown’s biggest hits, early, mid-60s.

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MOTOWN: THE HOLLAND BROTHERS SPEAK OUT . . . FEBRUARY 26, 1983

MarqueeTest-2From the MCRFB news archive: 1983

Holland Brothers Extend Rare Interview

 

 

 

 

 

Brian and Eddie Holland don’t talk a great deal. In more than 20 years as producers and writers, the can remember doing “maybe three or four interviews” — remarkable, considering the influence these gentleman have had on popular music.

Holland Dozier Holland. Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland. (Click image for larger view).
Holland, Dozier, Holland. Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland (click image for larger view).

Together with Lamont Dozier, they helped define the musical “Motown Sound.” What was an inspired hit-making formula for the Supremes, the Four Tops and many others has become a permanent part of our musical vocabulary. Daryl Hall and John Oates’ “Maneater,” for example, approximates the Holland/Dozier/Holland arrangement of the Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love,” while Phil Collins has gone directly to the source for his current hit. Both these records have been top 10 pop hits this year, demonstrating the durability of a musical vision first forged in 1964.

Yet the Holland brothers are reluctant to dwell on the past. They’d rather talk about 8th Day, a five-member vocal group they have produced and signed to A&M Records. The original version of 8th Day recorded for the Hollands’ Invictus Records in the early 1970s.

“We don’t talk to the press often, because we’re basically background people,” says Eddie Holland. “But we’re genuinely excited about the group and this album.” Brian’s description of 8th Day‘s talent recall the Temptations. “We have five voices, each with its own particular style, which gives us an opportunity to use a lot of different vocal coloring and combinations.” When asked if 8th Day compared favorably to the Temptations, Eddie refused to be glib. “No, I couldn’t say that. The Temptations to me had, and still have, something quit special that I’ve never heard any other vocal group match. The quality of the voices and the way they could be played off each other made them especially interesting to work with.”

The Eddie Holland LP album with Motown Records, 1962
The ‘Eddie Holland’ LP album with Motown Records, 1962

The Holland brothers and Dozier left Motown in the late 1960s in a flurry of lawsuits and acrimony. Today, Eddie says, “That was so long ago we can even remember what started it. It must have been a bunch of little things that just built up that were never quite taken care of at the time. Egos got in the way at some point, and it never was worked out. Our relationship with Motown now is fine.

“We use their Hitsville Studio in Los Angeles. We’re extremely happy with Jobete. They keep our music out there, and our income from our publishing just keeps increasing. We make more money from it today than we did 10 or 15 years ago. Jobete worked with us to do a co-publishing project with our Gold Forever Music on our old music as  well as songs we’ve written more recently.”

About Berry Gordy, the Hollands have nothing but praise. “When we started, we were 17 or 18 years old, just kids really,” say Eddie. “Being a creative person himself, Berry could understand creative people and — this is important — could recognize talent in the raw. Some of the people at Motown had great talent and only needed a chance to grow. Others were just marginal talents that he stuck with.

According to legend, Motown’s music was ground out with a machine-like regularity of an assembly line. The Hollands agree that they were disciplined and worked quickly, but they say Motown meant “total freedom” to them. “It was a totally relaxed, creative environment and yes, very much like a family. We’d cut any time of the day or night. But we’d also sit down at Hitsville and play poker all night long.”

The famous trebley sound of Motown’s ’60s recordings was, according to Brian, more a matter of equipment than taste. “We’d listen to all those Stax records and other records of that period and try to get that same fat drum and bass sound,” he recalls. “When we’d hear our records through the speakers in the original Hitsville studio in Detroit, they’d have that same sound, too. But they wouldn’t record like that, though we’d hear them with a fatter sound through those particular speakers. But we didn’t complain. People seemed to like them.” END.

— NELSON GEORGE

A young Eddie Holland, as he looked here, photographed in 1961. Motown artist, producer and songwriter for Motown Records in the 1960s
A young Eddie Holland as he looked then, photographed in 1962. Motown artist, producer and songwriter for Motown Records in the 1960s. Eddie was one-third of the Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team at Motown.

(Information and news source: Billboard; February 26, 1983).

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