RIP Lamont Dozier – Motown songwriting legend, one-third of the hitmaking trio Holland-Dozier-Holland.

The word “legend” gets bandied about rather too readily these days, from journeyman footballers to your mate who once drank a pint of his own piss on a stag night in Scunthorpe.

Lamont Dozier never did that. But he wrote literally dozens of the greatest songs of all time. Fourteen of them topped the US charts.

Most of them were for Motown, in partnership with Brian Holland. And, after a while, with his own brother Eddie.
Look at any classic Motown single and the chances are you’ll see that ubiquitous three-name credit beneath the song title – Holland-Dozier-Holland.

Before that, in the 1950s, he had founded his own doo wop group, The Romeos, when he was just 13.

From the early Sixties, the team of Holland-Dozier-Holland churned out a massive stream of songs for The Supremes, The Four Tops, The Temptations, Martha Reeves & The Vandellas, The Marvelettes and Marvin Gaye.
Hghlights include “Baby Love”, “Where Did Our Love Go”, “Baby I Need Your Loving”, “You Can’t Hurry Love”, “Reach Out, I’ll Be There”, “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)”, “Stop! In The Name of Love”, “Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart”, “Heat Wave”, “Nowhere to Run”, “Bernadette”, “It’s The Same Old Song” and more.

Holland-Dozier-Holland were the architects of the self-titled “Sound of Young America” and created the songs that turned a fledgling Detroit record company into a household name and a multimillion pound business empire.

After leaving Motown, Holland-Dozier-Holland had a string of hits on the Invictus and Hot Wax labels that rank with their best at Motown.

The post-Motown period produced two more standards in Freda Payne’s “Band Of Gold” and Chairmen of the Board’s “Give Me Just A Little More Time”.