MONDAY
E-mail a friendLamont Dozier
airdate July 31, 2009
Lamont Dozier was one-third of Motown's prolific hit-making songwriting-production team, Holland-Dozier-Holland. On his own, the Grammy-winning musician recorded a number of albums and continued to write and produce, collaborating with artists like Kanye West and Phil Collins and winning an Oscar nod. After three decades, Dozier has reunited with the Holland brothers to score the stage musical, The First Wives Club, and signed on to teach at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music.
Motown singer-songwriter-producer shares the backstory for the song Stop in the Name of Love. (2:14)
Full interview. (19:26)
Lamont Dozier
Tavis: Pleased to welcome Lamont Dozier to this program. The legendary singer, songwriter, and producer teamed up with two brothers to form one of the most successful and prolific songwriting trios in music history. All in all, Holland-Dozier-Holland is responsible for nearly 30 number one Motown hits and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame back in 1990.
As I mentioned at the top, the three have reunited to write the music for the Broadway version of the hit movie "The First Wives Club." More on that in a moment, but as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Motown this year, here now just a small sample of Lamont Dozier's iconic work.
[Clip montage]
Tavis: Still sound good to you?
Lamont Dozier: Oh, yeah. I don't listen to it all the time, but then when I hear it I say, "Boy, I really wrote that, didn't I?" (Laughter) It's like - it still gives me a boost, you know what I mean?
Tavis: When you say you don't listen to it all the time, it's kind of hard to turn on the radio these days and not hear your stuff.
Dozier: Oh, and not hear it, yeah, yeah.
Tavis: Oh, yeah. You hear it all the time.
Dozier: Walking in the supermarket, the stuff is blasting.
Tavis: The minute you hear it, I assume, though, your ear must connect to it immediately.
Dozier: Oh, yeah.
Tavis: When you hear just a couple notes, you know that's your stuff.
Dozier: Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know what I used to do? I'm the cook in the family, so I used to go to the grocery store. When I'm in the grocery store and I'm hearing something, I used to have that feeling like I want to tell somebody. "You know, I wrote that." (Laughter) But then I did that a couple times, and people were going, "Oh, yeah, okay." (Laughter) They think you're crazy.
Tavis: So you stopped doing that.
Dozier: Yeah, I sort of said, "Well, yeah, forget it." (Laughter)
Tavis: Have you written so many hits over the years that you have forgotten? I hear your point when you hear stuff you know you wrote it, but have you written so much stuff that you've forgotten that you wrote certain stuff?
Dozier: Yeah, you do. Some of the things are not as popular as some of them, and some of the stations, they'll play some obscure song from an album that I say, "Kind of sounds familiar, but I'm not sure." That might be one that I penned, but it's hard to say sometimes.
Tavis: We've been having a good time around here for the better part of this year; it's early in the year, because we've been having so many conversations about this 50th anniversary of Motown. Berry Gordy was here for two nights.
Dozier: Yeah, I saw that.
Tavis: Ashford & Simpson were recently here. We're rolling them through here as the year moves on. Lionel Richie was here earlier this year. What do you make of the fact that it's been 50 years of Motown hits?
Dozier: Man, it - it went sort of fast in one regard, or I missed a couple of decades or something. (Laughter) Because it was going so fast, and now here it is 50 years with this music, and it is still going strong around the world. Everywhere I go - I travel quite a bit - throughout - London especially is like that, and Japan. The people love this stuff.
Tavis: You know what's amazing about the work that you and the brothers did, it's not just good music, it's not just that you wrote a bunch of hits - you did all of that. But in a very real way, what you did is the soundtrack to peoples' lives. You ever think about that?
Dozier: Yeah, I've heard that a lot, too - the soundtrack of America. And I've had people calling me from all races, they walk up to me with tears in their eyes and go, "I was hearing this stuff in college." And it's a great feeling to give, and to have something like that that has been around for 50 years when I thought - at the time, I can remember in the '60s, talking to Brian Holland about, I said, "Man, I think we stumbled into something that might be around for a while."
Because we were getting, like, number one, number one, one after the other with the Supremes and the Four Tops and Marvin, and it was just spooky, man, to have that much success.
Tavis: Do you have any idea of what you hit upon, what was happening in that period when you were rolling these hits? Was there something - I'm just trying to get a sense of whether you know why you all hit it in that moment, and just kept hitting it?
Dozier: Timing is everything, as you've probably heard, and in a lot of respects in this music - I think in the '60s, things were not looking good for music. Just before we started in '62, HDH teaming up together, Elvis had gone into the Army so a lot of people said, "Well, that's the end of rock and roll and I told you it would last," a lot of the naysayers.
And then here we come out of Detroit, some obscure place where the people would never think, by a Black-owned guy that put all this together. It was very interesting that it would be so big and last for so long. During the '60s, when the civil rights movement and the race riots and all type of riot - not necessarily race riots but the riots of the '60s, I could see these people, the tanks coming down West Grand Boulevard.
It was, like, just scary and weird. And then Kennedy getting killed in '63, and it was just very - but we kept on pumping out love for stuff and feel-good music, regardless of what was happening. But it was one or two things - one in particular, "Nowhere to Run," which you just played that - that was one that stuck out in my mind, and it stimulated me to the point of I was trying to say something with the music that we're in a situation where nobody has anywhere to run.
If we don't run together, come together, it's going to always stay that way. It was like a double entendre, you might say.
Tavis: To your point, Lamont, even when your message had a double entendre in it, even when your music, rather, had a message to it, you said something, and I swear to you every time I talk to a Motown artist, somewhere in the conversation it comes out. It's as if y'all are programmed this way. (Laughter) And I know y'all ain't got no memo to stay on talking points everywhere you go. So this is how I know it's real.
Dozier: Okay.
Tavis: You cannot talk to a Motown artist about that era, about this last 50 years, and not hear the world L-O-V-E. I don't care whether you're talking to Berry Gordy or Stevie Wonder or Ashford & Simpson or Lionel Richie. The word love always seems to come through. It's like that was, like, part of y'all's writing formula, is that it had to have some love in it.
Dozier: And we would not be strayed or pushed into another direction, because that was - it may not have been that conscious, but it was what was there and what we were facing every day. It was like a love fest, as corny as it may sound, but the music and what we wrote about, the unrequited love and about one-on-one situations with boy and girl, and what we thought about each other as races coming together.
And I always thought that coming to Motown was a fulfillment for me, because I always wanted to bring music or make music that would bring people together.
Tavis: You mentioned a moment ago "Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide," and how that song came to be. I am always - and you know where I'm going with this - I am always fascinated when I talk to songwriters about the back story to the music. We know the song, we all know the words, but it's always the back story that tickles me and turns me on.
So you talked about "Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide." How did "Stop in the Name of Love -" (Laughter)
Dozier: Somebody must have told you something.
Tavis: You know I know the story. You know I know, that's why I asked you on national television. So tell the story about how that came to be.
Dozier: Well, there were some things that I was doing that were not - I was not a very good guy. I was fooling around with a couple of girls, and one of the girls, the main squeeze, heard about it and came down to this place where I was hiding out with the other Ms. Pretty. (Laughter) And when she got there and started knocking on the door, all hell broke loose.
Tavis: It got ugly.
Dozier: Yeah, it got ugly. Girl run out the back door, out the bathroom window or something like that. And I said, "Oh, my god." So the girl came in - I'd opened the door and tried to act like I had just woke up. "What happened? I was at the studio all night and I thought I'd come down here just to rest. What's all the noise?"
And she started saying, "I know, where is she? I know she's in here somewhere." (Laughter) I said, "What are you talking about?" I said, "Baby, please, please, stop in the name of love." (Laughter)
Tavis: Yeah. Yeah.
Dozier: And then all of a sudden I said, "Stop in the name of love?" And I looked at her, and I said, "Did you hear that cash register?" And she said, "That ain't funny." And she said, "I'm not laughing." So that day, actually, I was trying to defuse the thing.
Tavis: Wow, wow, wow.
Dozier: So I went back to the studio that afternoon, (laughter) and Brian was sitting at the piano, and he was playing this melody - (hums). Whatever that first melody was. I said, "Man, I got the perfect title for this - 'Stop in the Name of Love.'" He said, "Oh, man," and that's how that song became another number one for the Supremes.
Tavis: And the rest, as they say, is history.
Dozier: And the rest is history. (Laughter)
Tavis: I tell you, man, the back story is always the best part of the song.
Dozier: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, there's a lot of them.
Tavis: I love the back story. While you and the brothers wrote songs for a lot of people at Motown, had a lot of number one hits that we've already established, there was something about the stuff y'all wrote for the female artist. What was that about? Y'all made some big hits with these female artists.
Dozier: A lot of it comes from being raised by women. All three of us were raised by grandmothers, primarily, while the mother was doing day work, cleaning houses and stuff like that. And we had that same similarity growing up, and had the same type of circumstances. And my grandmother had a little shop, a little beauty shop, and so all of these stories.
As a kid, I used to sweep up the hair and stuff in the place, and some of the women would come in going, "Yeah, he was out again," crying. And my grandmother was sort of, like, consoling and, "Well, girl, see, I told you what you're going to have to do - you're going to have to do thus and such. Because if you go that way and let him get away with one he's going to do another, and you just have to put your foot down." (Laughter) You know what I mean?
Tavis: I got you.
Dozier: And I'm sitting there listening, sweeping and listening. She'd say, "Lamont, now you go out of here now. We don't want you to hear this next part." (Laughter) And then they'd start to get deeper into the stuff. But all those stories, man, I retained - different things about unrequited love and the hurt and just the mental treatment that they were going through, and it stayed with me.
So a lot of those ideas (unintelligible) but the heroes are the women. We wanted to make the women feel good because we knew, we heard these stories. It was a similar situation going on with the Hollands and their household, and whatnot. So we got together, whenever we had a feeling - everything - first it had to touch us when we hit the piano, and then the stories would come.
As we're dueling and working out the melody so the melody would be infectious, come from the inside, and then all of a sudden we started to remember and going back and listening to those stories that we heard from our grandparents and people coming by. And okay, "You kids go to bed now; this is grown-ups talking in here." (Laughter) And we'd go upstairs and (unintelligible).
When company over, the kids want to stay up, but (unintelligible) listening and retaining all that stuff, and that's how it happened, man. We both - the Hollands and I, and myself, we came together with that thought in mind, to write for women, because women were left out and they didn't get their share - the fair end of the situation.
Tavis: Speaking of getting the fair end, it sounds like Grandmamma is due some royalty somewhere. (Laughter) That's what it sounds like.
Dozier: Yeah, oh, yeah.
Tavis: Big Mama should have got some royalty.
Dozier: Yeah. While Grandma was telling the stories or packing away the stories, Granddaddy, we called him, he'd whistle all around - (whistles). I mean, blues whistling. They were from the South, Alabama, my grandparents, but they could whistle up a storm and tell these stories, and I just retained all that stuff about human nature. And that's what a lot of it comes from.
Tavis: I want to just throw some names at you of some of these groups, and I don't want to ask any questions. I just want to throw the name out and you tell me whatever you want to tell me about the working relationship. I want to start with - since we were talking about "Stop in the Name of Love," I want to start with the Supremes, because it's hard for us to imagine this now, on this side - hard to imagine.
But at one point, before y'all got a hold to them, they were known inside the company as the no-hit Supremes.
Dozier: The no-hit Supremes.
Tavis: They didn't have no hits, and y'all went to work, and something happened.
Dozier: Yeah, we had to go to work. What we did first - we wrote a song first, a little song called "When the Love Light Starts Shining in His Eyes," and that was a top 20 or top 30 song. And it did fairly well, but they dropped back down in that status or the no-hit Supremes area again after that and nobody came up with anything.
And then suddenly I came up with this idea, and I was banging on a piano, and (singing) "Baby, baby, where did our love go? Oh, don't you want me?" But at first, I was going to give it to the Marvelettes, because the Marvelettes was hot, and you want your best stuff to go with the hottest group.
Tavis: Absolutely.
Dozier: We're thinking about coins too. But they refused it. They didn't like it at all. They thought, "What is this, this - this - this stuff that sounds like a cartoon music or whatever." And they did not like it and refused it - they didn't want it. We had cut the track and I didn't want to be charged for this track that we cut, assuming that the girls wouldn't give us any lip. But wow, we never had that before - they just said, "No, we will not do it."
I said, "Oh, man, I'm going to get charged for this track." That's the (laughter) - that's the -
Tavis: That's the Berry Gordy way.
Dozier: That's the Berry Gordy way, yeah. And I said, "Oh, my lord." And I said, "Who can I put this? Oh." Looked at the roster, at the bottom of the roster - the Supremes. They can't afford to say no.
Tavis: They need a hit.
Dozier: They need a hit, and they ain't going to dare say no. When I got there they talking 'bout, "Uh-uh," Mary - she'll probably tell you this - "Uh-uh. What is this? This is horrible. You're always giving us the throw-away songs that nobody else wants." (Laughter) So I assumed that the Marvelettes had talked to them.
I said, "Well that girl, why'd she do that?" (Laughter) But then that's what we did. We talked to them, and they got to talking to Diana and the girls and convinced them that this is a big hit song and dah, dah, dah, and we should do this thing, blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, to make a long story short, we got in the studio and they recorded it. And they were so perturbed - I'll put it a nice way - and while she was singing the song, "Baby, baby," and the attitude. It was the wrong key, because it was in the key of Gladys Horton. It was in the wrong key, because she never sang that low before.
But her voice took on a whole new thing, man. It became sultry. And she was so mad and so disgusted with this song, having to sing - being forced to sing this song. But it put out such a feeling, a sexy feeling and a style, and she became a stylist that night. And that sound, everybody started adapting it, the keys, and singing it - putting that down - "Baby, baby.". But just that attitude was the attitude that the song needed, and - (laughs).
Tavis: And now we all know the words to that song.
Dozier: Yeah, and it shot up to the charts, I think it sold two or three million copies. Straight to number one. And then we had, like, oh, man, consecutive number ones - 13 of them in a row with the Supremes.
Tavis: How cool was Marvin Gaye?
Dozier: Marvin Gaye was great, man, and just don't get on his bad side. (Laughter)
Tavis: That cat was so cool, though, man.
Dozier: Oh, he was so good, man. We were personal friends, too, because we were at Anna Records before we got to Berry's place, Motown. We was at Berry's sister Gwen Gordy's place, and when they folded, I just went over to join Berry and Marvin was already there with "Stubborn Kind of Fellow." And when we got a hold of him with "How Sweet it Is" and "Can I Get a Witness" and "Baby, Don't You Do It."
But I started thinking about "How Sweet it Is." He did it in one take. Eddie was in there working with him on it, he said, "Come on, man, I got to go, I don't have time. Yeah, just give me the thing." And he looked at it. (Laughter) "I got to go, man."
And then, "Okay, man, all right. Hey, don't say nothing, just let him do it. Let's do it (unintelligible)." He went in there and, "Turn the thing on, man." (Laughter) And they turned (unintelligible), he put on his headphones and he said, "Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, okay, I'm ready." And that guy did that song in one take. The take that you hear -
Tavis: Is the one take he did.
Dozier: - is the one take he did.
Tavis: And it's cold, man.
Dozier: And he just took the thing down and walked out. (Laughter) And we said, "What?" If we had any complaints, forget it. He didn't care. He said, "That's it," and walked out.
Tavis: Pardon the pun - it turned out to be sweet, though.
Dozier: Oh, sweet, because he knew what to do. It was in the wrong key. We always put Marvin's keys a little bit higher because when he had to reach, he got magical.
Tavis: Oh, yeah.
Dozier: He'd start rolling up into that falsetto and doing things, man, that was, like, I said, "Whoa, this guy's incredible." Incredible singer, man, he was one of the best.
Tavis: Tell me quickly - my time is up; I could do this for hours - tell me about the Broadway thing.
Dozier: Oh, yeah. "The First Wives Club."
Tavis: Yeah, "The First Wives Club."
Dozier: Yeah, open up in San Diego at the Old Globe Theater in July, and then we'll iron out whatever it is to iron out there before we take it into Broadway, which is the first of the year, hopefully, or before. Wonderful stuff.
Tavis: Man, you guys have done a bunch of wonderful stuff.
Dozier: (Laughs) Thank you.
Tavis: They're legends in their own time.
Dozier: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: Man, so many hits, so little time.
Dozier: Thank you. (Laughs)
Tavis: Lamont, I'm glad to have you here, man.
Dozier: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: Thanks for coming to see us in the 50th year Motown celebration.
Dozier: My pleasure.
Tavis: Glad to have you.
Dozier: Thank you.
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