Covered: Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier & Eddie Holland, Volume 3: 1965

The non-stop hits keep on coming with Volume Three of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland (usually known as Holland-Dozier-Holland) for my Covered series on songwriters. All the songs in this volume were released in 1965.

In 1965, Holland-Dozier-Holland were in a hit making groove. Look at how many of the songs here were big hits that still get played on the radio. 

Their accomplishment is even more impressive considering that they not only wrote all these songs, they produced nearly all of them too. In case you're curious, I found a 2022 with all three of them were they explained their successful formula. Here are some excerpts.

Brian Holland: "Lamont and I would start writing the songs on piano. Eddie would also be there early on, and we would discuss what the melody and structure should be. Lamont and I would then start recording the tracks, which would be the actual tracks for the master (not just demo tracks)."

Lamont Dozier: "In the recording studio, Brian and I would split the room. Brian would work with the drummer (usually Benny Benjamin). I would get with the keyboard players (usually Earl Van Dyke or Joe Hunter) and show them how to play the track and chords. I would also give the bass lines to James Jamerson, then he would inject his own bass ideas to make it stronger. We wanted to guide the musicians, so we could create our own sound. We would never let the band just go in and play the chord sheets. We were very focused on what we had in mind for these productions."

Brian Holland: "We would record the full track, which would include the melody with a scratch vocal, without lyrics yet. Although sometimes, we would have the title, and some of the chorus lyrics. Then we would give the track to Eddie, who would go off and write the lyrics."

Eddie Holland: "When I got the track, I would spend many days writing. I would lock myself away. I had a townhouse in Detroit; I would close all the curtains and shades, and there was no telephone. I didn’t go out much; most of my life was devoted to writing lyrics."

So basically, together with the Motown backing band later nicknamed the Funk Brothers, they did it all. The only thing the star performer would have to do is come in and sing the lead vocals, helped by the guide vocals already done by Holland-Dozier-Holland. Some groups, like the Temptations, would often do their own backing vocals, but in most cases that was done already as part of the Holland-Dozier-Holland production too, by a little known female trio called the Andantes. Incredibly, they sang backing vocals on about 20,000 songs, which was about 90 percent of all the songs recorded for the Motown label! 

Virtually all the songs here are the original hit versions by Motown artists. As with the previous volumes, I did my best to order the songs by their release dates, though I had to guess for a few of them.

There is one non-Motown version here though, and that's "1 2 3" by Len Berry. This was a big hit originally written by Berry and two others. But it turns out the song had a great similarity to the song "Ask Any Girl," a B-side for the Supremes. So after two years of lawsuits, Holland-Dozier-Holland were added to the songwriting credits and got a share of all the royalties.

This album is 44 minutes long.

01 Stop, In the Name of Love (Supremes)
02 Beauty Is Only Skin Deep (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
03 Nowhere to Run (Martha & the Vandellas)
04 Back in My Arms Again (Supremes)
05 I Can't Help Myself [Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch] (Four Tops)
06 Lonely, Lonely Girl Am I (Velvelettes)
07 It's the Same Old Song (Four Tops)
08 Mother Dear (Supremes)
09 Nothing but Heartaches (Supremes)
10 1 2 3 (Len Barry)
11 Take Me in Your Arms [Rock Me a Little While] (Kim Weston)
12 Love [Makes Me Do Foolish Things] (Martha & the Vandellas)
13 I Hear a Symphony (Supremes)
14 Something about You (Four Tops)
15 My World Is Empty without You (Supremes)
16 Everything Is Good about You (Supremes)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17402922/COVRDHOLLNDDZRHLLND1965Vlum3_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cCmxZH6k

The cover photo is almost certainly from the same photo session as the photo I used for the 1964 album in this series. The three of them look to be wearing the exact same clothes, and were around a piano in both. But when I colorized this one with the help of the Palette program, I picked different colors for their clothes, so it wouldn't look so similar. I also moved them a bit in Photoshop so they'd be closer together. Finally, I ran the image through the Krea AI program to improve the detail level.