Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Covered: Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier & Eddie Holland, Volume 4: 1966

This is the fourth volume highlighting the unstoppable hit making machine that was the songwriting team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland (usually known as just Holland-Dozier-Holland). This volume deals with just the year 1966. If you're not listening to these albums, you're really missing out.

If anything, Holland-Dozier-Holland was even more successful in 1966 than any previous year. Consider that the previous three volumes in this series were from 40 to 44 minutes long, whereas this one is an hour long. They still were the top songwriting entity for Motown Records, writing and producing hits for pretty much all of Motown's top acts this year. After "only" having two songs in Rolling Stone Magazine's top 500 songs of all time, they had three in 1966: "Reach Out, I'll Be There" by the Four Tops, "You Keep Me Hangin' On" by the Supremes, and "Standing in the Shadows of Love" by the Four Tops. 

Once again, I tried my best to list the songs by the exact order of the single releases. However, I had to guesstimate some, especially the few songs that were mere album tracks instead of singles. Those are songs I generally consider ones that should have been hits, but were overlooked or not properly promoted. Examples of those would include "Any Girl in Love (Knows What I'm Going Through)" by the Supremes and "Suspicion" by the Originals.

Generally speaking, these are all the original versions of each song. Note though that "Greetings (This Is Uncle Sam)" was originally a minor hit for the band the Valadiers in 1961. Brian Holland wrote the song with some others. But it was a bigger hit in 1966 by the Monitors, when it had more relevance due to the increasingly bloody Vietnam War.

"Everybody Needs Love" by Mary Wells is another oddity. Wells left Motown in 1964, and didn't have much success with other record companies. This song was recorded by Wells in 1964 while she was still with Motown, but wasn't officially released until it came out on a Motown various artists collection in 1966.

This album is an hour long.

01 Put Yourself in My Place (Chris Clark)
02 Greetings [This Is Uncle Sam] (Monitors)
03 Shake Me, Wake Me [When It's Over] (Four Tops)
04 This Old Heart of Mine [Is Weak for You] (Isley Brothers)
05 Helpless (Kim Weston)
06 [I'm a] Road Runner (Jr. Walker & the All Stars)
07 Love Is like an Itching in My Heart (Supremes)
08 I Guess I'll Always Love You (Isley Brothers)
09 You Can't Hurry Love (Supremes)
10 Any Girl in Love [Knows What I'm Going Through] (Supremes)
11 Little Darling [I Need You] (Marvin Gaye)
12 Reach Out, I'll Be There (Four Tops)
13 Function at the Junction (Shorty Long)
14 Everybody Needs Love (Mary Wells)
15 Heaven Must Have Sent You (Elgins)
16 Love's Gone Bad (Chris Clark)
17 I'm Ready for Love (Martha & the Vandellas)
18 You Keep Me Hangin' On (Supremes)
19 Suspicion (Originals)
20 [Come Round Here] I'm the One You Need (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
21 Standing in the Shadows of Love (Four Tops)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17402924/COVRDHOLLNDDZRHLLND1966Vlum4_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Yi2mc7hd

The cover image is from around 1970 apparently. That's probably right, given that the two Holland brothers grew goatees which weren't there on any pictures of them from the 1960s. The original of the image was in black and white, but I converted it using the Palette and Photoshop programs. Then I improved the image detail with the Krea AI program.

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