For most of the 1960s, the Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team and the Motown Records company was a match made in heaven. The hits kept coming seemingly endlessly. But there was trouble brewing. Berry Gordy, the head of Motown Records, was a business genius in some respects, but an idiot sometimes too. The Holland-Dozier-Holland team rightfully considered their songwriting and production to be a major part of Motown's success, and they wanted more creative control and better pay. Gordy, by contrast, could be a pretty ruthless business person, especially when it came to compensating songwriters, producers, and session musicians. So although I don't know the details, I'm guessing the Holland-Dozier-Holland team had good reason to feel undervalued.
Problems began in 1967. The team began a work slowdown while they tried to negotiate a better deal. When the deal didn't happen, they left Motown in early 1968. They immediately started their own record companies, Invictus Records and Hot Wax Records. Motown sued for breach of contract, and they counter-sued. The resulting legal battles would last years. They were still legally contracted to Motown's publishing company, so they couldn't release songs with their names credited as the songwriters without having to pay Motown. As a result, from 1968 until 1972, they usually credited their songs to Edith Wayne, who was a friend to the Holland brothers.
The split between the team and Motown is a big tragedy for music, in my opinion. The three of them should have spent most of their working hours writing songs and producing them. Instead, a big chunk of their time had to go to fighting legal battles, and another big chunk had to go to setting up and then running their new record labels. For instance, they put out almost no new music in 1968, since leaving Motown and starting new record companies took up almost all their time.
The three of them simply wore too many hats in their new roles. Keep in mind that when they wrote new songs, they didn't have any musical acts to perform them. They also had to be talent scouts and find the new acts for their companies. They found some good ones, like Freda Payne, the Chairmen of the Board, Honey Cone, and the like. But at Motown they had been writing songs for great, legendary acts like the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas, and more. I don't blame them for leaving a bad deal with Motown, but one can only imagine all the great music that never came to be had they stayed there.
The first five songs, plus track 15, were still performed by Motown acts. That's because Motown didn't suddenly cease recording Holland-Dozier-Holland songs when they left. Motown had other talented songwriters, and I've highlighted many of them with my various Covered albums, but Holland-Dozier-Holland was the clear top songwriting entity, and Motown never really found an adequate replacement. So Motown kept releasing songs written by them until they exhausted all the good ones they still had the legal rights to.
Up until this album, I was posting the songs in the exact order of singles releases. From this album to the end of the series, I'm just posting by the year of release since it would be much more difficult trying to figure out the exact release dates.
Besides, note the pace of hit singles slowed quite a bit. Each of the previous four albums in this series dealt with one year each, whereas this one deals with three years. There are still lots of great songs here. In fact, "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne even made Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the top 500 songs of all time. But there were lots of singles releases that were merely good. So I've been more selective to keep the quality level as high as it was for the Motown years.
Holland-Dozier-Holland still had lots more music in them after this. Two more albums will follow before this series is over.
This album is 48 minutes long.
01 Forever Came Today (Supremes)
02 Gotta See Jane (R. Dean Taylor)
03 Leave It in the Hands of Love (Martha & the Vandellas)
04 Bring Back the Love (Monitors)
05 I'm in a Different World (Four Tops)
06 The Unhooked Generation (Freda Payne)
07 Crumbs Off the Table (Glass House)
08 Girls It Ain't Easy (Honey Cone)
09 Give Me Just a Little More Time (Chairmen of the Board)
10 Deeper and Deeper (Freda Payne)
11 Everything's Tuesday (Chairmen of the Board)
12 Westbound No. 9 (Flaming Ember)
13 [You've Got Me] Dangling on a String (Chairmen of the Board)
14 Band of Gold (Freda Payne)
15 Without the One You Love (Supremes & the Four Tops)
16 Hanging On to a Memory (Chairmen of the Board)
https://www.upload.ee/files/17410457/COVRDHOLLNDDZRHLLND1968-1970Vlum6_atse.zip.html
alternate:
https://pixeldrain.com/u/yfPbAfjT
Unfortunately, I ran out of good photos of the Holland-Dozier-Holland team when they were young. The cover photo here is from 1988, probably from some awards ceremony.
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