Lamont Dozier 1941-2022

I’d always written,” Lamont Dozier told this writer in 2018. “It started with poems at 11, then by the time I was 15 it was songs for The Romeos.

- Lois Wilson

When Berry Gordy signed me to Motown in 1962, he made it clear he didn’t want me as a singer. He wanted to take advantage of my songwriting and producing skills.”

And take advantage he did. As one third of the genius songwriting team, Holland, Dozier and Holland, who died 8 August aged 81, wrote timeless classics for The Supremes (You Can’t Hurry Love, Where Did Our Love Go), Four Tops (Reach Out I’ll Be There, I Can’t Help Myself [Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch]), Martha and the Vandellas (Heatwave, Nowhere To Run), Isley Brothers (This Old Heart Of Mine (Is Weak For You), Marvin Gaye (Can I Get A Witness, You’re A Wonderful One), and Jr Walker and the Allstars ([I’m A] Road Runner). The songs became not only signifiers of the 60s but standards as important to pop music’s fabric as the work of Lennon and McCartney and Jagger and Richards.

From the Detroit housing projects, Dozier, born 16 June 1941, was the eldest of five children. Music was a constant: his father, Willie Dozier, loved Nat King Cole and Sinatra, his uncle played boogie woogie piano, while his aunt was a trained classical concert pianist. His grandmother, meanwhile, was the choir director at the Spiritual Israel Church And Its Army Temple. It was there that he first sang before joining the Detroit vocal groups, The Romeos, and The Voice Masters. The latter were signed to Anna, Berry Gordy’s sister Gwen Gordy’s label, and it was with that label that he also recorded his debut solo single, Let’s Talk It Over, under the alias Lamont Anthony, the self-penned B-side Popeye featuring a fledgling Marvin Gaye on drums.