Remembering Motown Songwriter Lamont Dozier

Fresh Air

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🗓️ 12 August 2022

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

Lamont Dozier was one third of the Motown songwriting team Holland Dozier Holland. He died Monday at the age of 81. Along with brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, he helped define the Motown sound, writing 10 Number One top hits for The Supremes, The Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas, and Marvin Gaye — songs like "You Can't Hurry Love," "Baby Love," "Reach Out I'll Be There," "Can't Help Myself," "Heatwave," and "Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch." They spoke with Terry Gross in 2003.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Fresh Air. I'm David B. and Koolie, Professor of Television Studies at Rowan University in New Jersey, Infertary Gross.
0:08.0	Lamont Dozier, part of the Motown songwriting team Holland Dozier Holland, died Monday at the age of 81.
0:15.0	Along with brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, he helped define the Motown sound.
0:20.0	They wrote many hit songs mostly for Martha and the Vandela's, The Supremes and The Four Topps. Here are just a few.
0:50.0	We're one with you, something inside, it's too burning and I feel with these eyes.
1:04.0	We're one with you, something inside, it's too burning and I feel with these eyes.
1:23.0	We're one with you, something inside, it's too burning and I feel with these eyes.
1:38.0	I want you to move around the street, baby, baby, baby don't leave me, please don't leave me.
1:51.0	All by myself, I have this burning, burning, burning, feeling inside,
2:01.0	and it hurts so bad, you came into my heart.
2:11.0	Baby, I need your love, baby I need your love, although you're never here,
2:22.0	your voice I'm only here, another day, another night, a long, a whole new time.
2:34.0	No one's wrong to baby, no one's right, got nowhere to run to, baby, no one's right, it's not love, I'm pulling from.
2:53.0	It's so hard, we got nowhere to come, but I know you're not for money, but she belongs upon me, everywhere I go, your face I see.
3:07.0	You're the pie, honey, but you know that I love you, I came up myself, I love you and nobody else, eating up my life, eating up my life.
3:25.0	Come and you go, come and you go, baby, just your picture, baby, heart.
3:32.0	All sweet is to be loved by you, yes, baby, ooh, all sweet is to be loved by you.
3:46.0	Oh, baby, I needed the shelter of someone's arms, and they're you.
3:56.0	Paul and Dozier and Holland wrote more than 80 singles that reached the top 40 in the popper R&B charts, including 10 number one hits for the Supremes.
4:06.0	The team was inducted into the songwriter's Hall of Fame in 1988, and the rock and roll Hall of Fame in 1990.
4:14.0	We're going to listen to Terry's 2003 interview with Lamont Dozier and Brian and Eddie Holland.
4:20.0	They began with one of their hits for the four tops, which, by the way, became part of the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress.
	...

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