The Detroit native was a member of the songwriting trio behind dozens of chart-toppers, including ‘Stop! In The Name Of Love’ and ‘I Can’t Help Myself’
Lamont Dozier, a songwriter and producer behind era-defining Motown hits including “Baby Love” and “You Can’t Hurry Love,” died Monday. He was 81 years old.
His death was confirmed Tuesday by the Motown Museum in Detroit. No cause of death was given.
Mr. Dozier helped define the sound of the 1960s, and influenced a generation of artists, as one-third of the songwriting trio Holland-Dozier-Holland. Together with brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, he worked with Motown’s most successful artists, including Diana Ross & the Supremes, the Isley Brothers, the Four Tops and Marvin Gaye.
The trio churned out hits such as “Stop! In The Name Of Love,” “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” and “Love Is Like A Heat Wave.”
“As part of the unmatched song writing and production team of Holland Dozier Holland, Lamont Dozier is largely responsible for shaping the Motown Sound,” Motown Museum Chief Executive Robin Terry said in a statement.
Born in Detroit in 1941, Lamont Herbert Dozier originally had aspirations as a singer and founded the group The Romeos as a teenager. That was followed by a stint as a doo-wop singer, before he joined Motown Records as an artist in 1962.
Under the label, Mr. Dozier joined with the Holland brothers. Together, they would write almost 150 Motown chart hits in the U.S., according to Motown Records, the first of which was “Locking Up My Heart” for the Marvelettes.
After leaving Motown Records, the trio founded Invictus Records and Hot Wax Records. Mr. Dozier branched out on his own in 1973. He won a Grammy award in 1989 for best song written for a motion picture or television for “Two Hearts,” from the movie “Buster.” In 2007, Mr. Dozier reunited with the Holland brothers to work on a musical version of “The First Wives Club.”
Tributes poured out Tuesday to honor the late tunesmith, who was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.
Producer and guitarist Nile Rodgers called him a music-composing genius and said Mr. Dozier had affected many people. “We’ve lost a giant,” he wrote in a post on Twitter. Singer-songwriter Carole King said striving to keep up with Mr. Dozier and the Holland brothers had made her and Gerry Goffin better songwriters.
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“I admire Lamont so much,” Duke Fakir, of the Four Tops, said in an interview Tuesday. “He was so talented and he will truly be missed.”
Mr. Fakir said Holland-Dozier-Holland wrote songs that sold the Four Tops’ records and contributed to their success. The trio penned hits for the group from 1964 to 1968, including “Bernadette” and “I Can’t Help Myself.”
Mr. Dozier talked to The Wall Street Journal in 2013 about writing the 1966 No. 1 song “Reach Out I’ll Be There” for the Four Tops with Messrs. Holland.
“I wanted to create a mind trip—a journey of emotions with sustained tension, like a bolero,” he said. “To get this across, I alternated the keys—from a minor Russian feel in the verse to a major gospel feel in the chorus.”
Weeks after the Four Tops recorded the song, Motown founder Berry Gordy called the group into his office and said he was going to release their biggest hit—and then played the opening to “Reach Out.”
“We knew how to entertain,” Mr. Fakir told the Journal Tuesday, “but they taught us how to record.”
