The Unhooked Generation: Holland-Dozier-Holland After Motown – Part 2
The team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland — known collectively as Holland-Dozier-Holland, or HDH for short — wrote and produced some of Motown’s most beloved classics, including hits for the Supremes, the Four Tops, and Martha Reeves & The Vandellas. The trio left Motown due to disputes over contracts and royalties, forming their own pair of labels, Invictus and Hot Wax, in 1969. (A third, the short-lived Music Merchant, followed in 1972.)
This seven-part series The Unhooked Generation: Holland-Dozier-Holland After Motown examines every single released on that trio of labels. The series follows the format of the 14-disc box set Holland-Dozier-Holland: The Complete 45s Collection, released this year by Demon Music’s Harmless Records to coincide with the 45th anniversary of the formation of Invictus and Hot Wax. To read part one, click here.
Part 2: Invictus Records, 1971-1972
The first part of this series, which covered the birth of Invictus Records from 1969 to 1971, also featured the label’s biggest hits. In contrast, only one single in this installment entered the Top 40, with a handful of others entering the R&B charts and none scoring gold. Yet the overall level of quality barely wavered, even though pressure from distributor Capitol Records found the label struggling to pull together enough material to meet demands.
Though no truly-new artists were signed to Invictus in this period (with the semi-exception of Holland-Dozier as a performing duo), the label released several singles credited to individual group members of acts like Chairmen of the Board and the Glass House, and also licensed a pair of 45s from a small Texas label.
While the 8th Day’s “You’ve Got to Crawl (Before You Walk)” didn’t quite live up to the success of its predecessor, the million-selling “She’s Not Just Another Woman,” it nevertheless became Invictus’ biggest hit of this era, peaking at #28 on the Hot 100 and #3 on the R&B charts. The song is genial if a bit corny: the narrator humbles himself by literally crawling into his girlfriend’s arms.
The follow-up, “If I Could See the Light in the Window” (#79 Pop, #27 R&B), is a remake of a song originally released as a B-side by 100 Proof (Aged in Soul), whose version we’ll get to in Part 5 of this series. The 8th Day’s version is far more rock-oriented than anything else credited to them so far, sounding more like Joe Cocker or Three Dog Night than the group that had just scored a hit with “You’ve Got to Crawl.”
The best 8th Day single of this batch, “Rocks in My Head,” is also the only one to miss both the charts entirely. It marries a classic hook-filled HDH song structure with the looser vibe of an R&B jam, compressed into just over three minutes without ever sounding crowded. The acid guitar retains some of the previous single’s rock influence, while also reflecting the narrator’s claim of temporary madness. The vocal interplay between Melvin Davis and the female singers is the highlight of the track – Davis explains his cheating with “I plead insanity!” only to be shot down by the ladies’ “no, no, guilty.”
Shortly before “Rocks in My Head” came out, a song pulled from the first 8th Day album was released as a Melvin Davis solo single. “I’m Worried” and its B-side “Just as Long” are ballads in a more traditional vein than the funkier, poppier singles released under his group’s name; not surprising, as they were likely recorded by Davis before the 8th Day even existed. Like “Rocks in My Head,” though, “I’m Worried” went nowhere on the charts.
Besides the 8th Day, Freda Payne was the only other Invictus artist to trouble the pop charts during this era. “You Brought the Joy,” a great driving bit of proto-disco, made #52 on the Hot 100 and #21 on the R&B charts. The classic HDH sound of “Suddenly It’sYesterday” served as the B-side. Its “memories … keep coming back” vocal hook was recycled for the intro to Payne’s follow-up single,“The Road We Didn’t Take,” which just barely made the pop charts at #100. Its B-side, “I’m Not Getting Any Better,” is actually a more interesting take on the semi-theatrical pop-soul ballad than its rather soporific flip. (Perhaps that’s why the box set flips their respective placements, putting “Better” on the A-side disc and compiling “Road” with the B-sides.)
Chairmen of the Board, once rivaled only by Payne for the position of Invictus’s biggest hit maker, are off the pop charts completely at this point, though they continued to have some minor R&B hits that deserved far more attention than they got. The Brian Holland/Lamont Dozier-penned “Try On My Love for Size” is perhaps the best example in this installment of the classic HDH sound updated for 1971, with its tight construction, strong lyrical conceit, and hooks packed into every available space without feeling claustrophobic.
Most of the Chairmen’s other tracks of this era were co-written by General Johnson, including “Men are Getting Scarce,” which converts the title of an old Joe Tex hit into an anti-war statement. The Chairmen appeal to women to “Protest! Get us out of this mess!” so that they won’t be left “on earth alone” when all the men are killed off. “Elmo James” is a more upbeat-sounding return to the poor rural setting of “Patches,” though its storyline is perhaps even more tragic. It didn’t chart at all in the US, but it would become one of the Chairmen’s biggest UK hits.
All three B-sides are worth hearing as well: the Four Tops-like “Working On a Building of Love,” which became a Top 20 hit in
the UK; the New Orleans R&B funk of “Bravo Hooray”; and “Bittersweet,” an ambitious ballad that lent its title to the group’s third album. As with Melvin Davis and the 8th Day, each of the Chairmen (down to three members after the departure of Eddie Custis) released a single under their own name. General Johnson’s “All We Need is Understanding,” a lightly political, upbeat anthem, was pulled from the Chairmen’s second LP, In Session. Harrison Kennedy delivered a full-blooded attack on religious hypocrisy with “Sunday Morning 
People,” a cover of a song that had previously appeared on two Honey Cone albums. The best of the bunch, however, is Danny Woods’ Hendrix-meets-Temptations soul-rocker “Let Me Ride,” backed with the funky grooves of “It Didn’t Take Long.”
Like Chairmen of the Board, the Glass House saw its pop fortunes recede during this period. While their earlier singles were dominated by Scherrie Payne’s sweetly sassy style, both “Look What We’ve Done to Love” and “Playing Games” are led by the group’s male lead singer Ty Hunter. Both are smoother, more traditional soul than the Glass House’s previous singles, befitting Hunter’s status as elder statesman of the group. “Look What We’ve Done to Love” was the bigger hit (#31 R&B, #101 pop), but “Playing Games” is the more interesting track, its breezy mid-tempo groove at odds with its paranoid lyrics.
In fact, the B-sides of both singles outdo their counterparts on the flipside. “Heaven is There to Guide Us” is a funk piano- and bongo-driven gospel number, with Hunter giving his best Pops Staples impression. Scherrie Payne finally gets a lead on “Let It Flow,” singing the hell out of a questionable central metaphor (“beat me with kisses/ torture me with your love/ abuse me with sweetness”). Luckily, Payne got a single released under her own name: “V.I.P.” backed with “It Ain’t the World (It’s the People In It).” Payne is at her most winsome on “V.I.P.,” a gentle pop throwback that Mary Wells might have recorded a decade earlier, but the driving protest song “It Ain’t the World” gives her more to tear into.
While the commercial prospects of many of the Invictus’s star acts were beginning to founder, label eccentrics Parliament earned their first hit (#30 R&B) with “Breakdown,” featuring Steve Mancha of 100 Proof (Aged in Soul) on lead vocals. The single is more conventional than their previous two for the label, taking the form of a dance craze song (“swing your arms up and out / show the power sign!”). Eddie Hazel’s bubbling acid guitar line and the trademark Parliament harmonies on the chorus, however, ensure that it won’t get confused for any other act on the label. “Breakdown” co-writer Ruth Copeland’s last single on Invictus, a serviceable cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” with Parliament as her backing band, is mostly memorable for the breakdown (so to speak) midway through the song: an extended coda jam on the line “love’s just a kiss away.”
Invictus’s white rock band Lucifer also released its final new single for the label in 1971, the vaguely Van Morrison-ish “We Gotta Go” backed with the smooth-jazzy “Don’t You (Think the Times A-Comin).” “We Gotta Go” is easily the strongest Lucifer track on this compilation, if you can get past Eugene Smith’s screechy, tic-ridden vocal style. (This writer can’t.) The following year, the label re-released “Old Mother Nature” with a new flipside, a cover of Hank Penny’s (via Wynonie Harris) novelty Western swing number “Bloodshot Eyes.” Many radio stations seized upon this B-side, making it the band’s most famous recording – strange, as it sounds as if it were released for the express purpose of making “Old Mother Nature” seem far, far better by comparison.
Lucifer may have been an odd fit for the label, but at least they actually recorded in Detroit with HDH. Not so with John Billy West’s “Nothing But a Devil” and Billie Sans’ “Solo,” a pair of singles licensed from a small Texas label called Impresario Records. It’s uncertain how these records attracted the attention of HDH, or even when they were recorded, given that neither of them is exactly the sound of 1971.
The bluesy groover “Nothing But a Devil” is likely the only track West ever released. Even its B-side, “Yeah, I’m a Devil,” features no new contribution from him; instead, it consists of three women talking over the a recording of the A-side and taking umbrage at the lyrics(“listen to that jivetime melonballer calling you a devil – again!”)
“Nothing But a Devil” may have been outside of HDH’s usual poppy sound, but at least it could be classified as soul music. Not so with the “Solo,” which welds a minor-key, Del Shannon-ish verse and guitar riff to a dinky bubblegum chorus. Its B-side, “I Don’t Want to Lose a Good Thing,” is a solid slice of bouncy pop-rock, but it sounds about five years out of date — which is still about half a decade more current than “Nothing But a Devil.”
While that pair of licensed 45s found Invictus expanding its scope beyond its Detroit soul-pop sound, another single found the label drawing from a much closer source: its own founders. Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier returned to their roots as singers, banding together to form a duo called (naturally) Holland-Dozier. Their first single, “Don’t Leave Me,” is also the first on Invictus to be granted the classic “Holland-Dozier-Holland” writing credit. Now that their Motown contracts had expired, the trio were free to retire the “Edythe Wayne” pseudonym. Strangely, the record falls rather flat, with few memorable hooks and an underwritten chorus. None of HDH’s records on this boxset are terrible by any means, but it’s puzzling that the one they wrote and produced for themselves barely surpasses their baseline level of competence.
Meanwhile, The Barrino Brothers, whose previous singles largely sounded like HDH by the numbers, managed to transform themselves from also-rans to the group responsible for one of the highlights of this set. If “Don’t Leave Me” suffered from a weak chorus, the gorgeous weepie “I Had It All” is essentially nothing but chorus, rounded out with a bridge and some spoken word bits. But what a chorus it is — simple in melody and lyric but built up into a heartrending epic through surges of strings and the Brothers’ mountain of harmonies.
While the label’s A-sides during this period were largely as strong as its previous singles in terms of quality, if not sales, the choice of tracks to back those singles shows Invictus perhaps starting to reconsider its profligate ways. From the start, the label regularly filled the flipside of its 45s with stray album tracks, or reused B-sides across multiple singles. (All four of Parliament’s singles for the label, released over the span of two years, featured novelty country number “Little Ole Country Boy” on the flip.) But now, several of the releases were backed with instrumental versions of the A-sides. Whether this was to encourage LP sales, focus attention on the A-side, or avoid giving away strong tracks for free, it was a trend that would become more popular for future releases – as we’ll see with next week’s installment: Part 3: Invictus Records, 1972-1973.
