The Unhooked Generation: Holland-Dozier-Holland After Motown – Part 4

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).

The 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 Harmless Records to coincide with the 45th anniversary of the formation of Invictus and Hot Wax.

Part 4: Invictus Records, 1974-1977

The end of 1973 found Holland-Dozier-Holland in crisis. Hot Wax Records, the sister label to Invictus, closed up shop, as did Music Merchant, the trio’s third labed formed just one year earlier. Nearly every act on the Invictus roster, apart from Chairmen of the Board, had either fallen apart or left for greener pastures. Most critically, Lamont Dozier himself had split for a solo career, leaving Brian and Eddie Holland to try to postpone the sinking ship’s inevitable nose-dive.

The brothers concentrated on their one remaining label, moving star act Laura Lee and journeyman Lee Charles from Hot Wax to Invictus, and rehousing Eloise Laws, a promising newcomer who’d cut a pair of singles for Music Merchant. The line-up was fleshed out with some Brian Holland solo material, as well as a handful of one-off singles either licensed from other labels or intended to launch the careers of new artists. This edition of Invictus managed a few minor R&B hits in 1974, but by year’s end, the Hollands had begun focusing their writing and production talents elsewhere.

Before Dozier’s departure, HDH worked on Dionne Warwick’s 1973 album Just Being Myself for Warner Brothers. By late 1974, however, the Hollands were back at Motown, despite the fact that they were still entangled legally with their former employers. The brothers contributed to a teenaged Michael Jackson’s final Motown recordings, as well as the last three albums by the Supremes, the group they had made into superstars a decade earlier (and which now featured Scherrie Payne of former Invictus act the Glass House). Two of the men responsible for the quintessential girl group’s first Top 40 single, 1963’s “When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes,” were also behind its last, 1976’s “I’m Gonna Let My Heart Do the Walking.”

Soon afterward, the Hollands attempted to revive Invictus and Hot Wax, but only managed a combined total of eight singles across the two labels before both folded in 1977. Yet while the last days (or years) of the once-promising HDH empire may lack the hits of its early era, scattered amid the decline is a wealth of dead-ends, detours, and shoulda-been classics.

Chairmen of the Board’s quartet of 1974 singles falls into all three of those categories at once. All four singles, plus 1973’s “Finders Keepers” (from Part 3 of this series), were pulled from the LP Skin I’m In.  The album was produced by Jeffrey Bowen, a Motown-turned-Invictus staffer who often collaborated with Parliament-Funkadelic, and married fellow Invictus/Parliament affiliate Ruth Copeland. Various P-Funk musicians turn up among the Chairmen’s backing band on the album, lending it a darker, more groove-based sound than the smooth pop-soul that had made the group one of HDH’s biggest stars. Skin I’m In flopped, but the album has since acquired a minor cult following due to its unusual style and artistic cohesion — a rarity among HDH-related LPs, which tended toward the “collection of songs” approach.

“Life and Death” is a version of the Sly Stone two-chord incantation that had previously been a modest hit for Abaco Dream (as “Life and Death in G&A”) in 1969. On Skin I’m In, it’s stretched into the second and fourth parts of a four-song suite at the end of Side 1. It’s not the most obvious choice for a single, but its processed, near-unidentifiable electronic instrumentation and mantra-like repetitions of, “If it feels good, it’s all right” are mesmerizing. “Skin I’m In” (the LP’s title track) carries over some of its spacey production elements, but weds them to a more conventionally-structured pop song, creating a psych-soul sound not unlike what Norman Whitfield was cooking up for the Temptations.

Between those two singles, the Chairmen released a pair of 45s with slightly more obvious pop appeal: “Everybody Party All Night” and “Let’s Have Some Fun.” But even those two tracks are more sinister and strange than their titles suggest. “Everybody Party All Night” is built on a distorted acid-rock guitar line, aggressive horn charts, and martial drums; its insistent chants of “Party / Party / Party Party Party” seem less like a suggestion and more of a command. The dub reggae-flavored “Let’s Have Some Fun” is more insinuating, its laidback island groove laced with rattlesnake rattles and demonic giggles.

While the Chairmen we have come to know and love — General Johnson, Danny Woods, Harrison Kennedy — may have split after Skin I’m In, Invictus wasn’t quite ready to close the book on the group. When the label bounced back in 1976, its very first single was “You’ve Got Extra Added Power in Your Love,” billed to “Chairmen of the Board ft. Prince Harold.” Despite the name, none of the original lineup appeared on the record, a decent mid-tempo disco number doused with heavy doses of talkbox.

When Laura Lee emigrated from Hot Wax at the start of 1974, she became the other established act on the newly consolidated Invictus. Like the Chairmen, however, her hit-making days were behind her, though her first single for the label managed to climb to the middle reaches of the R&B charts. The horns and electronic organ backing “I Need It Just as Bad as You” give the track a Stax flavor that suits her gritty voice, while the “I’ll cheat on you if you cheat on me” theme recalls her biggest hit, 1971’s “Women’s Love Rights.”

Her final single for Invictus was a stranger choice: a cover of Holland-Dozier’s “Don’t Leave Me Starving for Your Love” that seems to use the same backing track as the original, just with Lee’s and her backing singers’ vocals layered over the top. Holland-Dozier’s version (covered in Part 3 of this series) had already been a sizeable hit by the label’s standards, and, naturally, Lee’s version didn’t scale those chart heights. She then left Invictus for a brief stint on Ariola Records, later trading secular music for gospel.

Eloise Laws had actually signed with Invictus back in 1972, but her recordings for that label ended up released on HDH’s short-lived Music Merchant instead. So her “move” to HDH’s flagship label was in name only, though perhaps with the promise of increased attention and promotional resources. “Touch Me,” her first single released through Invictus, was the best thing she had been given to date, a dramatic disco-funk-rock hybrid that anticipates Donna Summer, albeit with a warmer, more soulful sound. Along with Chairmen of the Board’s singles of this era, it’s the most contemporary-sounding thing Invictus would release, and perhaps the one with the greatest hit potential. Yet “Touch Me” had the misfortune of being the last single Invictus would release before packing up at the end of 1974, and thus vanished into the ether.

As if to make up for wasting her potential, the Hollands chose Laws to be one of the focal points of the relaunched Invictus in 1976, remodeling her into a disco diva. “Love Goes Deeper Than That” isn’t as exceptional as “Touch Me,” but it equally deserved to be a hit. After the release of its B-side-turned-follow-up, the less notable “Put a Little Love In It (When You Do It),” Laws left for greater success at ABC Records, the label that also sheltered Freda Payne and Lamont Dozier after they departed Invictus.

Brian Holland may have spent 1974 writing and producing for other artists and trying to keep his label afloat, but he also somehow managed to release two singles of his own. The first, “I’m So Glad,” is pleasant but not especially memorable. The other, however, ranks with “Don’t Leave Me Starving for Your Love” as one of Holland’s best releases as a performer. “Let’s Get Together” finds Holland in full loverman mode over a loose up-tempo groove highlighted by horns and a mellow-but-insistent electric organ riff, featuring the immortal lines, “You talk about love and peace / But what you want is a piece of love.”

The rest of 1974 was padded out with one-off releases often written and produced by outsiders — a necessity, given that much of the Invictus staff had bailed by this time. There’s very little information to be found on Hi Lites — the liner notes of the Harmless box set omits them entirely! — but the breezy, O’Jays-ish “That’s Love” ranks among the best of these one-offs. The songwriting credit for Keith Barrow hints that it may be an early recording by the singer who’d hit with “You Know You Want to Be Loved” later in the decade, something which the falsetto lead vocals and sweet Philly sound seem to corroborate.

Earl English’s “Wanting You” apparently came to Invictus through the same deal that brought “That’s Love” to the label, as the production of both records is credited to “Thomas Associates.” “Wanting You” is even better than that Hi-Lites track, borrowing from Bill Withers’ low-key, direct vocal style and adding a quietly anxious jazz-rock backing. English released a couple singles on local Detroit labels with his band the Apaches, but this appears to be his lone solo effort – a shame, as it suggests an intriguing musical viewpoint left unexplored.

If “Wanting You” is the cream of the one-offs, Natural High’s repetitive funk exercise “Bump Your Lady” is the low point, though it at least has a spark of fun to it and barely exceeds the two-minute mark. Tyrone Edwards’s “Can’t Get Enough of You” is more enjoyable but leaves less of an impression – it’s very much HDH by the numbers, and by this point is a few years out of date.

Unlike the rest of the one-offs, Lee Charles had a bit of history with HDH productions. The previous year, Hot Wax had licensed a single by him that had been recorded in his hometown of Chicago (discussed later in Part 6). For his lone Invictus 45, however, Charles came to Detroit and laid down a cover of former labelmates Honey Cone’s “Sittin’ on a Timebomb (Waitin’ for the Hurt to Come).” His version isn’t really different enough to justify its existence, but it’s nevertheless a terrific reading of a song that was unjustly overlooked.

When Invictus relaunched in late 1976, the only new act to join Eloise Laws and the recast Chairmen of the Board was the funk-dance act New York Port Authority. The NYC-based group’s “I Got It” is a dynamic semi-instrumental that mingles synths, horns, and punchy drums. The follow-up “I Don’t Want to Work Today” is less interesting musically, but has the honor of being the very last single Invictus would ever release before closing up shop in 1977.

Thus the promising enterprise that Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland started eight years earlier limps to a close. But while this may be the end of Invictus, it’s not the end of the series. Next week’s installment, The Unhooked Generation, Part 5: Hot Wax Records, 1969-1971, rewinds the clock back to the early days of Holland-Dozier-Holland’s other label, when Top 40 hits and gold records flowed like honey from a cone.