Motown legend Lamont Dossier, a songwriter who composed hits for Supremes and Marvin Gaye among other icons, has died, according to a statement from his son shared on Instagram. He was 81 years old.
“Rest in Heavenly Peace, Dad,” wrote Lamont Dossier Jr. in a post alongside a photo of himself with his father.
The Detroit-born musician and songwriter was a star for Motown Records. Label founder Berry Gordy paid tribute to the dossier in a statement to CNN.
“Lamont was a good friend and will be missed by the entire Motown family. My sincere condolences to his family and friends,” Gordy said.
Dozier, along with brothers Brian and Edward Holland, was a member of the Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting trio. Together, they wrote some of the greatest earworms of the 1960s and ’70s, including “Reach Out I’ll Be There” by The Four Tops, “Stop! in the Name of Love” by The Supremes, and “You Can’t Hurry”. Love,” “How Sweet It Is” by Marvin Gaye and “Heat Wave” by Martha & the Vandellas.
Prior to the group’s inductance into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, composer and writer Andrew Schwartz wrote in 1990, “If Holland, Dossier and Holland’s output had started and ended with these five songs, their words and melodies would be what they are today . resonate too.” “But these acknowledged classics are only the tip of a creative peak that began to take shape three decades ago.”
However, it took some time for the trio to find their footing within the Detroit music scene. In 1963, Gordy joined Dozier and his collaborators with Diana Ross and the Supremes, when neither group had released a star-making hit—and the rest is history.
Dozier was an unconventional songwriter: in a 2004 interview with “Fresh Air”, he explained that he would begin on piano with Eddie Holland, and that the two would begin writing a song based on “a sense of thought or type”. Some of his catchy songs were inspired by phrases he’d heard in life – “sugar pie honey bunch,” anyone? — and, of course, their own romantic getaways, he said.
“I don’t read music, and I can’t even write it,” he told the Detroit Free Press in 2019. “I did it all by ear and by feeling when I was sitting at the piano.”
Speaking to Songwriters Universe in 2005, Dossier recalled his time with Motown Records as “amazing”.
“During this period, everything we touched goes straight into the top 10,” he said. “It was like we stumbled upon the best door on ‘The Price Is Right,’ where the awards keep coming and going! The hits and hits keep on going. Many of our songs have turned into beloved songs from the American Songbook.”
But it wasn’t perfect, the dossier told the Free Press in 2019: “There were a lot of things happening behind the scenes that haven’t been written about — moments where there was sometimes jealousy and jealousy that you had to ignore.” Your ego didn’t come in the way of your talent or your aim, which was to write a hit song.”
After beheading Gordy over royalties, the trio left Motown and started their own labels at Invictus and Hot Wax, where artists such as Chairman of the Board and Laura Lee recorded. In 1973, he explored a solo career as a singer-songwriter, and over the next decade collaborated with artists such as Phil Collins, with whom he wrote and produced the Oscar-nominated song “Two Hearts”.
In 1990, more than 25 years after joining with the Supremes to produce their greatest hits, Dossier was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with the Holland brothers. He recounted this and more wins — as well as some failures — in a 2019 memoir, “How Sweet It Is: A Songwriter’s Reflections on Music, Motown, and the Mystery of the Museum.”
In his memoir, he outlines 19 guiding principles for great songwriting. In the final tenet, he encouraged readers to accept that “there are no bad days”—just “learning days.”
“There is a way to grow and improve,” he wrote. “To live up to your full potential, you have to look at writing and life with humble awe.