Dozier-Holland: Invictus Records

Description

Holland, Dozier and Holland are undoubtedly among the greatest songwriters of all time. More prolific than Lennon and McCartney, they shaped the “sound of young America” and propelled the Motown sound in the mid-1960s to heights of creativity unmatched by any other independent label. Their trademark: catchy teenage love songs, performed with energy by then-unknown Detroit groups such as the Supremes, the Four Tops, Martha & the Vandellas and Marvin Gaye. Although inseparable from Berry Gordy’s Motown, it was their departure from Motown, after a strike in 1967 and a fierce legal battle, that led them to found their own label group: Invictus, Hot Wax and Music Merchant. This compilation offers a definitive look at this historic period, exploring how H-D-H, under its new name of “Creative Corporation,” propelled the new generation of soul music in multiple directions, toward funk, underground disco and jazz. One of their main ambitions when opening Invictus was to recapture the same overflowing creativity that had made Motown successful and to discover artists capable of reproducing the national success of the Four Tops, the Supremes and Marvin Gaye. The fact that they partly succeeded is a real feat. Illustrated by award-winning author Stuart Cosgrove, who wrote the Soul trilogy, a series of books on soul music and social transformations: Detroit 67: The Year That Changed Soul, Memphis 68: The Tragedy of Southern Soul (winner of the 2018 Penderyn Music Book Prize) and Harlem 69: The Future of Soul. Comprising 68 tracks, this compilation explores the creativity, expression and evolution the trio was experiencing at the time, with tracks by Chairman Of The Board, Freda Payne, Honey Cone, Glass House, Flaming Ember, 8th Day, Laura Lee and Eloise Laws.