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OUR MOTOWN RECORDING HERITAGE |
Second Chapter |
MAY 25, 2002
ISSUE |
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OUR MOTOWN RECORDING HERITAGE
- Second Chapter
chronicles the Detroit Motor Town scene after
"The Great Exodus" of their #1 Songwriting & Production team of
Holland-Dozier-Holland. The vibe of Motown began to die
on West Grand Blvd.
but the vibe lived on in the HDH "splinter" group. |
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Our
Motown Recording Heritage - Part 17 |
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DIVIDED WE FALL |
By Bob Dennis |
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The Motown Years |
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The explosion of Motown was
largely due to the Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting/producer team. Motown had
captured 10% of the market in 1964, but a full 75% of the releases
that were hits were written and/or produced by the HDH team
members. Theoretically, at least, HDH by themselves could have
been the biggest hit record company in the world. |
| But by 1967 the
relationship between this writing team and Motown was getting
strained. Because HDH was so important to Motown, BG had let
Brian Holland know that he would be getting a block of stock in the
company. When that didn't come about, Eddie Holland
suggested a label deal with Motown where the team would write and
produce for 3 new acts. When BG said no to this, the team
left Motown to start their own label, outside of Motown. They
established both the Hot Wax and the Invictus labels. |
| The New Labels
Build |
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The three team members of HDH were under
exclusive writing contracts with Motown, but nothing prevented them
from being music publishers - which brought in just as much money.
In part 16 of this series I described how
they used their vast talent to develop new writers for their new
publishing company - keeping a flow of hit songs coming.
Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland were under exclusive production
contracts with Motown, but Eddie Holland was not. Eddie had
been helping with production for years, so there was nothing
preventing him from being the producer. It looked like they
could keep the team operating much like it did before, without
Motown. |
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Almost instantly
the new HDH labels started getting hit records. They had the
Hot Wax Records label distributed by Buddah Records and the Invictus
label distributed by the giant Capitol Records. They went with
two different national companies so that they could not be
exclusively under the control of any one company - an business
decision that they should have stuck with. Over the next
few years they got a dozen gold records with these labels, on
artists such as the Honey Cone, Freda Payne and the Chairmen of The
Board. |
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Divided We Fall |
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HDH left Motown early in 1968 and for a while
were a major force in the industry, producing black recording
artists. But by 1971, it became apparent that all was not well
in music-land. By that time, Buddah Records had gone
under, leaving HDH with only one national distributor. |
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Although hit singles kept coming, album sales
through the Capitol distribution system were disappointing.
Record companies make the majority of their profits though albums,
not singles. HDH began feeling that Capitol would never get
the kind of album sales that they knew were possible with their
black artists. The team knew that they would never have
a completely successful record company unless something was done to
get better album sales. Then Clive Davis called... |
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Clive Davis was the CEO of CBS Records
(Columbia/Epic labels). CBS was the biggest major record
company in the world. CBS wanted to make its mark in the black
music segment of the industry. Because it didn't have the
in-house staff to create this type of music, they wanted
associations with independent black labels. CBS told HDH that
they could , with their superior distribution, sell three to four
times the records that Capitol could. |
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After switching to CBS the problems really
intensified. Report of records doing well on radio, but
without product in the stores began to surface. Sales
dropped for albums and even for the main product of HDH, the hit
singles. |
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CBS had not only gone after distribution of HDH
product, but the distribution of every major black independent
record label. Once critical deals were made, all of the
black labels being distributed by CBS suffered from reduced
sales. CBS began to offer the black artists on those
labels new deals to have the artists abandon their independent
label and contract directly with CBS as artists. The same type
of arguments were used to convince the artists to switch, "You can
sell more records though us." When the Jackson Five and
Michael Jackson switched from the Motown Label to the CBS Epic
Label, the "raiding" was all but complete. |
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Deceit, raiding and underhanded business
practices would be the words used by the black labels. I'm
sure CBS would describe it differently. I think, however,
the proof lies with the result. |
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Copyright © 2002, by
Robert Dennis, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED |
Published in Recording
Engineer's Quarterly and Alexander magazines with permission |
USE OF THIS ARTICLE SUBJECT TO USER AGREEMENT |
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