They co-wrote R Dean Taylor’s “There’s A Ghost In My House,” Martha & The Vandellas’ “Jimmy Mack” and the sole hit for The Elgins, the sublime “Heaven Must Have Sent You.” In 1969, the awesome threesome quit Motown and launched their own Invictus and Hot Wax labels. While these began as simple four-chord ditties, HDH songs rapidly became mini-symphonies of love, heartache, and outright loss, such as “Seven Rooms Of Gloom,” “You Keep Me Hanging On” and “Reflections” for The Supremes – the latter one of the first soul records to get to grips with psychedelia. “Baby I Need Your Loving,” “Baby Love,” “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch),” “Come See About Me,” “It’s The Same Old Song”… the records the trio created for the two vocal acts defined mid-60s Motown. HDH were on the way to becoming songwriting legends. Early hits with Martha & The Vandellas (“Heat Wave”), The Marvelettes (“Locking Up My Heart”) and The Miracles (“Mickey’s Monkey”) led to assignments to ignite the careers of two Motown acts that had the talent but not the material: The Supremes and Four Tops. All three had had solo careers at Motown and its subsidiaries in the late 50s and early 60s when they began working together they really clicked.
Holland-Dozier-Holland (HDH) was Motown’s first truly great songwriting team, pairing brothers Eddie and Brian Holland with Lamont Dozier. Holland-Dozier-Holland: Motown’s first truly great songwriting team Smokey had it all… including competition. When times changed, Smokey did too, helping shift soul towards its What’s Going On era in the 70s with “Still Water (Love)” ( Four Tops) and giving an entire soul subgenre a title with his own “Quiet Storm”. “Get Ready” (The Temptations), “One More Heartache” (Marvin Gaye), “Shop Around” (The Miracles) – all were exhortations to the dancefloor. Bob Dylan called him America’s greatest poet, but he was more than that. Smokey Robinson wrote songs that moved the body and the soul. A good pupil, Smokey outstripped the master. Gordy got Smokey to think about songs as a whole and focus on the subject matter. “I had five songs going on within one song,” the Miracle-worker admitted to Jon Wilde in 2016. In 1959 he made The Miracles the first signing to his label, Tamla, and helped Smokey put his songs in order. Wilson’s songwriter was Berry Gordy, who listened to 20 of Smokey’s compositions – before turning them down.
He’d written 100 before he met Jackie Wilson’s songwriter at an audition. Tamla Motown knew the way to a fan’s heart was via the feet, and one of its greatest songwriters was Smokey Robinson. Smokey wrote his first song at the age of six.
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