remembering Lamont Dozier with golden shovels
On Monday, legendary Motown singer, songwriter and producer Lamont Dozier died at the age of 81. He was most known for his success as one-third of Holland-Dozier-Holland (H-D-H), the trio that penned and produced 10 chart-topping songs — working closely with The Supremes, The Four Tops, and Marvin Gaye — and dozens more hits.
Their influence helped grow the prolific Motown genre not only in Detroit, but across the country in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Listening back to these songs, and reading through their lyrics, is an exercise in love. Their discography shares stories of the ups, downs and middles of romance — joyful, painful, confusing, everlasting. So often, for so many years, these enduring songs have moved listeners to think of a person, place or time in their own lives. And over decades, many memories have been linked to Dozier’s work — that is one of the magics of Motown.
A “golden shovel” is a poetic form created by poet Terrance Hayes, inspired by Gwendolyn Brooks. It is meant to pay homage. In a golden shovel poem, the final word of each line, read from top to bottom, reveals a line from another’s work.
In remembering, appreciating and listening to Dozier and exploring the writing of H-D-H, here are five vignettes, half-fictional, that respond to the theme and mood of the original song. Each has a ‘golden shovel’ — a particularly poignant lyric from each record.
Unspoken love yous lolling in lips, I recall the way you
embraced, so quickly, the staccato nothings that came
between us, and braided our shared clump of exhales into
silence. Pitter-patters littered our pulled-apart gaze and my
flung-open, churning, high-fructose heart.
It was, through the all of us, a taffy-pull of grief — a muscle so
chewed. Still, we asked for more. Its beats remember sweetness tenderly.
You came into my heart so tenderly
In her pocket, amongst trinkets and dust, an unfinished note begins: Don’t
forget … And she tries — that fleeting ellipses a vessel she thinks to throw
rope to and tug to shore. On the edge of memory’s pond, ripples tickling our
shins and sandy feet, we pull upon that which we’ve shared, a heavy love,
until the taught knot snaps, we’ve fallen to our backs, watching it float away.
Don’t throw our love away
We danced uptempo that summer, drummed-up and together, no
waltz too large or small, no step too high or low, and ridiculed all matter
to do with lines, maps, semantics, place. We were disappearers! Exactly how
we stumbled into shadows and sprinted into sun, that story is long
as time together felt — at least before the whipsaw dulled and it
came time to move again, on to whoever else life gives and takes.
No matter how long it takes
Wrinkle-nosed and froze, whorled eyes on the bumper-bumper traffic — I’ll
never forget you or that old leather-scented car, and I never won’t be
nostalgic for the drives we shared, Motown blaring, speakers vibrating there
in the stand-still machines. You touched my arm in reassurance — I don’t
remember where we drove and it didn’t matter, there was no haste nor worry.
I’ll be there, don’t worry
A sky evoking spinnakers, stars pockmarking its gray canvas like holes. You’re
fickle as breeze itself, I said, clearing my throat of its dampening grief, the
smear of a firefly on the salty curb like chalk leaking from a soul.
Immersed in both moonglow and minutia, noises of living and the best of
melodies ebb, like freon dribbling cold through space, gusting ever into me.
You’re the soul of me
