Holland-Dozier-Holland Heaven Must Have Sent You

Motown classics are the stuff of legend and well they should be. For years, the songs exiting the Motown hit factory rose to the top of the charts, ruling the rare air of Number Ones and forcing coins to slip down the chutes that fired jukeboxes into life. Even today, oldies radio cannot go an hour without spinning several of Motown’s endless best. One of the intrinsic elements for a lot of that instant success came from a trio of songwriters that held a legend all of their own, the word and melody rich talents of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland.

As individual performers, this group learned, first-hand, how to develop songs that worked with audiences, after which, their formation as a songwriting unit broke records unmatched today. It is therefore necessary to create an accessible boxed set that celebrates the genius and brilliance of this trio known to the world as Holland-Dozier-Holland despite the fact that we can get a similar collection in other ‘best of’ sets that round up many of the same tunes. However, to fully acknowledge the essence of their hits-writing skills, you need to absorb it in the detail and sequence that is found on Heaven Must Have Sent You, Motown’s tribute to one of the best teams in song-writing history.

The set is spread over 3 discs that mixes songs sung by Eddie Holland, and Holland-Dozier, with a few from Lamont Dozier, along with the original version of hits as written by the trio and sung by the original artists. The songs run the gamut from Marvin Gaye’s “Can I Get a Witness” to The Supremes’ “Baby Love” and “You Can’t Hurry Love” as well as Four Tops’ “Reach Out, I’ll Be There” and Matha & The Vandellas’ “(Love is Like A) Heat Wave.” It didn’t stop there. There were a fair share of their words and melodies that found themselves hits for performers on other labels as well. The Band recorded their excellent “Don’t Do It,” found on Rock of Ages and released by Capitol; Freda Payne laid down the Top 40 hit, “Band of Gold,” released by Invictus Records; while The Chairmen of The Board sang the trio’s “Give Me Just a Little More Time” in 1970 also for Invictus Records. You’ll find The Doobie Brothers’ version of “Little Darling (I Need You)” from the band’s Warner issue of Livin’ On the Fault Line, and Simply Red’s “You’ve Got It” from their 1989 eastwest released album, A New Flame.

Suffice it to say, Holland-Dozier-Holland not only fed the hits machine with a multitude of their gold-mined words and melodies, but they also helped to keep careers afloat with their seemingly endless stream of classics. Song-writers come and they go. Some of them enter the upper atmosphere by writing hit after hit, often for the same unit, a situation that also speaks volumes to the talents of Holland-Dozier-Holland, who wrote material for a wide spectrum of artists, but none of them sit in the proverbial heaven of songwriting talent like Holland-Dozier Holland does. Simply, they’re a class apart from all the others.

The 3 discs are fitted into a tri-fold 5.5”x7.5” box with a 28-page booklet tucked into a slot. The booklet contains near exhaustive details about the 65 songs found on this collection as well as a pile of photographs, and an informative and well-written essay by Adam White, a former editor of Billboard magazine. The Hip-O issue of Heaven Must Have Sent You, the 3-disc, 28-page booklet box set is a required set for Motown lovers and Holland-Dozier-Holland aficionados, especially completists. This compilation is NOT another excuse to extract dollars; rather, it is a reverential nod to the legendary talents behind the hits of many.