Come and Get These Memories: The Story of Holland-Dozier-Holland
336
Come and Get These Memories: The Story of Holland-Dozier-Holland
336eBook
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781787591837 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Omnibus Press |
| Publication date: | 10/17/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Edward Holland is best known as a member of the legendary Motown writer/producer trio Holland-Dolland-Holland, the team behind numerous hit records by artists such as 'Martha and the Vandellas,' 'The Supremes' and 'The Four Tops.'
Dave Thompson is the author of over 150 books, including co-written memoirs with New York Doll, Sylvain Sylvain, Motown legends Brian and Eddie Holland (forthcoming), Hawkwind's Nik Turner, the Yardbirds' Jim McCarty, Fairport Convention's Judy Dyble and more. A columnist for Goldmine magazine, his work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, Alternative Press, Mojo, Record Collector and many other major publications. He has contributed to music documentaries produced by VH-1, A&E, the BBC and others. Born in the UK, Thompson is now a resident of Delaware, USA.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Kidnap
Eddie: It was the most significant moment in my life, and not only do I not remember it, I was not even aware of it until I was nineteen years old. Until the day I asked my mother what was the worst thing that ever happened to her. She replied, it was the day that I was kidnapped.
But to me, reflecting on her story then, and looking back on it today, the kidnapping was merely the prelude to something far more meaningful. The fact that I was found again.
For if I hadn't been, not one line of the story that my brother Brian and I are about to tell would have occurred.
I would have been raised and grown up with other parents, siblings and friends. My entire life would have been utterly altered. I would never have known Brian or my sister, Carole. Would never have met Berry Gordy and Lamont Dozier. Would never have written those songs. Nothing in this book would ever have happened.
But I was found. I did know those people. We did write those songs. All because my mother got me back.
This is the story she told me.
It was a beautiful spring day in April 1940, an early taste of sunshine after what had been a typically bitter Detroit winter. My mother had thrown open the windows of the house we shared with my grandmother, Ola. She parked me in my stroller outside the front door, so I could catch a little sun. Every so often, she would look out to check on me while she went about her daily routine. The morning passed by without incident. Just another day.
Until she looked out and my stroller was empty.
She burst out of the house, onto the street. She was hysterical, looking this way and that, crying, screaming uncontrollably at the top of her lungs. "Where is my baby? Oh God! Where is my baby? Help, somebody help!" Other neighbours were streaming out onto the sidewalk.
Her pleas for help were answered almost immediately.
An old man living across the street had seen the entire episode unfold. He was sitting on his front porch when he saw a woman approaching our house. She glanced into our yard and spotted the stroller; took a few steps towards it, and saw me laying there. Then, as fast as she could, she scooped me up into her arms and took off down the street, not running, but walking faster, her illicit bundle cradled in her arms.
The neighbour continued watching as she walked a few blocks further down the street and into a house.
He called from across the street. "It's okay, Mrs Holland. I saw everything." He started pointing down the street, telling her where the lady had gone. My mother asked him which house. Then she ran as fast as she could, into the woman's yard, banging on the front door. "Give me my baby! Give me back my baby!"
The woman came to the door. "She looked into my eyes," my mother told me. "She knew that I knew, and she said, 'I have him.' She disappeared into the house, then came back and handed me my baby."
My mother said she had never felt relief like that in her life. She was so happy to get me back. She couldn't even be angry. She held me to her breast, feeling her heart rate finally slow, the adrenalin subside. But she had to ask. "Why did you take him?"
"Because he's the most beautiful baby I've ever seen," the woman replied. "I was walking by, saw him, and I couldn't help myself. I had to have him. I'm so sorry."
My mother was stunned. She didn't even know what to say. She simply turned and carried me home. And that's the way she described the worst thing that ever happened to her.
I cannot even imagine what went through her mind, but 19 years later, the memory of that discovery still set her heart racing. I could still see the panic in my mother's eyes as she relived that awful moment. But talking to her, it was ancient history. It was not something she thought about very often. I was sorry I put her through the pain of remembering.
For me, however, who had never heard this story before, it was as though it had just happened ... and was still happening. All that day and deep into the night, and even today, all these years later, I sometimes reflect and cannot shake that story from my mind.
What if the neighbour had not seen that woman grab me? What if she had not lived down the street but had come from a different part of town altogether? What if my mother had never found me? Where would I be now? What kind of life would I have led?
I cannot answer those questions and I don't want to. She did find me. That is what I focus on. My mother found me, and it was the most important thing that has ever happened to me.
Our mother, Evelyn Virginia Everett, was the eldest of four children. She was born in 1917, in the town of Comer, Georgia. Her brother, James, arrived the following year and in 1921, the twins, Dorothy Marie and Richard, were born.
The family had moved to Detroit by that time, one of thousands that trekked out of the American south in the years that followed the First World War, in search of work at the automobile factories that were springing up around the city.
As I grew up, I discovered that many of my friends could tell a similar story. Their parents or grandparents, too, had fled the south, where life was hard and money was sparse. Many of them moved north. The assembly lines at Ford, Chrysler, General Motors and Packard promised better opportunities than anything the south had to offer. Ford was also offering equal pay to blacks and whites, regardless of skin colour.
Not that Evelyn's father, Howard, had any intention of taking a job in any of them. He did work there for a short time, but he found it too confining.
Howard Everett was born in 1892, and worked on his father Richard's farm until the army called him up in 1917. His real loves, however, were tailoring and music. He could make you a suit as soon as look at you. That's how he earned his living. Then, to relax, he would sit at the piano, playing spiritual tunes.
He was a stocky man, a familiar sight around the bars of Comer. And the town itself was booming, a small place with very big ideas. It was still a young town, almost exactly the same age as Howard. It was incorporated on January 1, 1893 and took its name from one of the first settlers to live in the area, a Mr A. J. Comer, a century before.
At that time, the place was known as Honey Pond and, by the end of the American Civil War, Comer's blue-eyed, fair-skinned descendants owned the entire area. They grew cotton for miles around, and the area flourished. There was a railroad, farmland and everything a modern town could need. So the locals set about creating one. Hotels, schools, stores, blacksmiths, cotton gins, fertiliser plants, a newspaper – Comer had it all.
Howard's parents, our great grandparents, Richard and Millie Everett, were certainly impressed by it all. Sometime around 1890, they left their home in Pleasant Hill, 100 miles away, and took the Comer Road to this exciting town-to-be. There they raised their family and their first grandchildren, too, before Millie Everett passed away in 1919. Then, when Richard followed her to the grave in March 1921, Grandfather Howard made the decision to sell the farm and move north to Detroit, Michigan.
Howard was married now, to a local girl five years his junior, named Ola Smith – apparently she was no more than fifteen or sixteen when they wed.
Ola was the eldest of five children and, when her mother had died, it was Ola who'd had to take responsibility, but not only for her own siblings. Her father, Jerry Smith, soon remarried a girl barely a few years older than Ola and, in quick succession, there were four more babies to be cared for. Ola got on well enough with her stepmother, a lady with the magnificent name of Texas Smith, but the burden had been too great. She had decided to leave home and get married.
Now it was time for Howard and Ola to leave Georgia, so they did. They packed up their belongings, gathered up the children and took the train 740 miles north to Detroit.
They did not make the journey alone. Ola's brother, Gordon, travelled with them; and, over time, other members of the family – including Texas and her now-grown-up children – would join them in Detroit. Gordon even moved into the house next door to Ola and Howard on Lumpkin Street, in the north of the city, and his three children, our cousins George, Roberta and Hattie Elizabeth, would become our greatest playmates while we were growing up.
Evelyn's sister, our aunt Dorothy, and her husband Richard Dean were also in Detroit, and their son James would be another close cousin. Many of Grandfather Howard's 15 brothers and sisters were soon in the city as well.
Life wasn't bad at first. Howard had savings – some $3,000, or the equivalent of $40,000 today. It was enough to buy the family home, and it kept them buoyant, too. But then the stock market crashed and the Depression set in. His savings were completely wiped out.
Ola quickly found a job at the Ford factory. In fact, most of the family worked there, and most of Detroit as well. Even our mother, long after she finished high school, worked at Ford for a time, and who did she meet while she was there? A young man named Berry Gordy Jr.
Our grandfather Howard, as I've mentioned, worked for Ford a short time, but he had no interest in clocking in and out every day. Life, he believed, was for living, and you could not do that in a factory. Not when you could earn money making suits for whoever wanted one, and spend your free time playing piano and whistling. He loved to whistle! Walking down the street, he would reach up, pluck a leaf from a tree or bush, put it to his mouth, and the most remarkable sounds would come pouring out. We could never, ever, learn how to do that, no matter how hard he tried to teach us.
So Howard went about his life, happy as can be, with just one dark cloud hanging over him.
Ola!
She hated what she saw as his random, careless lifestyle, and never knowing how much, if anything, he'd contribute to the family budget in any given week. Particularly with four children to raise.
Putting even greater strain on Ola and Howard's marriage, their son Richard, Dorothy's twin, was diagnosed with epilepsy, following a fall while he was still a toddler. One day he was playing on the porch and Ola, who was watching him, had to turn away for a few minutes. While she was gone, he climbed onto a balcony, slipped and fell, and hit his head. At a time when medical care of any description was out of the reach of many working class families, Richard passed away when he was just fifteen.
Ola never forgave herself for the death of their son. She never spoke of him, though. All the while we were growing up, we would see pictures of the twins in the cabinet. We recognised Aunt Dorothy, but not the young man alongside her. I asked who he was – Ola never answered. But she would visit his grave every Memorial Day.
Eddie: I was fifteen years old before I found out who he was, when I happened to ask my cousin George. He simply said, "That's Dorothy's twin."
* * *
Some time in the mid, maybe late 1930s, our mother met and married our father, Edward Holland Sr. He was older than her, born in North Carolina in 1915. His family had also moved to Detroit during the 1920s.
A widower (his first wife died in childbirth), Edward worked as an auto mechanic and he was one of the best around. He could strip an engine and have it back together and purring perfectly without even breaking a sweat, we were told. He also worked as a bump and body painter for a while, but the thing he was best at was making money.
He was the kind of guy who was high living. He would play golf, go horseback riding, boating, fishing, hunting. He was never short of cash. The only problem was, he wouldn't spend it on his family.
We know very little about his family background, only that his mother (our grandmother Mary's) father, Lawrence O'Bryant, was half African- American and half Creek Indian, and worked as a linesman throughout the south; and her mother Molly was mulatto, mixed with a little Irish and Cherokee, and kept a very strict household. She also absolutely dominated her children, to the extent of telling them what they should name their own kids!
But Grandmother Mary was strong-willed as well, so when Will Holland came around, she married him, even though he was old enough to be her father. Anything to get away from her mother.
Will left the south first, heading up to Detroit in the hope of finding work. Mary and their son, Edward, our father, were left behind, expecting Will to send for them once he had settled. Time passed, however, and they didn't hear a word. Finally, Mary's brother passed on a rumour that Will was now living with another woman.
Leaving little Edward with her brother, Mary made her own way north, to discover the rumours were true. Not being the kind of woman who would take any such nonsense from a man, she promptly left Detroit and moved to Chicago, where she quickly secured work.
Learning what had taken place, Will Holland, meanwhile, hired two of his associates to travel back down to North Carolina to seize the boy. Then they brought him back to Detroit, where he lived with Will and his new partner. Our father, who was seven or eight years old at the time, used to ask the woman where his mother was. Cruelly, she would respond, "She gave you away. She didn't want you."
It was a lie – Mary had had no choice. But it would be 10 years before Edward saw his mother again, by which time she had earned, and saved, sufficient money to return to Detroit and buy a house ... in cash. Edward moved in with her and could not have been happier. But the damage to his relationships with women had been sealed.
Mary, too, carried the guilt from that lost decade, locked deep inside of her and endured throughout the remainder of her life.
Eddie: I was the recipient of all the love our grandmother Mary had not been able to bestow upon our father. She really spoiled me and I became the centre of her life. Grandmother Ola was a disciplinarian and very strict. Grandmother Mary was the complete opposite. She always doted on me by telling me how beautiful I was. Ola, on the other hand, would never say that to me, or even allow anyone else to say it in front of her. She didn't want it to go to my head. She felt it spoiled children.
We were all born about 16 months apart, Eddie, Brian and our sister, Carole. Our parents, however, did not remain together for long. They loved each other but they didn't get along. They were both such headstrong people, and Dad could only take so much fussing. He didn't like people interfering with his life and telling him what to do. He would simply do whatever he wanted, coming and going as he pleased.
He was a very handsome man as well, and women found him extremely attractive. They had trouble keeping their distance from him and he had trouble keeping his distance from them. Finally our mother couldn't put up with his misbehaviour any longer, but with all her fussing, he left.
He went to live with his mother, our grandmother Mary, for a time, and he remarried, to a lady named Ossi. This marriage lasted around four or five years before he divorced and moved to Chicago, where he married for a fourth time.
Eddie: My first memory as a child is about my father although, unfortunately, he isn't in it. My mother, Brian and I were living on Goddard Street, in Detroit. I must have been about three years old, and I remember looking out of the window, waiting for my father to come and pick me up. He and our mother had already separated by that time, but he was supposed to be coming to see me that day.
I was crying because he was already late. I must have stood in that window all day. But he never showed up and I was very hurt. Even today, I sometimes wonder if maybe that's the reason I have a problem with trust, particularly because my mother always said that on the occasions when our father was around, he was the parent I was most drawn to. He had such a magnetic personality! He fascinated me. He would drive around Detroit on his Harley Davidson with his motorcycle club.
Growing up, I would stay with him at his mother's, sometimes for a week or so. I enjoyed being with him, hanging out together, visiting his friends or other relatives in the evening. Or he would take me out to get a haircut (I hated that!), or to buy new shoes.
He had a way of talking and laughing that appealed to me so much, and when I grew up, I was amazed by the strength of his personality.
Brian: I don't remember much about our father, apart from the motorbike rides. He had a big Harley Davidson motorbike, and he'd come by and take us for the most hair-raising rides on the back. "Get on and hold on tight," he'd say and then zoooooom. You'd feel it in the pit of your stomach, and forget holding tight – you'd be clinging on for dear life.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Come and Get These Memories"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Omnibus Press.
Excerpted by permission of Omnibus Press.
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Table of Contents
Foreword by Barney Ales,
Introduction,
Chapter One Kidnap,
Chapter Two A Family History,
Chapter Three Boys Will Be Boys,
Chapter Four Music Music Music,
Chapter Five Enter the Creator,
Chapter Six Motown Love,
Chapter Seven The True Meaning of Royalties,
Chapter Eight Living in a New World,
Chapter Nine The Birth of a Legend,
Chapter Ten Baby I Need Your Loving,
Chapter Eleven Hitsville from the Inside,
Chapter Twelve Diana, Mary and Florence,
Chapter Thirteen A Baby Love Story,
Chapter Fourteen No Stopping Us Now,
Chapter Fifteen With The Beatles,
Chapter Sixteen Big Decisions,
Chapter Seventeen Storm Clouds Forming,
Chapter Eighteen When Good Friends Fight,
Chapter Nineteen Invictus Rising,
Chapter Twenty The End of the Beginning,
Chapter Twenty-One Return to Motown,
Chapter Twenty-Two Murder Happen,
Chapter Twenty-Three My Heart Wants to Try One More Time,
Chapter Twenty-Four Back in My Arms,
Epilogue Esther,
Selected Discography,
Highlights — Awards and Honours,
All The Hits — HDH on the Hot 100,
Chronology of Selected Compositions and Productions,
Selected Productions,
Solo Recordings,
Collected Listening,