They were hard on us, because these were jazz guys, ... Earl Van Dyke and Joe Hunter were always on our backs. I'd show them different chord progressions, and they'd say, 'What kind of playing are you doing, man? That's not a C chord.' I'd say, 'Yes, that is a C chord ...when we started getting hits, then they stopped bugging us.

Lamont Dozier

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We wanted to guide the musicians, so we could create our own sound. We would never let the band just go in and play the chord sheets. We were very focused on what we had in mind for these productions.

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He was fussy and very childlike. He'd be a handful, ... He'd have you so angry, but then he'd come up and hug you. He was just aggravated and somewhat fearful about the key. But we knew if we made him stretch, he'd have to invent something for the performance, slide off into a little falsetto, and it just worked.

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You can't write all those little nuances, inflections that they'd do, ... James and Benny, playing off each other, they'd come up with something ten times better than what you thought you had.

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