HDH/Hot Wax/Invictus

[aarondillon2011@gmail.com]

Does anyone else wish HDH were able to produce more hits on the label? I finally picked up all the Chairmen Of The Board albums and have Freda Payne on the way. Most of the material is strong and almost reminiscent of their material with Motown just updated. So any clues as to what happened? Change in the music industry? Promotion issues? Lack of interest from consumers?

[woodward]

I personally looked at the HDH hits on these labels as an extension of what they accomplished at Motown. I think they started out great but the switch over to Columbia Records for distribution was a negative. The two books released this year one by the Holland Brothers and the other by Lamont Dozier are must haves for anyone with interest in the Invictus label. Eventually Music Merchant was an associated label with some great artists but the label never achieved the success that Invictus did.

[MIKEW-UK]

I absolutely love Invictus, Hotwax, Music Merchant. There is a very distinctive sound. Some great songs, but definitely not The Motown Sound. The richness of arrangements, the intricacy , orchestral treatments and the overall depth of the aural experience were absent. It was a different stripped down, funkier guitar driven sound which I revered, but it was not Motown and it generally was not crossover material. Whilst I liked and bought all their harder, more aggressive records they lacked the crossover appeal that Motown had.

[Motown Eddie]

Does anyone else wish HDH were able to produce more hits on the label? I finally picked up all the Chairmen Of The Board albums and have Freda Payne on the way. Most of the material is strong and almost reminiscent of their material with Motown just updated. So any clues as to what happened? Change in the music industry? Promotion issues? Lack of interest from consumers?

I Do! I Love the Music that HDH produced at their own labels after they left Motown. As others have said, they had a distinctive sound and Great Songs that fit early '70s Soul to a tee. However, I feel that the quality of the songs declined after Lamont Dozier [[and others) left the Holland Brothers sometime in '72. With sales falling off, the distributors of Invictus/Hot Wax had other Soul Music labels chomping at the bit [[Philly Int'l, T-Neck, Curtom, Etc.) so they were forgotten about when it came to distribution & promotion.