New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Songcraft: Spotlight on Songwriters will launch its milestone 100th episode on October 16, 2018, featuring a wide-ranging conversation with Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Lamont Dozier. Best known as a member of the Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting and production team that was instrumental in defining the Motown sound, Dozier penned classics such as "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)," "Heat Wave," "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie
Honey Bunch)," "Reach Out I'll Be There" and a string of ten Top 10 pop singles for the Supremes, including "Baby Love," "Come See About Me," "Stop! In the Name of Love," and "You Keep Me Hangin' On."
Launched in 2015, Songcraft is a bi-weekly podcast featuring in-depth career-spanning conversations with songwriters from a variety of genres and eras. Co-hosts Paul Duncan and Scott B. Bomar have interviewed Mike Stoller ("
Stand By Me"), Jimmy Webb ("By the Time I Get to Phoenix"), Siedah Garrett ("Man in the Mirror"),
Loretta Lynn ("Coal Miner's Daughter"), Dan Penn ("Do Right Woman, Do Right Man"),
Bill Withers ("Lean on Me"), Lori McKenna ("
Girl Crush"), Steve Cropper ("The Dock of the Bay"),
Don McLean ("
American Pie"),
Bobby Braddock ("He Stopped Loving Her Today"), Mark
James ("
Suspicious Minds"),
Brandy Clark ("
Follow Your Arrow"),
William Bell ("Born Under a Bad Sign"), Randy Bachman ("
American Woman"), and Matraca Berg ("Strawberry Wine"), among others.
Scott B. Bomar is a former staff songwriter at Sony/ATV
Music Publishing. He is a Grammy-nominated writer, researcher, and award-winning author who currently works as the Senior
Director of the book-publishing arm of global music company BMG. Paul Duncan is a musician, producer, and platinum-selling songwriter signed to Centricity
Music Publishing. He's appeared on the Billboard charts with hit singles by Sherrie Austin, Jordan Feliz,
Aaron Cole, and
Lauren Daigle. Duncan co-wrote four songs on Daigle's 2018 Look Up Child album, which recently debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200 chart, just behind
Paul McCartney and Eminem.
"Even though we've both lived in Los Angeles for many years, Scott and I were good friends back when we were growing up in Nashville," Duncan said. "We played in our first band together in high school and spent hours geeking out and talking about our favorite music. Actually, we still spend hours talking about music, so not much has changed." The idea for Songcraftgrew organically from the longtime friends' conversations. "We met up for lunch one day," Bomar recalled, "and Paul suggested that since we talk about music all the time we should just turn it into a podcast. Neither of us had ever actually heard a podcast at that point, but we stumbled into it and ended up creating Songcraft, which was the first serious podcast of its kind in the U.S. I don't think we ever imagined we'd put out 100 episodes, but we can't stop. We're having too much fun."
Bomar and Duncan invited Lamont Dozier, a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, to help them mark their milestone episode. "We thought it would be cool for our 100th interview to find a guest who'd landed at least 100 Top 10 hits on the Billboard charts," Duncan explains, "but that narrows the field pretty quickly. We weren't even sure if anyone had actually achieved that feat." Dozier, who first hit the charts in 1962 writing hits for the Marvelettes, continued to have success beyond his legendary Motown years with songs such as "Give Me Just a
Little More Time" (a hit for both the Chairman of the Board and Kylie Minogue) and "
Two Hearts" (which earned Dozier and co-writer
Phil Collins a Grammy award and an Oscar nomination). Remaining active in music after nearly six decades, Dozier released his own Reimaginationalbum earlier this year, featuring collaborations with Graham Nash, Gregory Porter, LeeAnn Womack, and others. Listeners of the 100th episode will have the opportunity to enter to win a copy of the CD signed by Lamont.
"Soon after we started Songcraft," Bomar recalls, "Rolling Stone magazine released a list of the '100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time.' Lamont Dozier was, of course, part of that exclusive fraternity. Being two guys who love to highlight songwriters, we decided we'd come up with our own list of the 100 other greatest songwriters of all time." Duncan elaborates: "There are so many great and influential writers who deserve recognition, so Scott and I created a list of writers who weren't acknowledged by Rolling Stone. We don't always have the exact same taste in music, so hashing out the rankings together was a big task, but a lot of fun. We're excited to share it."
Listeners can find out more about the 100 Other Greatest Songwriters of All Time, hear the illuminating conversation with Lamont, and listen to all 100 episodes of Songcraftat www.songcraftshow.com.
