Description
Folks remember Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland for their musical talents as writers, producers, and arrangers. What's frequently overlooked is their business talents. Along those lines, The 8th Day stand as a perfect example of how innovative the Holland-Dozier-Holland team could be when it came to marketing and the business side of things.
Without wasting a lot of time, when the Holland-Dozier-Holland team left Motown in 1968, they quickly set up their own labels - Invictus (distributed by Capitol) and Hot Wax which was affiliated with Buddah. By 1970 both labels had enjoyed a string of hits; Hot Wax scoring with the likes of The Flaming Embers, Honey Cone, and 100% Proof Aged In Soul. The latter enjoyed a substantial hit with the single 'Somebody's Been Sleeping In My Bed' and when radio stations began fishing around for a follow-on single, they latched on to the song 'She's Not Just Another Woman'. Concerned that releasing another 100% Aged In Soul single would cannibalize sales of the group's first single, H-D-H decided to release 'She's Not Just Another Woman' on Invictus with a credit to a different band - in this case The 8th Day.
The only problem came when the song began picking up airplay and H-D-H found themselves with a top-20 hit, but no band to promote it. That small issue didn't stop them from releasing two follow-up charting singles. At that point H-D-H decided to recruit a band centered around Detroit singer Melvin Davis and release an 8th Day album. Davis had previously released a string of solo efforts and had worked for H-D-H recording demo material for several years. Several of those earlier "guide" tracks (Davis was reportedly paid $100 per song), subsequently appeared on the 8th Day debut LP. With production credited to Holland-Dozier-Holland, the cleverly titled "8th Day" pulled together the first two singles (for some reason the third single 'I Could See the Light' wasn't included);. Those tracks were bolstered by what appeared to be two more tracks from the 100 Proof Aged In Soul LP - 'Too Many Cooks (Spoil the Soup)' and 'I've Come to Save You'. The track line up was rounded out by two tracks from a Melvin Davis single ('I'm Worried' and 'Just As Long') and what appeared to be a couple of new studio efforts. Interestingly, although they weren't credited with any of the material, the sound on many of these songs was pure H-D-H (the absence of songwriting credits probably a result on ongoing litigation with Motown). Davis was the real find here, with one of the best voices to ever work with H-D-H and Tony Newton's bass lines were simply fantastic - check out his work on 'You've Got To Crawl (Before You Walk)', or 'I'm Worried'.
![8th Day - You've Got To Crawl - [STEREO]](media/video-thumbnail/161604-0.jpeg)
