"Reach Out I'll Be There" (The Four Tops)

Chances are, if you hear a song by Martha & The Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, or The Four Tops from the mid-1960s, it was written by the team of Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Brian Holland.  In all, the trio composed more than 50 Top 10 hits, including 25 #1 songs, for Motown Records between 1962-1968.
One of my favorite Holland-Dozier-Holland compositions is "Reach Out I'll Be There" (1966), as performed by The Four Tops.  It's a song that has so many memorable elements from start to finish--from the galloping rhythm in the intro (created by using timpani mallets on the plastic head of a tambourine with its cymbals removed) to that dramatic, intricate bassline, played by the inimitable James Jamerson of The Funk Brothers.
In a Sound On Sound online piece from February 2008, Dozier recalls his writing partner Brian Holland sitting down at the piano and playing a minor-hued pattern that had an almost Russian or Gypsy feel.  Dozier says Holland played around with the melody for awhile, but ultimately was stumped about where to go with it.  So Dozier sat down next to him at the piano and decided to go "into left field with a totally different feel," playing a verse that shifted the melody from Holland's moody minor key to a major key, giving it a gospel feel.  
In a separate 2013 Wall Street Journal article about the making of the song, Dozier notes that he and his writing partners also were listening to a lot of Bob Dylan in 1966.  As much as they admired him as a lyricist, they really liked Dylan's half-spoken, half-sung delivery on his songs, and they wanted to write something for Levi Stubbs, lead singer of The Four Tops, that had that same feel.  Says Dozier, "We wanted Levi to shout-sing 'Reach Outs''s lyrics--as a shout-out to Dylan."
So, there you go: it's one part Dylan, one part Russian/Gypsy folk song, one part gospel, and completely Motown.