Smokey Robinson '& The Miracles

Once pronounced by Bob Dylan as America’s “greatest living poet,” acclaimed singer-songwriter Smokey Robinson’s career spans over 4 decades of hits. He has received numerous awards including the Grammy Living Legend Award, NARAS Lifetime Achievement Award, Honorary Doctorate (Howard University), and the National Medal of Arts Award from the President of the United States. He has also been inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame.
Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Robinson founded The Miracles while still in high school. The group was Berry Gordy’s first vocal group, and it was at Robinson’s suggestion that Gordy started the Motown Record dynasty. Their single of Robinson’s “Shop Around” became Motown’s first #1 hit on the R&B singles chart. In the years following, Robinson continued to pen hits for the group including “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me,” “Ooo Baby Baby,” “The Tracks of My Tears,” “Going to a Go-Go,” “More Love,” “Tears of a Clown” (co-written with Stevie Wonder), and “I Second That Emotion.”
The Miracles dominated the R&B scene throughout the 1960’s and early 70’s and Robinson became Vice President of Motown Records serving as in-house producer, talent scout and songwriter.

In addition to writing hits for the Miracles, Robinson wrote and produced hits for other Motown greats including The Temptations, Mary Wells, Brenda Holloway, Marvin Gaye and others. “The Way You Do the Things You Do,” “My Girl,” “Get Ready,” “You Beat Me to the Punch,” “Don’t Mess with Bill,” “Ain’t That Peculiar,” and “My Guy” are just a few of his songwriting triumphs during those years.
He later turned to a solo career where he continued his tradition of hitmaking with “Just to See Her,” “Quiet Storm,” “Cruisin’,” and “Being with You,” among others.
He remained Vice President of Motown records until the sale of the company, shaping the label’s success with friend and mentor Berry Gordy. Following his tenure at Motown, he continued his impressive touring career and released several successful solo albums.
In 2004, he produced a spiritual album, “Food for the Spirit” and launched a line of soul food entrees. Smokey Robinson Foods’ “The Soul is in the Bowl” products can be found in major supermarkets across the country.
In 2006 he released “Timeless Love,” a new album of standards, and he continues to set the bar by which others are judged. The headline in Rolling Stone’s review proclaimed: “The Motown giant shows everyone how you do a covers album.” The New York Times declared: “To hear Smokey Robinson curl his swooning falsetto around ‘Our Love Is Here to Stay’ is to discover one of the most astonishing reinventions of a standard since pop and soul singers from the 60's and 70's began digging into the past.”
Smokey Robinson continues to thrill sold-out audiences around the world with his high tenor voice, impeccable timing, and profound sense of lyric. Never resting on his laurels, Smokey Robinson remains a beloved icon in our musical heritage.

Essay

The actions of a Detroit school teacher, whom we only know as Mrs. Harris, are indirectly responsible for all the music on this collection and, oh, scores of other songs you would recognise the moment you heard them.

“I was in a play in elementary school,” William “Smokey” Robinson explained some years ago, “and at that time, you learned all of your theatre arts in a class called ‘auditorium,’ and they had a lot of plays.” At Dwyer Elementary in the north end of Detroit, he was six years old, learning to be on stage, in front of others, in a space he would go on to occupy for the rest of his life.

“And I had this scene where I was Uncle Remus and he had this white beard, and I was singing to the other kids in the class about how the pig had a curly tail and how the monkey hung upside down, and all those things, you know.”

Music played a part in the introduction to this drama. “There was this melody that this teacher had,” continued Smokey, “and she gave me a chance to write some words. So I wrote some words for a melody…and I sang it at the beginning of the show. Then at the end of the show, we used it as a reprise, and I sang some different words that I had written.”

Smokey added, “You see, I have always been trying to write songs all of my life.”

* * *

Another tutor, whose name is better known to us than that of Mrs. Harris, showed Smokey how songs required dramatic structure and internal logic. Berry Gordy Jr. began to educate after watching the youngster in a group which failed at an audition to impress the managers of Detroit superstar Jackie Wilson. “We had sung four of five songs that I had written,” said Smokey, remembering the disappointment at being nixed as a poor man’s Platters. “And Berry came outside and asked where we got the songs from, and introduced himself to me.”

Gordy’s own tunes (written with fellow composer Billy Davis) were turning Wilson into a household name, but he wanted to know more about the contents of Smokey’s notebook. “We struck up a conversation about songwriting,” said Smokey, “and he [saw] some more of my songs and gave me some critique. And that is where our relationship started – we were friends right off the bat.”

The fruits of that relationship are the opening trio of tracks on this album – and everything else it contains. The pair’s names as songwriters appear together here only on “Bad Girl,” “(You Can) Depend On Me” and “Shop Around,” but without the mutual support, selfless friendship and creative synergies which Smokey and Berry shared, Tamla/Motown Records would arguably not have existed, survived or succeeded, nor would its influence have seeped into the DNA of popular music during the last half-century.

This relationship, incidentally, is also evident in the names of Robinson’s children, Berry and Tamla – the son arriving in the year that “Special Occasion” was riding the charts, the daughter born when “The Tears Of A Clown” became the Miracles’ greatest hit. Of course, such achievement was beyond imagination when Smokey first met and married Claudette Rogers, and when Motown was years from delivering its – and the Miracles’ – first No. 1 on the Billboard R&B charts, “Shop Around.”

But before these Miracles, there were the Matadors: Smokey, Pete Moore, Ronnie White, Bobby Rogers and his cousin, Sonny Rogers. These five teenagers harmonised in Detroit in the middle 1950s, touched by the music of Billy Ward and the Dominoes, Nolan Strong and the Diablos, the Dells, the Spaniels, the Flamingos and more. Smokey was also aware of an earlier time when – as he explained upon the release of Timeless Love, his 2006 collection of pre-rock & roll standards – “the song was the star,” and when singers such as Sarah Vaughan ruled his heart and shaded his vocal style.

The Matadors matured when Claudette Rogers joined to replace her Army-bound brother, Sonny, in 1957, the year that the group met Berry. Renamed the Miracles and managed by Gordy, they began recording: first in derivative doowop mode (“Got A Job”) with the results leased to End Records, but soon in the ethereal, romantic and naive style exemplified by 1959’s “Bad Girl,” licensed to Chess Records.

“It was our first Motown record,” Smokey explained, “and it started to break so big, we couldn’t handle it because we had no national distribution.” So Chess took over “Bad Girl,” with success. “It was a big, big record for us, it was the one that started us on the road and doing professional dates and things of that type.”

The roadwork was demanding, but it fuel-injected the Miracles’ popularity as their bold, imaginative recordings – fronted by Smokey’s awe-inspiring lead – turned into fixtures on the airwaves and the hit parade. “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me” was not only a major R&B and pop smash in 1963, it also enjoyed the patronage of the Beatles, whose version helped bring the Miracles and Motown to a wider audience. The same year, “Mickey’s Monkey” was not only a top 10 crossover giant, but also touted the talent and potential of Gordy’s newest writing/production team, Holland/Dozier/Holland.

And so “not only, but also” became a Smokey signature. The Miracles made hits and pulled in the crowds, bill-topping the sensational Tamla/Motown Revue concert tours. Robinson created and produced material for his group and for other artists on the Motown roster, including Mary Wells (“My Guy”), Marvin Gaye and the Temptations (“My Girl”).

As the Motown sound evolved, so did that of the Miracles. Their vocal blend remained mellifluous and distinct, but seemed to become richer. It was cushioned, especially on Smokey’s archetypal ballads, by the growing sophistication and virtuosity of Motown’s in-house studio musicians, the Funk Brothers.

The additional X-factor was Marv Tarplin, the Miracles’ own guitarist since late ’58. His fretwork formed the centre of gravity of some of their most memorable sides, including “I Like It Like That,” “My Girl Has Gone” and, of course, “The Tracks Of My Tears.” That song’s co-writer, Pete Moore of the Miracles, recalled, “Marvin used to come up with a lot of licks and melodies, and when Smokey and I heard one we liked, we would follow up and write a song to it.”

Smokey’s versatility was key to the company’s development, and to his growing stature in the industry. He was one of Motown’s major stars and one of its backroom aces, its vice president in charge of acquiring new talent.

The contradictions in his lyrics – the essence of his writing – helped make him the 1960s’ premier romantic and one who was allegedly lauded by the era’s least romantic composer, Bob Dylan, as America’s greatest living poet. “If he did say it,” Smokey joked, “he has probably regretted it by now.”

Smokey not only belonged to the public, but also to Claudette. They shared the road together until she stopped touring in 1965, and they shared the pain of several miscarriages. “More Love” was written to reaffirm his love for his wife when their twin girls died shortly after childbirth that year. It endures as one of his most poignant lyrics, even as it is strongly associated with another singer, Kim Carnes, whose version was a top 10 hit in 1980.

It is as natural as daylight to cover a Smokey song, of course, and those who have done so range from the Rolling Stones to Rita Coolidge, Otis Redding to Jose Feliciano, Terence Trent D’Arby to Tammy Wynette, the Captain & Tennille to D’Angelo, Laura Nyro to Petula Clark, Alabama to Elvis Costello.

To the Miracles, Smokey also belonged. Their bond exceeded 15 years, from those aspirational nights and days in Detroit before anything like a hit record, through the intense excitement of their snowballing stardom and Motown’s explosive growth, to the treadmill which the recording-and-touring cycle became by the early 1970s. “You know, I had grown up with them and known them since I was very young,” Smokey explained. “We had a brotherly love and relationship, and were known as Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, but we all made the same money – everything, record royalties, gigs, whatever it was. You know, the mutual understanding among ourselves caused us to be together.”

The birth of his children changed Smokey’s perspective. “I didn’t want to be away from them all the time, and I didn’t want to be somewhere else and they hardly know me.” And so, in 1972, he and the group parted company. Ron White, Bobby Rogers and Pete Moore recruited Billy Griffin as their new lead singer, and charted a fresh course which included one of Motown’s biggest hits of the 1970s, “Love Machine.”

Smokey took time to find his pace and place as a solo artist, and even filled his life with other pursuits. He made records, certainly – “Baby That’s Backatcha” was a No. 1 R&B hit, A Quiet Storm was an influential top 10 album which also begat a radio format – but he also went to drama school. He hosted his own television special, acted alongside Angie Dickinson in an episode of TV’s Police Story, and spent a couple of years financing and producing an independent movie, Big Time.

The renaissance occurred in 1979. In some respects, that year’s “Cruisin’ “was a throwback to the classic Miracles sound, complete with the warm lines of Marv Tarplin’s Les Paul custom. The record set a new benchmark of solo crossover success for Smokey, at least until bested the following year by “Being With You.” The latter featured another enduring Robinson hallmark: background vocals by Claudette Robinson.

Since then, Smokey’s aim has been true, a succession of sides which retained his signature passion (“Just To See Her,” “One Heartbeat”) or harnessed his knack for a groove. Double good everything, indeed.

ADAM WHITE, Co-author, The Billboard Book Of No. 1 R&B Hits

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