The name Smokey Robinson is practically synonymous with the '60s heyday of Motown Records.
As the frontman of the Miracles, his vocals led the way on many of soul music's most beloved
hits.
But Robinson wrote plenty of hits for other artists, too, and his legacy on the music
industry stretches far beyond his own songs.
Here are a few things you probably don't know about the Motown great.
William Robinson Junior was named for his father, but the name by which the world would
come to know him was given to him by a different family member — because of a shared love
of the movies.
Robinson told the Los Angeles Sentinel:
"My uncle Claude was my favorite uncle.
He was also my godfather.
He and I were really, really close.
He used to take me to see cowboy movies all the time when I was a little boy because I
loved cowboy movies.
He got a cowboy name for me, which was Smokey Joe."
“Throughout my life, my teachers, everybody… has always called me Smokey.
When I got to be about twelve, they dropped the ‘Joe’ off.”
In his L.A. Sentinel interview, Robinson was asked if, as one story goes, Uncle Claude
gave him the nickname to remind the fair-skinned William that he's black.
His response:
"I've heard that story about him giving it to me because I'm a light-skinned black man,
but that's not true."
Although he had been writing songs and singing with his group the Matadors while still in
high school, Robinson had other plans for himself after graduation.
He had originally thought about becoming a dentist, but balked at the idea after having
to dissect animals in the 12th grade.
Instead, he chose a different career path, and began taking electrical engineering courses
in preparation for college.
To save money, he began working full-time.
He later told the Austin Chronicle:
"I had a job from the time I was 10 years old.
I did everything, delivering papers, shining shoes, worked at the grocery store around
the corner and the drug store"
When he graduated high school, he was offered a full-time spot with telegram company Western
Union.
Robinson explained:
"Rather than going to school in September I just waited 'til January so I could save
up money to buy books and clothes to go to college, and it just so happens that in August,
I met Berry Gordy."
In August 1957, the Matadors landed an audition with Brunswick Records, otherwise known as
the home of the legendary soul singer Jackie Wilson.
They failed the audition, but somebody in the room liked what he had heard.
Smokey later told CBN:
“He stops us and he said, 'Hey, where'd you get those songs from?'
I said, 'I wrote 'em, man.'
He said, 'You wrote all those songs?'
We sang about five songs.
I said, 'Yeah.'"
He introduced himself as Berry Gordy, the man who co-wrote most of Jackie Wilson's early
hits, including "Reet Petite" and "Lonely Teardrops."
Today, Gordy is widely regarded as one of the 20th century's foremost producers and
songwriters.
Robinson remembered:
"He said, 'You got any more songs?'
He never should have said that, man.
'Cause I had a loose-leaf notebook with about 100 songs in it."
The two became friends and the Matadors changed their name to the Miracles.
In early 1959, Gordy formed Tamla Records, which later became Motown, and made the Miracles
one of his first signings.
At their first meeting, Gordy sensed the potential in the youngster and gave him the benefit
of his experience.
Robinson revealed the Austin Chronicle the key to songwriting that Gordy imparted to
him.
He was told:
"You've got to make a song be one idea.
You've got to make it be a short book or a short movie or a short story that has a beginning,
a middle, and an ending that ties it together.
And even if you don't have an ending, you've got to give people enough information so they
can draw their own conclusion to what happened."
Smokey took that lesson to heart, and it eventually paid off with "Shop Around," which he said
he wrote in 30 minutes at the most.
They cut it twice, first as a slow version, but when Gordy thought it needed something
more, a faster version was recorded.
The second take was released in October 1960 and hit the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100
in early 1961, eventually peaking at Number.
2.
It easily topped the R&B chart, too, and "Shop Around" became the first song for the fledgling
label to sell more than a million copies.
It was far from the last.
Smokey Robinson grew up at 581 Belmont Street in the North End neighborhood of Detroit,
only a few doors down from the childhood home of another future Motown legend: Diana Ross.
Her family eventually moved to the Brewster-Douglass housing projects, where she joined a group
called the Primettes, who would later become the Supremes.
She then called upon her old friend to help her get a head start in the music business.
Smokey explained:
"She was getting ready to graduate from high school.
She called me, said she had a group.
She wanted me to hear them.
I heard them.
The rest is history."
Despite a number of rumors to the contrary, however, Robinson has strenuously denied that
the two ever dated.
"We're just close.
And perhaps, um, it might have gotten misconstrued."
For years, it's been widely reported that Bob Dylan — who is credited with changing
the rock 'n' roll landscape by melding the genre with spoken-word poetry — said that
Smokey Robinson was "America's greatest living poet."
But in 2011, former Motown publicist Al Abrams wrote in his book Hype & Soul: Behind the
Scenes at Motown that he was actually the one who gave Robinson that label.
As he recalled, Berry Gordy asked him to come up with a way to promote Robinson, and Abrams
thought it would be a good idea to try to get the endorsement of Dylan.
He asked Al Aronowitz, a music writer and friend of Dylan's, for assistance.
Abrams wrote:
"I asked Al if he would let me get a quote from Dylan about Smokey.
Al asked me what I had in mind and I suggested 'Smokey Robinson is America's Greatest Living
Poet.'
Al thought about it for a minute and said, 'Why bother even telling Bob?
That sounds just like something he'd say anyway.
Go ahead and do it.
If Bob sees it in print he'll think he said it."
When Aretha Franklin was 4 years old, her father, Reverend C.L. Franklin, moved his
family from Buffalo to Detroit after becoming the pastor of the New Bethel Baptist Church.
A year or two later, Robinson, who was 8 years old at the time, befriended her brother Cecil
— and was invited to the Franklin home, which was only a few miles away from Robinson's.
He was impressed enough by their lavish living conditions, but was more impressed still by
the young girl he met that day.
Robinson told Rolling Stone:
"That day, Aretha couldn't have been any more than 5 or 6 years old and she was singing
a gospel song at the piano.
From the time we were kids, man, Aretha could sing.
She never changed.
She was always Aretha."
Their friendship lasted until Aretha's death in August 2018.
Speaking to AARP that November, Robinson expressed regret that they had never recorded together.
However, they did sing a little bit of Robinson's "Ooo Baby Baby" together on a 1979 episode
of Soul Train.
In addition to writing hits for the Miracles, Robinson also wrote hits for Mary Wells, Marvin
Gaye, the Jackson 5, the Temptations, and the Marvelettes — among others.
But there's one Smokey Robinson song that towers above all of them.
After Mary Wells topped the charts with "My Guy," Robinson flipped the gender and came
up with "My Girl," which he gave to the Temptations.
In 2015, Smokey explained:
"I wrote 'My Girl' for David Ruffin's voice.
The Temptations were so creative in making up the background vocals.
[…] All the stuff that they're singing on 'My Girl,' they made that up themselves."
But even though it's remembered as one of Motown's greatest recordings, Robinson has
no problem with the song being associated with another group instead of his own.
He said:
"I always was so happy whenever I got a hit record on one of the artists.
They were my brothers and sisters.
If I could do something to enhance their career and make things better for them, that made
me happy."
Even if you're not familiar with some of the songs on which Smokey Robinson has sung, there's
a good chance you're familiar with some of the many cover versions he's inspired over
the years.
Linda Ronstadt had a pair of hits covering Robinson, for example: "Ooo Baby Baby" and
"The Tracks of My Tears," the latter of which Johnny Rivers got into the Top 10 in 1967.
Robinson's catalog has also been mined for hits by acts as diverse as the Rolling Stones,
Hall & Oates, Otis Redding, Peter Tosh, and the Captain & Tennille.
More recently, his solo hit "Cruisin'" topped the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart in
2000 when it was recorded by Gwyneth Paltrow and Huey Lewis for their karaoke-themed movie
Duets.
And not only did the Beatles record a cover of the Miracles' song "You've Really Got a
Hold on Me," but George Harrison also penned two of his own tributes to Robinson.
"Ooh Baby (You Know That I Love You)" appeared on 1975's Extra Texture and "Pure Smokey"
arrived on Thirty-Three and One Third a year later.
Robinson told Something Else:
"That was a wonderful, flattering thing for him to feel like that, and to write about
it, so that the world could know that he felt like that.
It was wonderful to me, and I'm very flattered by that."
Smokey Robinson had managed to avoid hard drugs throughout the entirety of the '60s
and '70s.
Although he often smoked marijuana, he didn't drink, partly because he didn't like the taste
of it and partly because he had seen the destructive effects of alcoholism in his neighborhood
when he was growing up — some of which reached his own family.
But after "Being With You" gave him another Top 5 hit in 1981, Robinson, at the age of
41, found himself addicted to cocaine.
"If you do that, then you’re gonna suffer the consequences of what goes along with it.
And I did it for two-and-a-half years and I was a walking corpse."
In May 1986, a concerned friend took him to a small church in Los Angeles, where the pastor
explained that God had told her Robinson was coming.
She then proceeded to tell him things that cocaine was doing to him — things that he
hadn't spoken about to anybody else.
He added:
"She told me every one of 'em that night.
She said God had showed her what was going on."
Robinson never touched cocaine again.
While Smokey Robinson is remembered as a recording artist, songwriter, and producer at Motown,
he also helped shape the company's wider vision.
In 1962, only three years after Berry Gordy founded the label, Robinson became its vice
president, which added the role of talent scout to his duties.
He remained in the position until 1988, when Motown was sold to MCA.
After his 1990 album Love, Smokey, Robinson left for a new label, SBK, but returned to
Motown for 1999's Intimate.
As a tribute to all that Gordy had done for him, Robinson and his first wife, Claudette,
who was also a member of the Miracles, named their son Berry and their daughter Tamla.
And the feeling, apparently, was mutual.
Looking back on their time together, Gordy told Billboard in 2017:
"He was the first.
My first artist at Motown, my first writer, my first producer, the one who wrote the company
song that kept our mission in focus.
That's why we called him the 'soul of Motown,' and he's still my best friend."
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