Smokey Robinson
Taught that every song must have a beginning, a middle and an end, a Detroit boy's notebook became the poetry of Motown.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The people beside him ⏳🌊
- FamilyLucy Robinson
His mother, who died in 1950 when he was ten; afterward he was raised by his sister Geraldine.
- MentorBerry Gordy
The man who taught him that a song must tell a story; at his urging he founded Motown and made him vice president.
- ColleagueClaudette Robinson
A founding member of the Miracles who built harmonies alongside him and married him in 1959.
- ColleagueMarv Tarplin
The Miracles' guitarist and his songwriting partner, who helped craft the guitar lines of “The Tracks of My Tears” and “Cruisin'”.
- FriendshipMarvin Gaye
A Motown colleague and longtime friend, he sang “I'll Be Doggone” and “Ain't That Peculiar,” which Robinson wrote for him.
- ColleagueStevie Wonder
He handed Robinson an instrumental demo he had made himself, and the tune became the group's first pop No. 1, “The Tears of a Clown.”
I. The boy from the North End · 1940–1955
(Birth) He was born in February 1940 in Detroit, Michigan. His given name was William Robinson Jr. The family lived on Belmont, in the North End on the city's north side. An uncle who used to take the boy to cowboy movies called him “Smokey Joe,” and he would use the nickname as his stage name for the rest of his life. (Loss) In 1950, at ten, he lost his mother, Lucy. His father was still around, but the one who kept house and raised him was his older sister Geraldine. While raising several children of her own, Geraldine took in her youngest brother as well. In interviews and in his memoir, he would speak many times of the debt he owed her. (Neighbors) The North End was full of gifted children. Nearby lived the family of a girl who would one day become Diana Ross. He was best friends with Aretha Franklin's brother Cecil and was in and out of the Franklin house. He has recalled more than once how he remembers young Aretha singing at the piano. (The ear) At home, records by Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine filled the air. What captivated him as a teenager was the high, slender tenor of Nolan Strong, who led the Detroit doo-wop group the Diablos. Singing along with that voice, he found his own range. He says he had been scribbling lyrics since about the age of six, and while at Northern High School he filled a notebook with songs of his own. A few years later, that notebook would change his fate.
II. The notebook and the label · 1955–1960
(Formation) In 1955, he formed a vocal group, the Five Chimes, with high school friends including Ronnie White and Pete Moore. The group soon changed its name to the Matadors, and Bobby Rogers and his cousin Emerson “Sonny” Rogers joined. When Sonny enlisted in the army, his sister Claudette Rogers took his place. In 1958, the group took the name the Miracles. (Audition) In 1957, they auditioned for Jackie Wilson's managers and were turned down. In the room was Berry Gordy, a young songwriter who wrote for Wilson. Gordy took an interest in the notebook Robinson had brought along, but pointed out that while the rhymes worked, the songs told no story. Robinson has said many times that he adopted this lesson, that a song must have a beginning, a middle and an end, as his songwriting method for life. (Going independent) In 1958, “Got a Job,” the first single Gordy produced, came out on End Records in New York, but the money that came their way was a pittance. Robinson persuaded Gordy to stop handing songs over to other people's labels and to start a company of his own. Tamla Records opened in 1959, and the following year Motown Record Corporation was incorporated. In November 1959, he married Claudette. (First hit) “Shop Around,” released in the fall of 1960, told the story of a mother advising her son not to rush and to choose carefully. The song was driven by a structure in which the lead tossed out a line and the members answered it (call and response). It reached No. 1 on the R&B chart and No. 2 on the pop chart, giving Motown its first million-seller. It was the first fruit of the storytelling he had learned from Gordy. The flip side (the B-side) carried his ballad “Who's Lovin' You.”
Telling a story with a beginning and an end, as Gordy had taught him, it was the first million-seller, the record that gave Motown a place to stand.
- The version widely known today is the second recording. Unhappy with the slow first take, Gordy reportedly called the members in at midnight to recut it at a faster tempo, and played the piano himself.
- Robinson's high tenor unspools the plot in something closer to storytelling than singing. Because it is framed as a mother's advice, the ear follows the tale from the very first line.
- A back-and-forth in which the lead tosses out a line and the members answer (call and response) runs through the whole song. Drawn from church music and doo-wop, this structure was the backbone of the early Miracles.
- Heard side by side with the slow first take, it makes plain how much a single change of tempo can transform a song's character.
III. Motown's poet · 1961–1966
(Vice president) In the 1960s, Gordy made him a vice president of the company. While performing as lead singer of the Miracles, he also worked as a producer, writing songs for other artists and directing their sessions. “My Guy,” which he wrote for Mary Wells, went to No. 1 on the pop chart in 1964. (The Temptations) He gave the Temptations their first big hit with “The Way You Do the Things You Do.” Then “My Girl,” written with Ronnie White, became the group's first No. 1 in 1965. On that song he put the rough, urgent voice of newcomer David Ruffin out front as lead. For Marvin Gaye he wrote “I'll Be Doggone” and “Ain't That Peculiar.” Gaye and Robinson were colleagues at the same company and longtime friends. (Across the Atlantic) In 1962 the Miracles released “You've Really Got a Hold on Me.” The following year the Beatles put the song on their second album. John Lennon and George Harrison openly spoke of their admiration for him, and in 1976 Harrison released “Pure Smokey,” a song dedicated to him. (Tears) 1965 was the year his songwriting came into full maturity. “Ooo Baby Baby” and “The Tracks of My Tears” explored the heart of someone hiding sorrow behind a smiling face. Underneath “The Tracks of My Tears” lay a short repeated figure (a riff) worked out by guitarist Marv Tarplin. Beginning that same year with the album “Going to a Go-Go,” the group was billed as Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.
When the Beatles covered it the following year, the song carried his name across the Atlantic.
- Robinson has said he was inspired to write it by Sam Cooke's “Bring It On Home to Me.” Its traces linger in the slow, rolling rhythm.
- Robinson sings lead, but Bobby Rogers sings nearly the same melody alongside him, so the two voices overlap as if they were one.
- Its theme is the contradictory heart that loves yet suffers in love's grip. In the chorus the voice climbs higher and turns to pleading.
- The Beatles recorded it on their 1963 album “With the Beatles,” with John Lennon singing lead. The original's slow sway and the Beatles' straight-ahead rock reading are well worth comparing.
Released in 1965, this is the song in which self-abasing address and falsetto perfected his signature ballad mood. Pete Moore of the Miracles co-wrote it.
- Robinson's head voice (falsetto) is nearly the whole song. Relaxed and floated high, it sounds like the trembling of someone begging forgiveness.
- The members stretch out the short call of the title beneath him, and soft harmonies wrap around the lead vocal.
- The accompaniment is restrained and the tempo so slow that even the pauses for breath sound like part of the song.
- It is a song in which someone who has done wrong apologizes. Instead of dazzling high notes, it builds its feeling through a humble confession.
The song in which his lifelong theme of sorrow behind a smiling face comes through most clearly. It is also the high point of his songwriting partnership with Marv Tarplin.
- The guitar riff in the intro is Marv Tarplin's. Tarplin played him the short figure first, and Robinson recalled that it took him a long time to find a story to fit it.
- At its center is the image of someone who smiles in front of others but cries inside. The voice begins evenly and gradually reveals the feeling it has been hiding.
- Where the verse gives way to the chorus, the rhythm section gains force and the members' harmonies thicken, lifting the emotion a notch.
- A fixture on all-time great-song lists across many publications, it is counted among the standards of the Motown ballad.
IV. The clown's tears · 1966–1972
(The party) At Motown's 1966 Christmas party, Stevie Wonder handed him an instrumental demo he had made with producer Hank Cosby. No one had yet been found to put words to the tune. Hearing a melody that called to mind a circus band, he thought of a clown. Then he wrote lyrics around the old theme of a clown hiding tears behind his laughter. “The Tears of a Clown” was quietly tucked onto the 1967 album “Make It Happen.” (Wordplay) “I Second That Emotion,” a hit the same year, grew out of an everyday slip of the tongue. While he was shopping for gifts at a department store with fellow songwriter Al Cleveland, Cleveland swapped one word of an idiom of agreement for the wrong one. The two of them took the phrase just as it was for the song's title, he recalled. Turning a funny turn of phrase into a love song was one of his specialties. (Reprieve) By the late 1960s, he was worn out by nonstop touring. His duties at the company were growing, too. In 1970, as he was making up his mind to leave the group, the three-year-old track “The Tears of a Clown” was released as a single in Britain and went to No. 1. Soon it topped the pop chart in America as well. It was the group's first pop No. 1, and he put off his departure. (Farewell) In the summer of 1972, he finished a farewell tour and left the Miracles. Billy Griffin took over as lead singer. That same year, when Motown moved its base from Detroit to Los Angeles, he too settled in the West.
The song in which he dressed Stevie Wonder's melody in a clown's story. Arriving three years late, this hit held him back from leaving the group.
- The circus-like sound in the intro comes from a bassoon. The backing track Stevie Wonder and Hank Cosby built spins round and round like carousel music.
- A joyful dance-floor groove collides head-on with sorrowful lyrics. The song is built so that the brighter it sounds, the more painfully its story lands.
- The lyrics borrow the clown of the Italian opera “Pagliacci,” carrying on the old theme of laughter onstage and tears behind the curtain.
- Recorded in 1967 and left buried on an album, it was released as a single in Britain in 1970 and went to No. 1, then reached No. 1 in America as well.
V. The quiet storm · 1973–1986
(Solo) In 1973 he released his first solo album, “Smokey.” The first few years, spent balancing his duties as vice president with a solo career, were a search for a sound of his own. The answer came with the 1975 album “A Quiet Storm.” Opening with the sound of wind, the title track of a little over seven minutes was night music, layering falsetto upon an unhurried tempo. (Radio) In 1976 Melvin Lindsey, a host at WHUR-FM, the Howard University station in Washington, D.C., launched a late-night program of soft R&B ballads played back to back and named it after this album. The approach spread to Black music stations across the United States. In the process, quiet storm grew beyond the title of one album into the name of a radio format and a genre. (Comeback) In 1979 “Cruisin’,” written with Marv Tarplin, climbed to No. 4 on the pop chart. It was his first big success as a solo artist. In 1981 “Being with You” reached No. 2 on the American pop chart and No. 1 in Britain. It proved that a hit songwriter of the 1960s could still connect in the post-disco market. In 1995 D’Angelo sang “Cruisin’” anew on his debut album, “Brown Sugar,” handing it down to a new generation. (Parting) In 1986 he and Claudette divorced. It ended 27 years of marriage to the woman who had built harmonies with him onstage since the days of the Miracles. He was nearing fifty by then, and the next chapter would be a time of looking back and setting things in order.
This is the song in which he found his own sound as a solo singer. Its title later became the name of a radio format and a genre.
- It opens with a wind sound effect and runs for more than seven minutes. Its very breathing is different from that of a three-minute radio single.
- Robinson’s falsetto is stacked in several layers, so that one man’s voice seems to spread out like a small choir.
- A bass repeating slowly in the low register and soft percussion create an unhurried groove.
- The mood of this song became the name of a late-night radio program. Ever since, it has served as a kind of benchmark for the mellow R&B ballad.
Written in a reunion with Marv Tarplin, his partner from the Miracles years, this is one of the biggest successes of his solo era.
- Tarplin’s gentle guitar opens the song, showing that the songwriting rapport the two had shared since the 1960s carried over into the solo era.
- It begins at a slow tempo, and toward the end Robinson’s voice climbs higher and higher until it soars into falsetto.
- Strings and backing vocals support it, giving the sleek texture characteristic of soft R&B production in the late 1970s.
- In 1995 D’Angelo sang this song anew on his debut album. The original and the new generation’s interpretation are worth hearing side by side.
VI. The elder storyteller · 1987–2026
(Hall of Fame) In 1987 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That same year he released the album “One Heartbeat,” and the following year its track “Just to See Her” won him the Grammy for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. For all the hits he had written, it was his first trophy in a competitive Grammy category. (Memoir) When Gordy sold Motown in 1988, he too stepped down from the vice presidency he had held for so long. The next year he published an autobiography written with the author David Ritz, “Smokey: Inside My Life.” In it he also revealed, in his own words, his struggle with and recovery from cocaine addiction in the mid-1980s. (Tributes) He received the National Medal of Arts in 2002 and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006. In 2002 he also remarried, to Frances Glandney. At Michael Jackson’s 2009 memorial in Los Angeles, he read the tributes sent by Diana Ross and Nelson Mandela. On their 1969 debut album the Jackson 5 had sung his song “Who’s Lovin’ You,” and young Michael’s performance remains the definitive reading of it. (Today) In 2014 he released “Smokey & Friends,” a duets album revisiting old songs with Elton John, James Taylor and others. In 2016 he received the Gershwin Prize, the Library of Congress’s award for popular-song composers. Well into his eighties he kept releasing new albums and taking the stage. The craft of storytelling he learned from Gordy at seventeen had been his work for nearly 70 years.
Lesser-known stories
(Guitarist) Around 1959 the Primettes, Diana Ross’s group, came to him, an older kid from the same neighborhood, asking him to set up a Motown audition. He granted the favor and brought the group’s guitarist, Marv Tarplin, over to the Miracles. It is a detail usually left out of the story of how the Supremes began, but many of the Miracles’ signature guitar lines grew out of this encounter. (The check) A widely told story holds that the royalty check for “Got a Job” came to a mere $3.19. That sum lent weight to Robinson’s argument that handing songs over to someone else’s label left nothing for them. That such arithmetic lay at Motown’s origin is seldom mentioned, overshadowed by the success story. (Crossed paths) “Being with You” was originally written with Kim Carnes in mind, just after Carnes had scored a hit with her cover of his “More Love.” But at producer George Tobin’s urging, he ended up singing it himself. In 1981 the song that kept it from No. 1 on the American chart was, as it happened, Carnes’s “Bette Davis Eyes.” (Hall of Fame) In 1987 only his name entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; the other Miracles were not inducted alongside him until 2012. Because of the practice at the time of honoring only the lead singer, this went long unnoticed. (The quote) The claim that Bob Dylan called him America’s greatest living poet has trailed nearly every introduction to him for decades. Yet some point out that when and where Dylan actually said it has never been clearly confirmed.
Glossary 📚🔎
Falsetto
(Etymology) The Italian falsetto is falso (‘false’) with a diminutive suffix attached, meaning a small false voice. The name carries the idea that it is a sound other than one’s ordinary speaking voice. (In pop) A technique of using the vocal cords thinly and lightly to produce notes far above one’s normal range; in Korean it is called gaseong (‘false voice’). Because it sounds soft and slender rather than powerful and belted, it is often used to express whispering or pleading emotions. If you have ever mimicked a friend’s voice in fun with a very high, thin sound, that is falsetto. Smokey Robinson used this voice like the central instrument of his ballads.
Call and response
(In pop) A form in which one person sings a line (the call) and others take it up as if answering (the response). It arose from the tradition of preacher and congregation trading words in Black churches, and carried on into gospel, blues, soul and doo-wop. It has the same structure as a stadium crowd where one side shouts the team’s name and the other answers with a chant. In the Miracles’ early songs, the exchanges between the lead vocal and the other members drive the song forward.
Doo-wop
(Etymology) The name doo-wop comes from meaningless sounds. The nonsense syllables sung by the members holding up the harmony, sounds like “doo-wop,” became the name of the genre itself. (In pop) Vocal group music sung with voices alone, without instruments, by young Black men on street corners and stoops in American cities of the 1940s and ’50s. One person sings the melody while the rest stack harmonies in low and high voices and even make the rhythm with their mouths. Picture friends at karaoke with no backing track, one singing while the rest go boom-boom, bah-bah to imitate the band. The Miracles, too, started out as a doo-wop group like this.
Producer
(Etymology) The English produce comes from the Latin producere, meaning to lead (ducere) forward (pro). It is a fitting name for the work of drawing out the sound inside a singer and turning it into a record. (In pop) The person responsible for the whole of a recording. The producer decides which songs to choose, which instruments and players to use, and how the singer should deliver each passage, and also polishes the sound after recording is finished. It is much like the drama teacher in a school play who, though not an actor, chooses the script, casts the roles, sets the stage and leads rehearsals. Smokey Robinson sang himself while also working as producer for other artists such as Mary Wells and the Temptations. (Elsewhere) In economics it refers to a producer who makes goods, and in film and broadcasting to the producer who gathers money and people to develop a project.
B-side
(In pop) In the vinyl era, a single carried one song on each side. The front (the A-side) held the lead song aimed at airplay and sales, and the back (the B-side) a lesser-known one. Now and then, though, a B-side song found a love all its own. It is like the toy prize in a snack bag becoming more popular than the snack. “Who’s Lovin’ You,” the B-side of “Shop Around,” was later sung anew by the Jackson 5 and lives on almost as a signature song.
Riff
(In pop) A short, catchy melodic phrase or accompaniment pattern repeated within a song. Usually played on guitar, bass or piano, it serves as the song’s face, letting you recognize it the moment you hear it. Like the rhythmic chant repeated during jump rope in gym class, it is short but keeps coming back, so the body remembers it first. Marv Tarplin’s guitar line that opens “The Tracks of My Tears” is a fine example.
Quiet storm
(Etymology) It means a quiet storm. The name joins two opposing words: calm on the surface, yet churning with fierce emotion. It comes from the title of Smokey Robinson’s 1975 album. (In pop) In 1976 Melvin Lindsey, a radio host in Washington, D.C., created a late-night program of soft, slow R&B ballads played back to back and named it after this album. As the approach spread nationwide, it became the name of a genre for mellow, velvety nighttime R&B. Think of a playlist you put on quietly before falling asleep. Only this playlist is mostly love songs.