William "Smokey" Robinson was born on Feb. 19, 1940 in Detroit. To hear him sing his way through his "The Tears of a Clown" is to understand a lovely, perfect moment in American music. He's a Detroit native and the very soul of Motown, a singer's singer, a poet's own poet, everyone's giving, loving clown and much more. Fellow Kennedy Center Honors Honoree Bob Dylan once called Robinson "America's greatest living poet." That is an unguarded, disarmingly emotional response to a musician whose emotions never fail to ring true. Think not only of his lyrics to "Tears of a Clown," but also of "The Track of My Tears," "Shop Around," "You've Really Got a Hold on Me," "My Guy," "The Way You Do the Things You Do," "Get Ready," "It's Growing," "I Second that Emotion," "Sweet Harmony," "Baby Come Close," "Baby That's Backatcha," "I Am I Am," "The Agony and the Ecstasy," "Open," "Quiet Storm" and "Let Your Love Shine On Me." Impressive by any standards as a string of hits, taken together they add up to a body of work that transformed and defined American music across any pop, soul, R & B or Rock and Roll divide. Perhaps Bob Seeger put it best in Rolling Stone magazine when he recalled nostalgically, "I used to go to the Motown revues and the Miracles always closed the show. They were that good and everybody knew it. Not flash at all. The Supremes had bigger hits. The Temptations had the better dance moves. The Miracles did it with pure music. Back then, the radio played the rougher stuff, [but] Smokey Robinson -- they played him all day. Everybody loved his songs, and he had a leg up on all the other singers, with that slightly raspy, very high voice. Smokey was smoky."
That Robinson wrote his own songs seemed like so much icing on a sweet cake. Everybody loved his songs, everybody still does. Together with The Supremes, The Temptations and the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson, with the Miracles and on his own as a composer, producer and hit-maker, was a powerful and influential creative force alongside Motown's visionary Berry Gordy in combining the naïve sweetness of mainstream American pop with the gritty sensuality of the most daring of rhythm and blues. Doo-wop came of age and the Motown sound was born.
As a child, Robinson was nicknamed "Smokey" because of his love of Westerns. He was just 15 when he founded a doo-wop group called The Five Chimes with four friends from Northern High School.
That Robinson wrote his own songs seemed like so much icing on a sweet cake. Everybody loved his songs, everybody still does. Together with The Supremes, The Temptations and the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson, with the Miracles and on his own as a composer, producer and hit-maker, was a powerful and influential creative force alongside Motown's visionary Berry Gordy in combining the naïve sweetness of mainstream American pop with the gritty sensuality of the most daring of rhythm and blues. Doo-wop came of age and the Motown sound was born.
As a child, Robinson was nicknamed "Smokey" because of his love of Westerns. He was just 15 when he founded a doo-wop group called The Five Chimes with four friends from Northern High School.
Renamed The Matadors in 1957 and joined by Smokey's cousins Bobby Rogers and Claudette Rogers, they began playing Detroit clubs. They changed names again, to the Miracles, and they met up with the young Berry Gordy Jr. who, in 1958, co-wrote for them the single "Got a Job." It was a humorous, nevertheless very positive, answer song to The Silhouettes' hit "Get a Job." The song came true: young Smokey really got a job. Gordy founded Tamla Records in 1959, soon reincorporating it as Motown Records with his friend and protégé Smokey Robinson as vice-president by 1961. The rest is music history.
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