Q&A: (Smokey Robinson)

When a member of the press once asked the iconic Bob Dylan who were some of his favorite poets, he replied with a list of the usual suspects - Allen Ginsberg, W.C. Fields and Charlie Rich - and one some may think of as less of a poet and more of a singer - Smokey Robinson.

For most baby boomers, Robinson became synonymous with what music critics and fans termed the Motown sound that came out of Detroit in the late 1950s.

Most members of Generation “X” surely know of Robinson and the Motown sound through their parents, but may also know of him and his poetry from a more current artistic platform, the HBO series “Def Poetry Jam.” I first saw Robinson recite a piece of work on the cable show that features various readings of original works written by poets from all over the United States. Robinson read the transcendent verse composition entitled “The Black American.”

Robinson, who became the vice president of Motown Records in 1961, met the label founder, Berry Gordy, in 1958 who was then writing songs for Jackie Wilson.


Robinson's first name is William and he got the nickname “Smokey” as a child because of his love for western films. Robinson was born in Detroit in 1940 and formed his first singing group The Five Chimes in 1955 which became The Matadors in 1957.

Robinson and Gordy wrote the song “Got a Job” and Robinson's high school-based group eventually changed its name again to The Miracles. Robinson convinced Gordy to establish the Motown label and The Miracles were one of the first groups signed in 1960.

Over the years with Motown, Robinson penned thousands of songs for groups such as The Temptations, the Supremes and Mary Wells who made famous the song “My Guy,” and became Robinson's most successful protegee.

Robinson married one of The Miracles members, Claudette Rogers, and the couple had two children.

The Miracles remained a successful act with the Motown label until around 1969, and Robinson quit the group to concentrate on his family and his duties as label vice president. However, when the song “Tears of a Clown” became a hit in 1970, Robinson stayed on with the group until 1972.

Since 1975, Robinson pursued a solo career and recently recorded an album of old standards entitled “Timeless Love” due out on Universal Records June 20.

The Beach Reporter spoke with Robinson last week about his career and the new work featuring songs that first inspired the musical prodigy.

The Beach Reporter: Some people know you for both your poetry and music. Do you feel there is a distinction between writing poetry and songs?
Robinson: To me, songs are just poems with music, and the biggest difference in writing a poem as opposed to a song is that in a poem, you don't have to have a chorus, something that repeats itself back in order to familiarize the person with what you're saying. A poem can just go on and on without having a repetitive sentence or part, but other than that, songs are just poems with music.

Do you write about certain subject matter for your poems that is different from the subject matter of your songs?

Not really. I write songs all the time and I write poems all the time, and I just think that it's my gift. God gives everybody a gift, and so it's not a labor for me and even in those times when it is a labor for me, it's a labor of love. I'm not one of those writers who has to take two months to go off to the mountains and isolate myself so I can write or go down to the beach and rent a little hut. Writing happens for me all day, every day, man. In fact, I've been writing a book of poetry for about 15 years which I've never finished. I really keep telling myself I'm going to get around to finishing it.

You've really been in one group or another since 1972. Was it difficult to leave that world and enter into the solo artist world?

Well, actually, yeah, that was one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make in my life - to leave the Miracles - they were my brothers and I had grown up with them as a child. We were from the same neighborhood. That was a rough decision for me, but at the time, my two - adults they are now - babies had been born and I got tired of being away from them all the time. The Miracles and I had done everything that a group could do; we had done it three or four times. So that was a decision I had to make. I was vice president of Motown at the time, and I figured I'd just do that and I had no inkling of coming back to show business, no desire to return. But after three years of going to the office every day, I was climbing the walls, and that's why I decided to come back and be a solo artist.

I've had a chance to tour Motown and the environment was very democratic in which people working at the label had a vote on what songs should be recorded and other similar decisions like that. Do you think that made you a better artist?

Well, absolutely, because what we had at Motown was competitive love. We were all competing against each other but we all loved each other so we all helped each other out but at the same time all competing against each other.

Did the process vary in terms of writing songs for The Miracles as opposed to writing songs for other artists such as Mary Wells?

It was the same thing for me, whomever I had the idea to write the song for; it was the same whether it was the Supremes, the Temptations or the Marvelettes.

How do you think the music industry's evolution has changed the recording process from your time at Motown?

When I started as a teenager, before Motown, we would use other recording studios in Detroit and everybody who was going to be on that record had to be in the studio at the same time because they just recorded you on one track and the producer and engineer mixed at the time it was recorded. Nowadays, most of the time people who record on the same record may never even see each other. Many people now have home studios, Pro Tools is the recording king now as far as method of recording.

How did you record your “Timeless Love” album?

Well, it's a CD of standard tunes - Gershwin, Porter, Cohen and people like that - because I've been singing their songs in concert in my life for about the last 14 years. It was the music that I was first influenced by and the first music I ever remember hearing in my home. How I recorded was to get a big studio room and we recorded everybody at the same time, and it was a blast. We had like concerts; it was so much fun.

How did you breathe new life into these old standards?

It's just the way I feel them. That's the best answer I can give, it's my interpretation of those songs. My conductor is a guy by the name of Sonny Burke, and he and I got together and I mapped out how I wanted a song to be and then he did the arrangements.