Speaker 1: Pushkin Smokey Robinson as if having one of the most
Speaker 1: beautiful and distinctive voices of all time. One enough, he's
Speaker 1: also one of the greatest songwriters of all time, a
Speaker 1: top notch producer, engaging performer, and then an indispensable part
Speaker 1: of the founding and fabric of motown. In other words,
Speaker 1: he's an institution of American music unto himself. But sometimes
Speaker 1: I wonder if he's hiding in playing sight. A fus
Speaker 1: music lovers take him for granted. This week, on February nineteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, he'll be turning eighty five years old,
Speaker 1: and because he's been around as long as he has,
Speaker 1: performing year round, still putting out albums, I think maybe
Speaker 1: we're prone to forget just how monumental he is to music.
Speaker 1: With that in mind, and with Smokey preparing to head
Speaker 1: out for another run on the road, including a three
Speaker 1: night engagement at the Venetian in Las Vegas, we sat
Speaker 1: down for a conversation about his life and legacy. Hopefully
Speaker 1: it'll be the first many conversations we have on broken
Speaker 1: record with the great Smokey Robinson. This is broken record
Speaker 1: liner notes to the digital age. I'm Justin Mitchell. Here's
Speaker 1: my conversation with Smokey Robinson. To see the video version
Speaker 1: of this episode, visit YouTube dot com slash Broken Record podcast.
Speaker 1: So happy to hear you have a Cadillac, because it's like,
Speaker 1: whenever I go to Detroit, Man, that's the most beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: I go to Detroit and you're like, yeah, I'm here
Speaker 1: because everyone's got you know, it's Cadillac. It's uh.
Speaker 2: You know, his field was right down the street from
Speaker 2: General Motors. Man, and everybody had his field.
Speaker 1: It's all American made. When you go to Detroit, it's
Speaker 1: the most beautiful thing you ever seen. Man.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: And so you still and you're still you're still driving yourself.
Speaker 1: You don't want most of the time, you don't want
Speaker 1: to call man.
Speaker 2: I'm a very normal guy. Man. You know I don't
Speaker 2: have chauffeurs and all this. You know what, I'm independent.
Speaker 1: Did you ever have a period of time where you thought,
Speaker 1: let me try, let me, let me get a chauffeur.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, I only use the shaufe If I'm
Speaker 2: going somewhere official, to a gig, or to the Grammys
Speaker 2: or the airport something like that, you know, I'll have
Speaker 2: a guy who drives me for that.
Speaker 1: But for my regular What's what been very successful for
Speaker 1: a long time as an incredible songwriter, singer, company man,
Speaker 1: record mad I made VP of Motown for a period
Speaker 1: of time as well. I'm an incredible career. What has
Speaker 1: kept you grounded all these years?
Speaker 2: What's kept me grounded the fact that I recognize the
Speaker 2: fact that I'm very, very, very blessed man. You see,
Speaker 2: I'm living my impossible dream. You know, as a child,
Speaker 2: this is what I want to do with my life.
Speaker 2: And I just from where I grew up in the
Speaker 2: hood and all that just wasn't going to be possible,
Speaker 2: you know. So I'm I'm very I'm very blessed man,
Speaker 2: and I don't take it for granted. You know. I've
Speaker 2: seen thousands of people come through show business. Man, I've
Speaker 2: been doing this forever and they get hit record or
Speaker 2: something like that, and they think, oh gosh, the world
Speaker 2: cannot possibly do without me. Now they know me, So
Speaker 2: I'm in You know, that's a bad mistake, man. You know,
Speaker 2: I tell them all the time. If you think he
Speaker 2: can sing, let me take you to my church on
Speaker 2: Sunday and let you hear your sister Ada Maybell. You
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying. So it's just, you know, you
Speaker 2: have to you have to recognize the source and and
Speaker 2: and and what allows me to do this. And I
Speaker 2: you know, I just thank God has blessed me to
Speaker 2: do it. And so that's how I feel about it.
Speaker 1: I mean you when you say that, when you say,
Speaker 1: if you come across someone who thinks they can sing,
Speaker 1: let me take it to your church, I mean that
Speaker 1: has been reality for your whole life. Coming from Detroit
Speaker 1: where at eight years old, you know Aretha Franklin and
Speaker 1: Irma Franklinton and her father, Reverend Franklin, and you know
Speaker 1: the four.
Speaker 2: Times and Daniel Ross lived Flordo was on the street
Speaker 2: from me. Ridiculous.
Speaker 1: You know what, what was primo town when you all
Speaker 1: guys were just growing up and singing and just knowing
Speaker 1: each other. Did you realize how insane it was that
Speaker 1: you guys all had these magnificent voices?
Speaker 2: You know what, man, I tell people all the time. See,
Speaker 2: I think that we, first of all, we were we
Speaker 2: were fortunate that there was a lot of talented kids
Speaker 2: and young people in Detroit. And like you said, I
Speaker 2: grew up with most of them because you know, Rees
Speaker 2: Franklin right around the corner from me, And until Aretha passed,
Speaker 2: she was my longest living friend because all of our
Speaker 2: other friends in the neighborhood were gone, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, except for her and Diana, you know. And
Speaker 2: so so I grew up with these people, and uh,
Speaker 2: the the the We had a lot of talented people
Speaker 2: around there, you know. But I believe that in every
Speaker 2: big city, in every town, every little village anywhere in
Speaker 2: the world, radio wise, with the amount of people that
Speaker 2: they're that might be that same amount of people ratio wise.
Speaker 2: We had Barry Gordy, you know what I mean. We
Speaker 2: had a young man who had a dream, who about
Speaker 2: eight hundred dollars from his family to start what became
Speaker 2: Motown internationally, you know what I mean. So that's a
Speaker 2: special man, you know. And he was our teacher, he
Speaker 2: was our groomer, you know. And when I met him,
Speaker 2: he was just a songwriter and a record producer in Detroit.
Speaker 2: He was a young man and I met him quite
Speaker 2: by chance. I tell everybody it was a god day.
Speaker 2: Because the miracles and I we weren't called the miracles
Speaker 2: at that time. We would call the matadors. But one
Speaker 2: of our members when we graduated from high school, had
Speaker 2: had his parents to sign for him to go to
Speaker 2: the Army because he wanted to go down because we
Speaker 2: weren't doing anything as a group. So his sister was
Speaker 2: in a sister group to our group in Detroit. And
Speaker 2: so when we went for the art one of the
Speaker 2: members of our group, a guy named Ron White, had
Speaker 2: a cousin who told us that Jackie Wilson's managers. Now,
Speaker 2: as a kid growing up, man Jackie Wilson was my
Speaker 2: number one singing idol okay, and he was from Detroit,
Speaker 2: and he was just a man. He was just you know.
Speaker 2: And so we had an audition with his managers and
Speaker 2: we go to audition for them, and rather than singing
Speaker 2: songs that were currently popular by other artists, we sang
Speaker 2: five songs that I had written. I've been writing songs
Speaker 2: since I was in elementary school or trying anyway. And
Speaker 2: so there was a young man sitting over in the corner,
Speaker 2: and see, I'm sixteen, and he looked like he was
Speaker 2: no more than nineteen or twenty, you know, And I'm
Speaker 2: thinking that he's waiting to audition after we finish. However,
Speaker 2: he's listening to us very carefully, you know, and he's
Speaker 2: just sitting in the corner listening. And so when we
Speaker 2: got through singing these songs, Jackie Wilson's A and R
Speaker 2: man who had been there listening to us, said, well, man,
Speaker 2: he said, you guys like the Platters. You know, the
Speaker 2: Platters were the number one group in the world at
Speaker 2: the time, and they had Zola the girls in the group,
Speaker 2: and Tony sang high. He said, you got the same
Speaker 2: format you singing Hi and the girls in the group.
Speaker 2: He said, we don't need another Platters man, and you
Speaker 2: guys are not going to overtake the Platters, So I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: we can't use you. So we're dejected and we go
Speaker 2: out and we you know, the young man who was
Speaker 2: sitting over in the corner comes out behind est. He says, hey, man,
Speaker 2: wait a minute. So I said yeah. He said, where'd
Speaker 2: you get some songs from that you sing? So I'm wondering,
Speaker 2: why is he asking me that, you know, I said,
Speaker 2: I wrote them. He said you wrote all those songs.
Speaker 2: I said yeah. He said, well, I liked a couple
Speaker 2: of your songs. Man, something to myself. I'm being polite.
Speaker 2: I'm saying, well, thank you very much man, you know,
Speaker 2: but I'm ready to go because you know so, so
Speaker 2: he said, I like to cover your song, you know.
Speaker 2: And I'm thinking to myself, maybe he wants to use
Speaker 2: my songs audition with it, you know. So he said, Now,
Speaker 2: when I buy records, and I still do that today, Man,
Speaker 2: when I buy records, I want to know who composed
Speaker 2: the music, who wrote the song. If it's just an instrumental,
Speaker 2: who composed this music? I want to know that because
Speaker 2: I like checking up on writers, you know. So now
Speaker 2: I got all of Jackie Wilson's records, you know, and
Speaker 2: so he said, yeah, he said, I'm Barry Gordy. What
Speaker 2: you are Barry Gordy who writes all those sits for
Speaker 2: Jackie Wilson and all that, Yeah, and some songs edit, James,
Speaker 2: You're that Barry Gordy And he said yeah. I said,
Speaker 2: I got all your music, man. He said, well it's good.
Speaker 2: You got good taste, he said, but I like to
Speaker 2: couple your songs. He said, you got any more songs?
Speaker 2: He shouldn't have said that, because I had a loosely notebook, man,
Speaker 2: with about one hundred songs that I've been writing to
Speaker 2: elementary school, you know. So he takes me in this
Speaker 2: little room and he says, sing some of your songs
Speaker 2: from me. I like the sound of your voice. I said, okay.
Speaker 2: So I sang about twenty songs a rare that day, man,
Speaker 2: And I loved him because he never once said, okay, man,
Speaker 2: I'm tired, I heard enough, or I got the gold,
Speaker 2: I got a poet. He never said that. He just listened,
Speaker 2: and every song he critiqued it. Because I've always been
Speaker 2: able to rhyme stuff. I've always been able to. I
Speaker 2: used to write poems as a child, and I've always
Speaker 2: been able to rhyme stuff. But my songs at that time, man,
Speaker 2: I only had two songs. The two did like that
Speaker 2: made sense, you know what I mean. They were all
Speaker 2: rhymed up, really good, but they didn't make sense, you know,
Speaker 2: because the first verse had nothing to do with the
Speaker 2: second verse. You know. First verse is, oh, my love,
Speaker 2: I love you so much. It's so glad to have
Speaker 2: you here in my arms and holding you like this,
Speaker 2: and we should never part and all that, and it's
Speaker 2: all rhymed up, you know. Second verse is, oh baby,
Speaker 2: where are you? I haven't seen you in ten years
Speaker 2: and I need you back bad. But it's all rhymed up.
Speaker 2: But he got nothing to do with the bird first,
Speaker 2: you know. So after a while he pointed that out
Speaker 2: to me. He said, hey man, he said, let me
Speaker 2: tell you something. He said, the song has got to
Speaker 2: be like a short book or a short movie or
Speaker 2: short story where the beginning, in the middle and the
Speaker 2: ending tie in together and they you know, they go together,
Speaker 2: you know. He say, your song is just rambling, he said,
Speaker 2: But I want you to listen to radio and see
Speaker 2: what's happening, you know, and see how songs are. You know,
Speaker 2: he said, because you can rhyme really good, he said,
Speaker 2: but I want you to just see how songs go,
Speaker 2: you know. And he said, so do you guys have
Speaker 2: a manager? So I said no, we want to manage.
Speaker 2: He said, well, I'm gonna manage you. And boy, that
Speaker 2: was just so I went out and we go out
Speaker 2: and I tell the group and everybody's all happy, he's
Speaker 2: gonna manage this and all that. So I go on
Speaker 2: and I started listening to the radio, like he said,
Speaker 2: to find out how songs go. The the continuity and
Speaker 2: now they tie in together and all that. So I
Speaker 2: could learn how to write like that. He started to
Speaker 2: mentor me on my songwriter and everything, and so there
Speaker 2: was no more At the time. I wrote a song
Speaker 2: called got a Job in answer to a group called
Speaker 2: the Silhouettes. They had a song called get a Job,
Speaker 2: which was the number one record in the world at
Speaker 2: that time, you know. So they're on Dick Clark one
Speaker 2: day and they're getting a gold record from Dick Clark
Speaker 2: for get a Job. And I see them. I'm looking
Speaker 2: at it, and I'm thinking to myself, get a Job.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna write got a Job. So I wrote the
Speaker 2: song got a Job, Man, and I went down to
Speaker 2: Barry's office where he was and interrupted him in a meeting,
Speaker 2: all that I got it, man, I got it, because
Speaker 2: he said, when you get it, come to me. So
Speaker 2: I said, I got it. I got it. So I
Speaker 2: sang it to him and he loved it, you know.
Speaker 2: So he recorded us, and he put us on in
Speaker 2: records out of New York, you know, because there was
Speaker 2: no Motown, so we weren't in label out of New York,
Speaker 2: and Got a Job turned out to be like a
Speaker 2: hit for us, man, because there were three charts at
Speaker 2: the time, four actually, but the three that were the
Speaker 2: main charts were what they call the pop charts. Were
Speaker 2: all the white artists are on that chart, you know.
Speaker 2: And then they had the Rhythm and Blue chart, you know,
Speaker 2: we're all the black artists were. And then they had
Speaker 2: the classical chart, you know. So anyway, got a Job
Speaker 2: goes to number five on the Rhythm of Blues chart,
Speaker 2: so we know, okay, this is a hit man, it's
Speaker 2: gotta be. So we had got a Job and another
Speaker 2: song which was the other side of got a Job,
Speaker 2: which is a song we had sung at that audition
Speaker 2: in a song called My Mama and told me that
Speaker 2: was on the flip side of got a Job. And
Speaker 2: then we had another forty five with in Rerecords out
Speaker 2: of New York and a song called I Cry, a
Speaker 2: song called I Need some Money, not the one by
Speaker 2: Barret Strong art Strong was money That's what I want.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so we had those four sides with them.
Speaker 2: Now we know got a Job. So he consists in
Speaker 2: the top five that those four sides with them, and
Speaker 2: come time to pay the royalties, which very still has this,
Speaker 2: but come time to pay the royalties, this guy sent
Speaker 2: us a check for foresights for the writing royalties, the
Speaker 2: producers royalties, the for the UH, the publishing royalties, and
Speaker 2: the group royalties. He sent us a check for those
Speaker 2: four sizes for three dollars and nineteen cents for you know.
Speaker 2: So I guess that was the start that broke to
Speaker 2: camel's back for Barry because he started, he was really
Speaker 2: upse three dollar ninety cent. So he borrowed eight hundred
Speaker 2: dollars from his family and started Motown Man. And I
Speaker 2: think that was the straw that broke the camel's back
Speaker 2: that started him that wanted him to start his own record.
Speaker 2: Where I thank George Goldener for that, cause he's got
Speaker 2: all in records. So because that made Berry start Motown Man,
Speaker 2: and UH liked, the rest is history. But I tell
Speaker 2: everybody was a godday because he didn't have to be
Speaker 2: there that day we went to audition man. He did
Speaker 2: not have to be there that day, or we didn't
Speaker 2: have to go on a day when he he was
Speaker 2: there just to turn in some new songs to Jackie Wilson.
Speaker 2: In fact, he had lonely tear drops with him that day,
Speaker 2: you know, t t to to turne into Jackie Wilson.
Speaker 2: So he was just there for that purpose. But he
Speaker 2: didn't have to be there the day that we came,
Speaker 2: and we didn't have to go the day that he
Speaker 2: was gonna be there. Attorney knows himself. So I tell
Speaker 2: everybody was God date because it just started a new
Speaker 2: life for me, you know, yeah, yeah, meeting him like
Speaker 2: that by chance like that, and then for him to
Speaker 2: you know, take an interest in me and take an
Speaker 2: interest in our group, and then to start Moti home
Speaker 2: and you.
Speaker 1: Know, it's it's really hard to believe. And there's so
Speaker 1: many there's so many moments in that story where it
Speaker 1: just maybe couldn't have happened or what you know, or
Speaker 1: any other way, you know, just one thing you got
Speaker 1: there slightly laid or yeah, after the break, we'll be
Speaker 1: back with more from Smokey Robinson. Now all that talent,
Speaker 1: but you you as well included an amazing, gorgeous, beautiful voice.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll never forget go with my wife about
Speaker 1: maybe five years maybe twenty nineteen to go see you
Speaker 1: at the Greek It was a little maybe was a
Speaker 1: year earlier, and I'll never forget you finished ooh baby baby.
Speaker 1: And I've i never seen an ovation that long or
Speaker 1: that people and I saw Barry Gordy was like, right
Speaker 1: over this way, I'm looking at Barry Gordon, I'm looking
Speaker 1: at you and I'm tripping out. I'm like, that's Barry Gordy,
Speaker 1: that's Smokey Robinson. You finished your baby, Baby, and it
Speaker 1: was like a five minute standing over you. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: I mean to this day, still an incredible voice. But
Speaker 1: the writing talent that you had, you know, and then
Speaker 1: to be a producer too, you know, you had so
Speaker 1: much Like what what was it about music for you
Speaker 1: that made you want to have all of those pieces?
Speaker 2: Nothing made me want to have them. I guess it's
Speaker 2: just a part of what happened for me, man, because
Speaker 2: you know, like I said, after I met Barry and
Speaker 2: he started to mentor me on my songwriting, and I
Speaker 2: started to really concentrate on what he said about making
Speaker 2: a song be a short story, something that somebody can
Speaker 2: relate to all the way through and all that you know.
Speaker 2: And so even today, man, when I said write, so
Speaker 2: I want to write a song, I really want to
Speaker 2: write a song. I hope it's going to be a hit.
Speaker 2: I hope that, you know, when I record it on
Speaker 2: myself or someone else, it's going to be a hit.
Speaker 2: But it might not be. But if it's a song,
Speaker 2: it's got a chance to live on for ten more
Speaker 2: years and somebody can pick it up and say, hey,
Speaker 2: I like this song and record it and it could
Speaker 2: be hit if it's a song. So I always go
Speaker 2: in with the idea that I'm going to write a
Speaker 2: song first. That's my first goal. Let me write a
Speaker 2: song before I ben going to the studio, and I'll
Speaker 2: get in the studio man, and change it, you know,
Speaker 2: and change something. Because actually that's how I was raised. Barry,
Speaker 2: Like I said, bar Goodie is a wonderful teacher. Man.
Speaker 2: He taught us so well. We just had his ninety
Speaker 2: fifth birthday party, not to know, and all the artists
Speaker 2: who and all the writers and producers who are still
Speaker 2: alive were there and we got up and we talked
Speaker 2: about him, and they all said the same thing. He's
Speaker 2: a great teacher. He taught us, he groomed us, he
Speaker 2: you know, he did all those things for us and everything.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a great thing to have a guy
Speaker 2: like him who has that interest in young people. But
Speaker 2: we had the opportunity to do our works and to
Speaker 2: go into the studio and record and and and to
Speaker 2: uh play off of each other. We were. He very
Speaker 2: created a sign that he had in the benning in
Speaker 2: the lobby of HISSEO says, competition breeds success. So he
Speaker 2: wanted us to compete with it that we were fierce
Speaker 2: competitors man against each other, because we had we had
Speaker 2: a policy in Motown whereas all the writers and all
Speaker 2: the producers had access to all of the artists. It
Speaker 2: wasn't like you know, say, for instance, I got to
Speaker 2: hit record on the Temptations and automatically I was gonna
Speaker 2: get that next Temptation record because I had It wasn't
Speaker 2: like that, man. Everybody had access to all the artists,
Speaker 2: and if they liked your song, you were free to
Speaker 2: record it on them. And we had money morning meetings
Speaker 2: where only the producers and writers were allowed in. Nobody
Speaker 2: else from the company was allowed in those meetings. And
Speaker 2: we sat there and we critiqued each other's music to
Speaker 2: try to make it better. Even though we were competing
Speaker 2: against each other, we were there trying. Man. I'll use
Speaker 2: this as an example. My biggest competition as a producer
Speaker 2: foreign artists was the Temptations against Norman Woodfield and barred strong.
Speaker 2: Norman Whitfield could be in the studio recording a song
Speaker 2: on the Temptation, and we hung out at Hitsfield.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: His field was not just our workplace. It was our
Speaker 2: hanging place. When you got back in off the road.
Speaker 2: If you had been on the road or somewhere and
Speaker 2: you got back in, the first thing you did was
Speaker 2: to go home, change your clothes and go to Hitsfield. Why,
Speaker 2: because everybody's over there. That's where we hung out. We
Speaker 2: did everything there, man. We played games, we want to
Speaker 2: each other's homes. We weren't just stablemates artists that you
Speaker 2: knew each other from the same record company and we see, hey, man,
Speaker 2: how you doing now? We hung out every day almost
Speaker 2: We went to each other's homes. We had picnics, we
Speaker 2: had outings, We went to the movies together the guys.
Speaker 2: Nowadays or in the last few years, it had turned
Speaker 2: to golf. But back in those days we bowld everybody
Speaker 2: bold and well, all the guys we bowled every But
Speaker 2: we did everything together, man, And it was just a wonderful,
Speaker 2: wonderful place to be, and especially being a kid growing
Speaker 2: up in Detroit and not thinking that any of this
Speaker 2: was ever going to be possible, you know, And to
Speaker 2: see all these people come along and be mentored by
Speaker 2: Barry Gordy into and to have but more time to
Speaker 2: become what it has become internationally is still unbelievable to me.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: You know, Barry Goldy is my best friend, and I
Speaker 2: just was at this house a couple of days ago,
Speaker 2: and we talk about that all the time. How neither
Speaker 2: one of us thought that. He didn't think it, you know,
Speaker 2: he did not think that it was going to be
Speaker 2: what it has become. He just was tired of people
Speaker 2: not paying him. He wanted to start his own thing,
Speaker 2: thank god. But yeah, so we had that kind of
Speaker 2: that kind of place, man, and we had and we
Speaker 2: still have for those of us who were still alive.
Speaker 2: We still celebrate the Motown family because we were family.
Speaker 2: We weren't just a record company. We were family, man,
Speaker 2: and we had the Motown family. So, like I said,
Speaker 2: we were at his ninety fifth birthday party, man, and
Speaker 2: everybody got up and said basically the same things, how
Speaker 2: he was our mentor and our teacher, and he's still
Speaker 2: going strong. To man, he's ninety five, but he's only
Speaker 2: about sixty.
Speaker 1: Only about sixty.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Can we go back to the there's so
Speaker 1: much there, But can we go back to the competition,
Speaker 1: the friendly competition, or.
Speaker 2: Maybe not the found Yeah, like I said, you know
Speaker 2: no more. It could be in this recording something on
Speaker 2: the Temptation. I'm at the studio and he said, he's
Speaker 2: smoke coming in. Man, I want you to sing ooh,
Speaker 2: I want you to stump your feet, to clap your
Speaker 2: hands or something like that. And I would go do it,
Speaker 2: and he would do the same thing for me, even
Speaker 2: though we were competing against this record for the Temptations,
Speaker 2: you know. So that's just the way it was. We
Speaker 2: all did that for each other. I you know, when
Speaker 2: I look back, and it's kind of like unbelievable that
Speaker 2: we had that kind of relationship with each other and
Speaker 2: and all of us had it, and we, like I said,
Speaker 2: we were just a family. And that's rare.
Speaker 1: Although you even had some competition with Barry when it
Speaker 1: comes to songwriting with the Temptation with Barry Gordy.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, well Barry, we had a competition
Speaker 3: with Barry Gordy first before Norman we really even came
Speaker 3: to Motown, and I had known Melvin who was the
Speaker 3: bass singer and Otis who was the founder of the
Speaker 3: group since high school, because we used to have.
Speaker 2: Group battles man, and they would called the Distance at
Speaker 2: that time, and we were called the Five Chimes, you know.
Speaker 2: And we used to have group battles all the groups
Speaker 2: in the neighborhood. And so we had group battles man
Speaker 2: singing for the girls who who you know, and we'd
Speaker 2: had them at the recreation center and at school and
Speaker 2: on the street corner wherever we saw some girls, we
Speaker 2: had group battles, you know. And the group at that
Speaker 2: time they were called the Four Aims, but they turned
Speaker 2: out to be the Four Tops. And you knew if
Speaker 2: the Four Aims were coming the best you were going
Speaker 2: to get his second place, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 2: because they were you know, so you knew that if
Speaker 2: they're coming, just shoot for second place the first place
Speaker 2: sided the question. But we had those battles like that, man,
Speaker 2: And so I had known Otis and Melbourne from that
Speaker 2: from before they came over. And when they came to
Speaker 2: audition for us, man, everybody loved them. And then we
Speaker 2: signed them and they had to think of a name
Speaker 2: for themselves and they came up with the name of
Speaker 2: the Temptations, but very and I used to battle over
Speaker 2: who was gonna get the first record out on them.
Speaker 2: And I actually had the first record out on them,
Speaker 2: a song called I Want to Love I Can See,
Speaker 2: and I beat him out on that, you know. But
Speaker 2: you know, he did a lot of good records on them.
Speaker 2: And at first when they came over, they had like
Speaker 2: three lead singers and everybody used Paul Williams, who who
Speaker 2: was the basically lead singer for them, you know. But
Speaker 2: Eddie Kendricks was in that group.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: Eventually David Ruffin was in that group, you know. So anyway,
Speaker 2: we all were trying to get hits on them and
Speaker 2: the Miracles, and I had gone on the road and
Speaker 2: I told Tim, I said, I'm gonna get a hit
Speaker 2: for y'all, you know, and the Temptations. If I brought
Speaker 2: David and Eddie and Melvin and Otis and Paul in
Speaker 2: this room right here, right now, and they were still
Speaker 2: alive and say, hey man, sing ooh, And they said, ooh.
Speaker 2: They could shake this room, that's how close and tight
Speaker 2: they were. And Melverne was way down on the bottom
Speaker 2: and Eddie was way up on the top and everybody
Speaker 2: was in between them, and they were just their harmony
Speaker 2: was I used to I used to call them five
Speaker 2: deacons because they had that gospel sound to me. You know,
Speaker 2: I call them five deacons. You know, this as our
Speaker 2: friendly thing. So I wanted to write something for them
Speaker 2: where that harmony was displayed. Okay, so the miracle's not
Speaker 2: on the road and on the way back one day,
Speaker 2: you know, we there were three of us who drove,
Speaker 2: and so after we got about two hundred miles off
Speaker 2: from Detroit, it was my turn to drive again. So
Speaker 2: everybody else was asleep, and I'm driving the car and
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, what can I write for the Temptations that's
Speaker 2: gonna display that harmony? And you know, it's like I said,
Speaker 2: I'm not a songwriter who needs to go to the
Speaker 2: mountains or to the desert for two months and isolated
Speaker 2: myself so that I can write and it just happens
Speaker 2: for me, man, and just have something. I'm in the
Speaker 2: car and I started to hum something that I thought
Speaker 2: would beat them singing. Got a smile so right, and
Speaker 2: I could hear them singing that, and so I started
Speaker 2: to write the way you do the things you do
Speaker 2: in the car wow and got back man. And I
Speaker 2: told Barry, I said, man, I got a hit for
Speaker 2: the Temptations. I got it. He said, you got it,
Speaker 2: you got He said it is too late. I said,
Speaker 2: what you mean, I'm too late? He said, I already
Speaker 2: record a hit on them, and it's coming out next week.
Speaker 2: It's all pressed up. Everything is coming out next week.
Speaker 2: So I said, man, I say, you making a mistake.
Speaker 2: I said, I got a real hit for him. Me said,
Speaker 2: master real here too, Man, I say, so, we just
Speaker 2: to have contests. Man. We would go out and stop
Speaker 2: cars in front of Hitzel, say hey, hey, you want
Speaker 2: to heed some new motile music that you never heard. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they come in. We give them a pencil, beats of
Speaker 2: paper and play five songs on right down to wats
Speaker 2: you like the best, or get the people from around
Speaker 2: the office and right down the world you like the best?
Speaker 2: You know? So I told him, I said, Man, I said,
Speaker 2: I'm telling you I got a real smash it for them.
Speaker 2: He said, mine is a real smash hit. Man. I said, well,
Speaker 2: I tell you what, Man, give me two days to
Speaker 2: record my record. He said, okay, Man, if you think
Speaker 2: you that I'm gonna give you two days, man, he said,
Speaker 2: but I'm telling you you can't beat my record. Man.
Speaker 2: I said, okay, cool, So two days. I had two
Speaker 2: days to record the Way You Do Things You Do?
Speaker 2: And I did, and uh so we had this contest.
Speaker 2: We invited some people from off the streets. We invited
Speaker 2: some people from around in the officers, lectaires and people
Speaker 2: like that, and uh we played these two records. They
Speaker 2: played his record first and everybody was jamming. Man, they oh,
Speaker 2: this is a great record. But it was a kind
Speaker 2: of slow move, but it was a great record. I
Speaker 2: think it was uh dream come true or something. I
Speaker 2: forgot the name of it. But anyway, I'm so I'm
Speaker 2: sitting there and I'm worried now because we got this
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars beat me and him, you know. And
Speaker 2: uh so then they put on the way you do
Speaker 2: the Things you do and it starts don dum to
Speaker 2: don don to dunk. Everybody jumps up, starts dancing, and
Speaker 2: his record got one vote, never was his, you know.
Speaker 2: So I teach him about that all the time. He
Speaker 2: had one vote and never was his. So but that
Speaker 2: was what started the temptations to Roland, and I used
Speaker 2: Eddie Kendrick's voice to sing the basic lead for that song.
Speaker 2: So everybody at the company, all the writers and producers,
Speaker 2: they jumped on the Temptations bandwagon and they started using
Speaker 2: Eddie to sing everything. You know, Eddie was singing, Girl,
Speaker 2: why you want to make Me blue? All your everybody
Speaker 2: was using Eddie then, you know, because so I said, Okay,
Speaker 2: that's cool with me because David and Paula in that group.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna write something sweet for David brotherend to
Speaker 2: sing because David had a voice she had that he
Speaker 2: was like him him. I used to tell him in
Speaker 2: Teddy Pendergrad, y'all scared of chicks into loving you because
Speaker 2: well that voice like that. But they were really singing
Speaker 2: and they could really sing, you know. So I knew
Speaker 2: that David was there, and I said, I'm gonna write
Speaker 2: something sweet for him to sing to the girls. And
Speaker 2: so I wrote My Girl for David to sing to
Speaker 2: the girls. I had no idea that My Girl was
Speaker 2: gonna do well. It has done. Man. My Girl for
Speaker 2: me as a songwriter has become like my international anthem
Speaker 2: or something. We go. We're preparing an overseas jump now
Speaker 2: for June, but we go to places in Europe and
Speaker 2: all places where a lot of places they don't even
Speaker 2: speak English, man, And sixty percent of the people in
Speaker 2: that audience don't even speak English. Okay, but we play
Speaker 2: my Girl in our live concerts, and as soon as
Speaker 2: they hear boom boom boom, boom, boom boom, they know
Speaker 2: what's gonna happen. They sing it verbatim. They don't even
Speaker 2: speak English and they sing it verbatim. So now I
Speaker 2: knew My Girl was a good song, I thought, But
Speaker 2: I had no idea there was gonna be what it is,
Speaker 2: you know. And so anyway I recorded My Girl with
Speaker 2: David and anybody the band ways David, but but that,
Speaker 2: but that's what That's how Barry and I started off
Speaker 2: competing for the Temptations, you know, and I beat it.
Speaker 1: Is it true? The way you do the things you
Speaker 1: do was a bit influenced by you because you were
Speaker 1: listening to a lot of Curtis Mainfield at the time
Speaker 1: and impressions. Is that accurate?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm sure it was, man, because Curtis and maybe
Speaker 2: Curtis and in the Impressions, Man, they had some of
Speaker 2: the tightest harmony that you ever wanted to hear, you know,
Speaker 2: and uh yeah, they had those songs like that, like
Speaker 2: It's all right and all those songs like that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm sure that that was that was influential because I
Speaker 2: knew the Temptations had that kind of sound, they had
Speaker 2: that kind of harmony they you know, and never once
Speaker 2: have I ever when I was recording the Temptations made
Speaker 2: up a background vocal for them. I'm teaching the lead
Speaker 2: whatever I want to lead to learn and all, and
Speaker 2: They're over in the corner making a background as I'm
Speaker 2: showing the lead what he's doing, you know, And there
Speaker 2: are parts of my girl. Man, they're just as popular
Speaker 2: as a leader. Hey, hey, hey, and all this stuff
Speaker 2: like that. They So Temptation made up all that stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, talking about micro they made up all that.
Speaker 1: So was that true of all artists you were working with,
Speaker 1: that you gave them some sort of some level of
Speaker 1: artistic freedom too, or was that he was it case
Speaker 1: by case?
Speaker 2: It was case by case, man, Okay, you knew with them,
Speaker 2: you could, Yeah, knew with them, Michael, they just had
Speaker 2: leeway to do whatever it was because they were gonna
Speaker 2: come up with some great you know. So all the
Speaker 2: songs I have recorded on them. I never made up
Speaker 2: a background over that. They just made up all their
Speaker 2: own background except for the way you do things you do,
Speaker 2: which I had them all singing it together. You know.
Speaker 1: After this flast break, will be back with the rest
Speaker 1: of my conversation with Smokey Robinson. How did you learn
Speaker 1: to be a producer?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, surprisingly enough, Barry allowed me. He kind
Speaker 2: of taught me that as Motown was just the beginning,
Speaker 2: and he allowed me to go in and produce records
Speaker 2: on the Miracles on Me, just the Miracles on Me
Speaker 2: at first, but then he saw I could do it,
Speaker 2: so he started to assign people to me. Man, when
Speaker 2: Tim came, he assigned me to do an album on them,
Speaker 2: and Mary Wells and Marvin Gaye. And when they came,
Speaker 2: you know, he say, man, I want you to write
Speaker 2: some stuff for them. So I did, and that's how
Speaker 2: I started to write for everyone. But he allowed me
Speaker 2: to produce the records. Eventually, thanked god, Stevie started producing
Speaker 2: it and Marvin started producing their own stuff, thank god.
Speaker 2: But you know, I was the first artist that was
Speaker 2: allowed to do that.
Speaker 1: Now, I mean thank God, but also thank God you
Speaker 1: were there too, because I mean, I mean, you gave
Speaker 1: Marvin some incredible songs and some incredible hits.
Speaker 2: You know, Marvin was my brother.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: Marvin was one of the best singers I think ever
Speaker 2: in life. You know, Marvin was a guy. Uh, Marvin
Speaker 2: IM a very very very close man. You know. Marvin
Speaker 2: lived righting around the corner from me. Uh and uh
Speaker 2: we were together almost every day of our lives doing something,
Speaker 2: you know, playing some basketball or some golf or you know,
Speaker 2: just hanging out. We were together all the time. So
Speaker 2: Marvin was uh, he was a great singer.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: When he first came to Motown, he didn't want to
Speaker 2: be Marvin Gay. He wanted to be Na King Cole
Speaker 2: Frank Sinatra. That's how he came. He wanted to sing
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. And uh, how we became aware
Speaker 2: of him is that. Uh do you do you know
Speaker 2: who Harvey Few.
Speaker 1: Was the Moon Moon Go Moon Gloves Mooos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, uh, Man, I had known Harvey and idlyized
Speaker 2: him since I was a kid growing up, cause we
Speaker 2: in the hood. When Moonlose came up with a recordman,
Speaker 2: you know, everybody got the Mooos record band, and the
Speaker 2: Moonos always had those great backgrounds where if you sing
Speaker 2: in a group, you learned the background before you've learned
Speaker 2: the lead. Because they had those great back cool and
Speaker 2: all that. But eventually Harvey came over to Motown, Man
Speaker 2: and he he married one of Barry's sisters, Gwynn, and
Speaker 2: he came over to Motown and he had you know,
Speaker 2: he had hired a new singer for the moon Glows
Speaker 2: because one of his guys had retired, and he hired
Speaker 2: Marvin Gay. Marmon Gay was from Washington, d C. So
Speaker 2: Harvey met him in d C. So he hired him
Speaker 2: to take the place of the guy who had left.
Speaker 2: And so we were having a Christmas party. We had
Speaker 2: them every year at Christmas, and all the artists came,
Speaker 2: everybody was there. You made sure you weren't on the
Speaker 2: road at that time so you can come to the
Speaker 2: Christmas party because they were great. And so Harvey bought
Speaker 2: Marvin to the Christmas party and there's a we had
Speaker 2: him in the Hissfield building and down in the studio.
Speaker 2: People were all over the building, but down there everybody
Speaker 2: was hanging out, mostly down in the studio where the
Speaker 2: piano and the instruments and all that stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Had set up. So Marvin goes over to the piano
Speaker 2: and he sits down and the party's going on. He
Speaker 2: starts to sing the Christmas song chest Nuts Roasty, and
Speaker 2: everybody starts listening to him and starts going over and
Speaker 2: surrounding the piano and he's playing and singing. He he
Speaker 2: could really sing, so uh we we we signed him
Speaker 2: up and he wanted to sing songs like that. His
Speaker 2: first song that we released on him was mister Sandman,
Speaker 2: Mister Samman, bring Me a Dream, because he wanted to
Speaker 2: sing that kind of stuff. Didn't do anything. Uh eventually, uh.
Speaker 1: We did think it straight like that too, Like it
Speaker 1: wasn't like, uh, it didn't sound like uh.
Speaker 2: It sounded like Marvin Gay singing mister sam Man. Man,
Speaker 2: that's what it sounded like. Marmon Gakeys sing the phone
Speaker 2: Book and you know what I'm saying, that's what it
Speaker 2: sounded like. So anyway, uh, we our and our director
Speaker 2: at the at the time, my first and our director
Speaker 2: ever that very hired was a guy named Mickey Stevenson.
Speaker 2: And Mickey was also a songwriter and a producer, and
Speaker 2: so he got together with Marvin and say, man, if
Speaker 2: you want to hit, we gotta do some different kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. So he and Marvin wrote this song called
Speaker 2: Stubborn cint of Fellow and recorded it. And that was
Speaker 2: when Marvin started to be Marvin Gaye and the rest.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Like I said, the Duke could sing anything. I work
Speaker 2: with Marvin Man and Marvel was always late for everything.
Speaker 2: Marvel was late for everything you talking about cpee time.
Speaker 2: Marvin was late for everything, man. So I got to
Speaker 2: the point where Marvin Man, so I was gonna record him.
Speaker 2: Uh and session's gonna start at eight o'clock in the
Speaker 2: evening out till Marven it's gonna start at six thirty.
Speaker 2: You know, he would still be late. He would he
Speaker 2: wouldn't get to nine anyway, small car, tell you man
Speaker 2: a so and so happened. I said, okay, man, cool,
Speaker 2: you know, but I knew that when he got there
Speaker 2: and I showed him my song. I used to tell
Speaker 2: him all the time. He marvenized my songs because he
Speaker 2: do stuff vocally that I hadn't even thought of while
Speaker 2: I was writing it. You know, he just come in
Speaker 2: and just kill you know, marvinized my story. I didn't
Speaker 2: care if he was late, you know, but he could
Speaker 2: sing anything, man, one of the greatest voices of our time.
Speaker 1: Did you did you have a relationship with Tammy Terrell too?
Speaker 2: Yes, had a relationship with everybody there, man, because we
Speaker 2: all had a relationship with each other. Tam Turell is
Speaker 2: my baby, man. She was a sweetie pie. She was
Speaker 2: a wonderful fun person. Tammy tell was you talk about fun.
Speaker 2: She was just a fun woman. She just when she
Speaker 2: when she came in, she brightened up the room, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. She was just a fun person.
Speaker 2: She unfortunately had a brain tumor at a young age.
Speaker 2: And you know, but yeah, Temmy, we all hung over.
Speaker 2: Like I said, everybody knew each other. Man, her and
Speaker 2: Marvin together, well, Marvin had his with all the girls
Speaker 2: at Motown, basically Kim Weston, Diana Ross, you know, Tam Dbrell,
Speaker 2: Valerie Simpson.
Speaker 1: I know you were like you say, really you were
Speaker 1: type with everyone. But you and Marvin were really tight
Speaker 1: as well, live near each other. When Tammy passed that,
Speaker 1: there's stories of that really affected him.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, shook him up for a long time. Shook
Speaker 2: him for a long time. He didn't even want to
Speaker 2: sing with any of the other girls for a while
Speaker 2: because he thought he was bad luck? Why are you
Speaker 2: bad luck?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 2: She had a brain to him. He didn't give it
Speaker 2: to her. You had nothing to do with that, you know.
Speaker 2: But he was he was, He was shook up for
Speaker 2: a long time. They were very close.
Speaker 1: And how did you guys as friends as a label,
Speaker 1: how did you guys handle, for instance, Marvin being in
Speaker 1: a funk like that, you know, because I'm sure you
Speaker 1: want to help him out, and I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you want him also to you know, use his gift.
Speaker 2: Well, he wasn't in a funk to the point whereas
Speaker 2: like he stopped recording for months at a time or so,
Speaker 2: he didn't do that just personally, you know, he was
Speaker 2: shook up. He just you see, I feel that way
Speaker 2: about a lot of them, man, because when you're young,
Speaker 2: you're a kid like that, and we were all kids together,
Speaker 2: going up there together. The last thing you ever expect
Speaker 2: is to see one of them dead, you know, think
Speaker 2: you aren't even thinking about death or anything like that.
Speaker 2: And I buried so many of them men, and it
Speaker 2: just it's a shake up, you know, Yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: shake up. Like I said, you know, I want to
Speaker 2: read the past. Man. You know, she was my longest friend.
Speaker 2: All the kids in our neighborhood, everybody was dead except
Speaker 2: for Diana. So now Diana, it's my longest friend.
Speaker 1: And you guys still get in touch.
Speaker 2: I'm sure, right, yeah, you know, she's a I brought
Speaker 2: her to Motown. She was my pet project that I
Speaker 2: bought the Motown at first, you know, because she lived
Speaker 2: right down the street. They moved to a place called
Speaker 2: the Brewster of Projects after we started Motown, and she
Speaker 2: called me, she said, smoke sh I got this group,
Speaker 2: and I want you to hear us. Man, the Primates,
Speaker 2: because the Temptations were the Primes. So the Primates, I
Speaker 2: want you to hear us because we could sing. So
Speaker 2: I said, come on auditioning. So I auditioned them and
Speaker 2: Barry wouldn't let me sign them because they were still
Speaker 2: in school. They were still in high school. They were
Speaker 2: about to graduate, but they were still in high school.
Speaker 2: And he said, man, he said, you know, we already
Speaker 2: got Stevie. And when Stevie travels, he got to have
Speaker 2: tutors and on entourage and all the people because he
Speaker 2: have to do his homework on the road. And so
Speaker 2: I don't want to sign another person. Like that or
Speaker 2: another group. So I had to wait till they graduated
Speaker 2: from high school to sign them. And they got signed
Speaker 2: and they became Dying Rolls and the Supremes.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable. Man, all you guys are so young.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Stevie, right, Stevie's there as young as can be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think about that now. I wasn't
Speaker 2: thinking about that then, but I think about it now.
Speaker 2: We were kids, man, we were just kids. My first marriage, man,
Speaker 2: I got married when I was nineteen years old to
Speaker 2: the girl who's in our group, Claudette, you know. And
Speaker 2: she had been my girlfriend since I was fourteen, since
Speaker 2: she got into group. You know. But when I was
Speaker 2: nineteen and I thought I was a man. I thought
Speaker 2: I was a man. Very started Motown. We were going there.
Speaker 2: I was making five dollars a week. I was, you know,
Speaker 2: working at Motown, making five hours a week. You know,
Speaker 2: I thought I was a man. Man, And I look
Speaker 2: back on that. That's funny. There's no way that one
Speaker 2: of my kids had come to me when they were
Speaker 2: nineteen and said, hey, Dad, I want to get married.
Speaker 2: And I was said, okay, all right, this is a
Speaker 2: good idea. Yeah, you know what I mean, man, But
Speaker 2: heck I did it. But I look back. We were
Speaker 2: all kids, man, We were just kids. But it was
Speaker 2: a great place to be because it was all energy.
Speaker 2: And like I said, we were kids and we were young,
Speaker 2: and we all hung out together.
Speaker 1: And you know, would would you guys listen to music together?
Speaker 1: Like if you'd go to Aretha's house, would you record?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, we used to have talent shows before when
Speaker 2: we were kids. I mean before I met Barry, and
Speaker 2: I'm talking about when we were ten and eleven and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. We had talent shows on Areta's back porch,
Speaker 2: you know, and every time Aretha or Irma would win.
Speaker 2: Irma was Aretha's sister, oldest sister. And but we used
Speaker 2: to have talent shows and stuff like that. Man on
Speaker 2: her back porch.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable. Unbelievable because Barry was a little older than you guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Arry's actually ten years older than me.
Speaker 1: So were you the conduit for like the Deep the
Speaker 1: Temptations coming to try out from Motown? And like you said,
Speaker 1: you knew Diana from the neighborhood, like you were kind
Speaker 1: of were the person who knew all the talent in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. Basically, Yeah, it seems to me. And so
Speaker 1: you you know, Barry set up this great structure for
Speaker 1: you guys to thrive in and to be this tutor,
Speaker 1: but it seems like you were maybe maybe like the
Speaker 1: A and R without being officially the an R.
Speaker 2: You know, well I did. I brought a few people in, man.
Speaker 2: I brought a few people, and even after we got started. Man,
Speaker 2: you know Gladys Knight and people like that, I brought
Speaker 2: them in too, because Gladys had been my friends since
Speaker 2: I was eighteen years old on the road, you know,
Speaker 2: and she was with the Pips and we were out
Speaker 2: there traveling on a road doing those one nighters and
Speaker 2: stuff together and stuff. So I knew them. And when
Speaker 2: they wanted to leave their current record company, I brought
Speaker 2: them in the Motown Chuck Jackson, you know, Ashraton Simpson,
Speaker 2: you know, and like I said, Diana Ross and I
Speaker 2: didn't bring the Temptations, but I knew them before they
Speaker 2: before they came over to audition. But yeah, yeah, a
Speaker 2: lot of people, man. And like I said, Ron White
Speaker 2: who was in the Miracles, brought Stevie also.
Speaker 1: He man, Yeah, you mentioned you have some tour dates
Speaker 1: coming up in the spring. Yes, you have a Vegas residency. Yes,
Speaker 1: how do you prepare for tour now versus then? You
Speaker 1: know when you're on the road the gladys Knight and.
Speaker 2: Well, well back then, basically, you know, like I said,
Speaker 2: we were kids, man, So you know, you just get
Speaker 2: in the car and there we go. We had caravans.
Speaker 2: We didn't one night we were traveling on a tour bus
Speaker 2: or anything like that. Everybody basically had their own individual cars.
Speaker 2: They mean, seven cars going down a howay behind each other,
Speaker 2: that's what That's what was going to go. We were
Speaker 2: doing those tours. But I think that, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: you're traveling around like that, and I just can't find
Speaker 2: anything that gives me the same thing. I can't find.
Speaker 2: I've tried, man, I tried retirement one time. When very
Speaker 2: first moved Motown from Detroit to Last Angeles, I came
Speaker 2: out to Los Angeles kicking and screaming because I didn't
Speaker 2: think we should leave Detroit. I told Barry, Man, you know,
Speaker 2: this is our home, it is our roots. We started here,
Speaker 2: and you know, and we all grew up here, and
Speaker 2: you know, they even called Detroit Motown. Now you know,
Speaker 2: So why are you moving to LA? He said, because
Speaker 2: LA is the entertainment capital of the world right now,
Speaker 2: which it was said. We're gonna go out there. We're
Speaker 2: gonna make some movies, do some TV specials. We're still
Speaker 2: gonna be a record company. I'm gonna leave a skeleton
Speaker 2: record thing here in Detroit, but our basic operation is
Speaker 2: gonna be in LA. But we can do entertainment things.
Speaker 2: We're gonna become an entertainment company, ladies things, the Blues
Speaker 2: and you know, the Temptations, Diarroh specials and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So we got into all that stuff, but I came
Speaker 2: out kicking the streaming man because I did not want
Speaker 2: to move to Los Angeles from Detroit. Eventually I was.
Speaker 2: I was glad that I did. But when I moved
Speaker 2: out to Los Angeles, I retired from the Miracles, and
Speaker 2: I I told him before I was gonna retire. My
Speaker 2: first wife, Claudee, and I have been trying to have
Speaker 2: a baby, and when my first son was born, finally
Speaker 2: I wanted to spend time with him man And two
Speaker 2: years after he was bore, my daughter was born. So
Speaker 2: I wanted to spend time with my kids. Man and
Speaker 2: the miracles, and I had done everything that the group
Speaker 2: could possibly do two or three times. We've been all
Speaker 2: over the world, you know, and I was tired, man.
Speaker 2: So I told them, I said I'm gonna retire. They
Speaker 2: laughed at me and oh yeah, yeah, okay, cool man,
Speaker 2: you're gonna retire. That's good man. So then we were
Speaker 2: having a Christmas party. Man. And this was in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty seven. We're having this Christmas party and Stevie comes
Speaker 2: in and he comes to me. He says, smoke, he said, Man,
Speaker 2: I I recorded this musical track, man, he said. It's
Speaker 2: the bomb. He said, but I can't think of a
Speaker 2: song to go with this. Man. I want you to
Speaker 2: listen and see what you can come up with. So
Speaker 2: I said, okay, man, I give it to me. So
Speaker 2: he gave it to me. I took it home. I
Speaker 2: put your tape on and it started off bom bom bomp.
Speaker 2: Duh dun dun dun dunt.
Speaker 1: So I heard that.
Speaker 2: I said, Man, that's ringing Brothers. That's bombing Bailey right there.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna use this track to write something about
Speaker 2: the circus. But I don't want to write about animals
Speaker 2: or trapeze artists or anything like that. I wanna write
Speaker 2: something personal for people. When I was in elementary school,
Speaker 2: I had a social studies teacher who got named mister Smith.
Speaker 2: He was German, and he told us the story of Paiachi.
Speaker 2: Now to this day, while I'm talking to you right now,
Speaker 2: I don't know if Poliacchi was real or just mythical.
Speaker 2: But I thought about that and I said, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: write this song about Polyiachi, but I'm gonna make it
Speaker 2: personal because Palliacchi was the Italian clown that was the
Speaker 2: star of the circus when he when the circus came
Speaker 2: to town, people came to see Poliachi, mainly the animals
Speaker 2: and all this stuff that was secondary to Poliachi. Paiacchi.
Speaker 2: They loved him. They cheered him. They more and more
Speaker 2: they cheered him, and then he would go back to
Speaker 2: his dressing room and he would cry because he didn't
Speaker 2: have that kind of adulation from a woman, from a
Speaker 2: personal woman. He would cry about it. You know, So
Speaker 2: someone right this about Payachi. Some are right. So that's
Speaker 2: where Tears of a Clown came from. So Cheers of
Speaker 2: a Clown comes out on an album in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy, a girl who worked for Motown in
Speaker 2: England was in the office and she was playing that
Speaker 2: album in the office and a guy who ran our
Speaker 2: office over there was a guy named Peter. So Peter
Speaker 2: comes by get the story and he says, what's that
Speaker 2: you're listening to? She said, Peter, we should release this
Speaker 2: record over here because this is a hit, so we
Speaker 2: should release it over here. I don't care what they're
Speaker 2: doing in the States. We should release this over here.
Speaker 2: So they put Tears of a Clown out in the
Speaker 2: UK number one. Motown ain't never had number one record
Speaker 2: in the UK ever yet until that point, you know,
Speaker 2: and then it starts to blossom all over Europe. So
Speaker 2: I had another record ready to come to go in
Speaker 2: the in the United States here, so I said, I
Speaker 2: told barrass I got to say. He said, no, no, no, man,
Speaker 2: we put out Tears for Clown. So we put out
Speaker 2: Terms with Cloud here in the States and Chisser Clown
Speaker 2: to this moment, it's the biggest single record that I've
Speaker 2: ever been associated with in my life. Really, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: Chisser Clown's I mean, you know, it's just so all
Speaker 2: over the world, just as that was out, and so
Speaker 2: the guys came to me and say, man, you can't
Speaker 2: retire now because tis the clown's out and it's the
Speaker 2: big suit we ever had, so my money's gonna go
Speaker 2: up and all that stuff, which it did. So I said, okay, man,
Speaker 2: I'm gona give you another year. So I did. I
Speaker 2: gave and I said, but I want you all to
Speaker 2: start looking for people because I'm retiring and I don't
Speaker 2: have to. I don't have to help you look for
Speaker 2: somebody to replace me because I'm not gonna be there
Speaker 2: and y'all got to live with whoever this is, it's
Speaker 2: gonna come in, you know. So they look for guys
Speaker 2: all over the country and they finally found a guy
Speaker 2: named Bill Griffin in Baltimore. So for the last few months,
Speaker 2: about four or five months of my touring with the Miracles,
Speaker 2: Bill traveled with us to see the show and to
Speaker 2: learn it and blah blah blah blah blah. So So
Speaker 2: then I retired and I moved out to Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: And I moved out to Los Angeles, and when I
Speaker 2: lived in Detroit, my vice president your office was to
Speaker 2: induct new talent. And I love that cause I saw
Speaker 2: talent all over the world and go to New York.
Speaker 2: I say, okay, you can come wheel auditions you So
Speaker 2: I loved doing that, you know. So we moved out
Speaker 2: to Los Angeles and uh, I get out and Barry says, hey, man,
Speaker 2: he says, you're my best friend. He says, So I'm
Speaker 2: gonna change your office function. I said, okay, man, what
Speaker 2: do you want me to do? He said, uh, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna make you the financial office. You gonna sign all
Speaker 2: the payroll checks. All the checks that come into the
Speaker 2: company are gonna come through you, except for the payment
Speaker 2: for the records. So that's what you're gonna do. So
Speaker 2: I said, okay, man. So I'm ready for that. Man,
Speaker 2: I'm ready for change. I'm not gonna be on stage.
Speaker 2: And my thought at that point was to never ever
Speaker 2: be on stage again in my life. I was never
Speaker 2: going to record myself again. I might record some other
Speaker 2: people and do some other songs and some other artists
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. I wanted to do that, but
Speaker 2: not for me. I'm gonna be at home with my
Speaker 2: kids and my wife, and I'm gonna do my vice
Speaker 2: presidential thing here at the office, and I'm gonna sign
Speaker 2: these checks. So when I started to do that, my
Speaker 2: name is William Robinson Junior. Okay, after my dad and
Speaker 2: I was signing in the checks, William Robinson Junior, William
Speaker 2: Robinson Junior. And after I had signed about a thousand checksmen,
Speaker 2: I said, this is not going to work. So you
Speaker 2: see my signature. Now, my signature is the room. It's
Speaker 2: just like that. I had to change it at the
Speaker 2: banks and everywhere, man, because you know when you're signing
Speaker 2: like that. So in the first couple of years, man,
Speaker 2: I was in vice presidential heaven, and then also my job,
Speaker 2: he would have me to go to New York and
Speaker 2: make deals with publishing companies, and do you know I
Speaker 2: got I was in vice presidential heaven. But then I
Speaker 2: started to hurt inside. I started to hurt inside. I
Speaker 2: was missing something, and so it got to the point
Speaker 2: whereas after about two and a half years, I was miserable.
Speaker 2: My insights were miserable. But I'm smiling on outside. It's
Speaker 2: like tracking my tears and stuff like that. I'm smiling
Speaker 2: on U because I don't want Barr to think, Okay,
Speaker 2: I can't handle this. I let him down. I don't
Speaker 2: want claud it to think. Okay, I don't want to
Speaker 2: be at home with her the kids. So I'm just miserable. Man,
Speaker 2: And I am so miserable. Man, I go in. So
Speaker 2: one day, after about three years, Man Barry came to
Speaker 2: my office. He say, Man, I want you to do
Speaker 2: something for me. I said, okay, Man, what you want
Speaker 2: me to do? He said, uh, sit down for saying,
Speaker 2: let's talk. I want you. I need to do something
Speaker 2: for me. Something. He's gonna tell me some corporate I
Speaker 2: gotta have a meeting with so ands on stay sets,
Speaker 2: I got to go to this place and so he said,
Speaker 2: I need to do something. I said, what do you
Speaker 2: need me to do? Man? He said, I don't. I
Speaker 2: can't use profanity on this interview. I can. I can
Speaker 2: say verbat him, what do you say? Okay verbatim? So
Speaker 2: he sat down. He said, I want you to get
Speaker 2: yourself a band and going to the studio make a record.
Speaker 2: I want you to get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 2: I said, what did you say to me?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 2: He said, you heard me?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 2: I said, no, I didn't hear you. I said, what
Speaker 2: did you say to me? Man? He said, I want
Speaker 2: you to get yourself a band. You go on the
Speaker 2: studio and make a record, and I want you to
Speaker 2: get the fuck out of here. I said, what are
Speaker 2: you talking about?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 2: I said, you don't think I'm doing a good He said, no,
Speaker 2: I ain't about that. Man. He says you're miserable, he said.
Speaker 2: I said, you coming in every day and you're miserable.
Speaker 2: You're my best friend. I know when you're miserable. Man.
Speaker 2: You can't hide at you from me. So I know
Speaker 2: you're miserable. So when I say you're miserable, it makes
Speaker 2: me miserable. So I need you to get the fuck
Speaker 2: out of my face. So I just hugged him. I
Speaker 2: was so happy. I just hugged him. And so that
Speaker 2: was my best friend peeping me. Man, Wow, he peeped me,
Speaker 2: he saw.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It fills me up right now. I don't know, but
Speaker 2: it was such a oh. Anyway, I went home. I
Speaker 2: was very very happy, and Claude said, well, what you
Speaker 2: so have? I said, Well, I told her what happened.
Speaker 2: She said, I agree with him. Wow, you know wow.
Speaker 2: So I said, Okay, I've always considered myself to be
Speaker 2: a quiet singer, but I'm gonna go back. Man, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna take show business by Storm, and.
Speaker 4: I thought about what I just said. I said, we
Speaker 4: made a quiet Storm. It's a great idea. So piano,
Speaker 4: that's how that comes about. I wonder to piano, start
Speaker 4: to write a quiet storm, man, you know.
Speaker 2: And my youngest sister who was actually fourteen when I
Speaker 2: was born, but she was a great lyricist man. And
Speaker 2: so I started the song and I was gonna do
Speaker 2: this whole album now. I'm gonna do a whole album
Speaker 2: now because I'm going back to show business. So I'm
Speaker 2: working on that. When I took it to her and
Speaker 2: I say, baby, finish this song up, because this is
Speaker 2: gonna be the title cut for my So she finish up,
Speaker 2: and I recorded it and recorded a Quiet Storm, and
Speaker 2: it was my debut back into show business, and it
Speaker 2: became something that I had no inkling that it was
Speaker 2: going to become.
Speaker 1: I had.
Speaker 2: I was just writing something to come back into show business.
Speaker 2: I wasn't thinking about what it was going to do.
Speaker 2: And then there was a young man who was a
Speaker 2: disc jockey at night disc jockey in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: Named Melbourn Lindsay, and he had a show that came
Speaker 2: on in the evening. His show started probably about nine
Speaker 2: o'clock at night and went through midnight and he started
Speaker 2: he named his show the Quiet Storm. Okay, radio stations
Speaker 2: all over the country started to have a Quiet Storm format.
Speaker 2: Now I'm not thinking that this is going to happen, man,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm just writing a song to come back
Speaker 2: into show business. But it has become a radio format.
Speaker 2: And this year we're celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the
Speaker 2: debut of A Quiet Storm. Wow, and our tour this
Speaker 2: year is going to be called the Quiet Storm Tour Beautiful.
Speaker 1: So dude, it's it's amazing the penchant for again. You wanna,
Speaker 1: you want to you want to get into show business.
Speaker 1: You meet Barry Gordy, and then you this whole company
Speaker 1: gets created around it, this whole ecosystem that lifts up
Speaker 1: you and Barry and so many other people, and then
Speaker 1: it's I want to get back into show business, you right,
Speaker 1: A Quiet Storm, which not only is like an incredible
Speaker 1: entree back into show business, but creates this whole other
Speaker 1: radio format, Like you're saying, almost the whole of the
Speaker 1: genre within R and B music for other people that
Speaker 1: people realize that, oh I like this vibe, And there's
Speaker 1: compilation see these now there quiet storm and you know,
Speaker 1: it's just so this that sort of knack in your
Speaker 1: life of these sort of things that are it's it's
Speaker 1: almost like, you know, similar maybe to like what's going
Speaker 1: on the way Marvin exists. It's a it's a it's
Speaker 1: a thing that was probably very personal to him, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but just resonates out so widely that it's just, you know,
Speaker 1: it's so that's it. Whatever was happening with you guys
Speaker 1: at Motown and Detroit. Even Aretha, who wasn't part of
Speaker 1: Motown but just.
Speaker 2: Her dad, would not gonna come. Man. I talked to
Speaker 2: her about coming, and he felt like we were not
Speaker 2: strong enough for her. He wanted her to be with
Speaker 2: Columbia and Capitol and all those people like that where
Speaker 2: she was at first she was with Columbia and they
Speaker 2: had her singing standards of what they call the Great
Speaker 2: American Songbook, because Aretha is one of those people. She
Speaker 2: could sing anything. Aretha did the most amazing thing that
Speaker 2: I think I've ever seen a singer do. We were
Speaker 2: having the Grammys one year, and I forgot what year
Speaker 2: it was, but Aretha was going to get something there,
Speaker 2: you know, And so Pavaratti was supposed to come and
Speaker 2: sing this song in Italian and he was going to
Speaker 2: be on the Grammys, and he got sick, and the
Speaker 2: producer came to a Reatha and say, hey, Aretha, Papa
Speaker 2: Latti is sick. We need somebody to sing this song.
Speaker 2: Aretha goes and takes the song and listens to Paparadatti
Speaker 2: singing in the dressing room and learns it in the
Speaker 2: dressing room in the dressing room and sings it.
Speaker 1: Lable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was, you know, she's Aretha man. But yeah.
Speaker 2: So he wanted her to be with Columbia and she
Speaker 2: was with them and she sang no songs, but nothing
Speaker 2: was happening. And uh then I think it was probably
Speaker 2: Jerry Wexler or something like that. They approached her and said, hey,
Speaker 2: you know, we could do something for you, and she
Speaker 2: she said, man, She asked me, she smokes you, what
Speaker 2: you think I should do? I said, I think you
Speaker 2: should go over there and be Aretha, So I think
Speaker 2: you should do so she did.
Speaker 1: Was there any part of you that thought though, like, well,
Speaker 1: wait a second, maybe you could go to Atlantic, but
Speaker 1: maybe come to come?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I said, you know, I want you to come.
Speaker 2: Her dad wouldn't litter because he didn't think we were
Speaker 2: strong enough. Yeah, he didn't think we were established enough.
Speaker 1: But you know, everything's what it's supposed to be. But
Speaker 1: that would have been pretty incredible.
Speaker 2: That would have been. But then you know, we didn't
Speaker 2: have her, but we had Gladys.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, but you guys have more talent than you could.
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, everything about people like Bobby Taylor
Speaker 1: and uh, well Bobby Tailing the Vancouver's like, you know
Speaker 1: that's there, and it's like, guess he's an incredible singer.
Speaker 2: Bobby Taylor was the one who brought the Jackson five
Speaker 2: to Motown. Man, is that true? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Bobby Taylor bought them. You know, they they they
Speaker 2: they first started to tour with Diana Ross. So I
Speaker 2: think at first people gave her credit for bringing them there.
Speaker 2: But Bobby Taylor about the Jackson five, man, and uh
Speaker 2: he was working with them. And people asked me, what
Speaker 2: is one of my fondest memories about Michael Okay, when
Speaker 2: Michael first came to audition for at Barry's house, when
Speaker 2: the Jackson five came, he was so incredible to me.
Speaker 2: Here's this little dude. Man, he's about this toy. He's
Speaker 2: ten years old, and that day I dubbed him James
Speaker 2: Wilson because he was a cross between James Brown and
Speaker 2: Jackie Wilson at ten years old, I mean, dancing his
Speaker 2: little ass off, you know, and singing and just a
Speaker 2: bundle of talent. Always thought his life was so paradoxical
Speaker 2: because when he was a kid, he was a man,
Speaker 2: and when he was a man, he was a kid,
Speaker 2: you know. But he was just dynamic and people said, well,
Speaker 2: what do you remember? I remember that. And then Bobby
Speaker 2: Taylor and I he used to pretty golf together all
Speaker 2: the time, you know, So we started taking Michael to
Speaker 2: the golf course with He'd be on the cart wood us.
Speaker 2: Michael didn't had never even seen a golf club. The
Speaker 2: first time he went out the Woodson, he's telling us
Speaker 2: how to play golf. You know. Love that. You know
Speaker 2: you're in a badge of you Why you hit your
Speaker 2: ball over there like that you're supposed to hit the ball.
Speaker 2: But he was a cute little guy. But I love
Speaker 2: that memory. But yeah, he was. He changed the face
Speaker 2: of show business. Michael Jackson changed the look of show business.
Speaker 2: You know, I look at him, and I look at
Speaker 2: he was such a bundle of talent. Like I said,
Speaker 2: Michael watched everybody. We'd be doing those shows, and Michael
Speaker 2: be standing in the wings and he watched everybody. He
Speaker 2: idolized the dancing and the stuff of Jackie Wilson and
Speaker 2: Fred Astaire and James Brown and those people like that,
Speaker 2: and he worked his dancing skills like that. You know,
Speaker 2: Like I said, I could even understand him doing James
Speaker 2: Brown and Jackie Wilson. But Fred Astaire, the Nicholas Brothers,
Speaker 2: how do you even know about them? You know what
Speaker 2: I mean? When Michael did the moonwalk on the on
Speaker 2: the on the on the Motown twenty fifth anniversaries and
Speaker 2: people saying to do it, Oh, it's a fantastic mikeel
Speaker 2: got the moonwalk from the Nicholas Brothers. Was a movie
Speaker 2: called Stormy Weatherable. You know, they did that in Stormy
Speaker 2: Weather back. Lena Horn was the star of that movie.
Speaker 2: So you know how long ago they were nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: something they're doing the moonwalk, you know. But yeah, but
Speaker 2: Michael was just an incredible talent man, And like I said,
Speaker 2: he'd be dancing with those he'd have fifteen dancers who
Speaker 2: had been dancing since they were five years old. There
Speaker 2: was their profession. They're professional dancers and they're dancing alongside
Speaker 2: of him, and he's out dancing all of them. It's incredible.
Speaker 2: Oh man, incredible.
Speaker 1: Well, Smoky, I'm excited to see you back on tour.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to go. We've been off for a minute now.
Speaker 2: So as they say, I'm rid, well.
Speaker 1: Break I appreciate talking, thank you, thank you, very fasher man.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. Incredible, honor, my blessure, bib cool.
Speaker 1: All right, Happy birthday to the great Smokey Robinson. You
Speaker 1: can hear a playlist of all of our favorite tracks
Speaker 1: of his and the episode description or by visiting Broken
Speaker 1: Record podcast dot com and be sure to follow us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at the Broken Record Pod. You can follow
Speaker 1: us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced
Speaker 1: and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric
Speaker 1: Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Holliday. Broken
Speaker 1: Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love
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Speaker 1: Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.