Speaker 1: R and B Money.
Speaker 2: Honey, we are.
Speaker 1: Take volati. We are the authority on all things.
Speaker 2: R and B.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen. My name is Tanking. I am Ja Valentown.
Speaker 1: This is the R and B Money Podcast, the authorities
Speaker 1: on all things please R and B. Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that's what we represent. The foundation is in the building,
Speaker 1: preach telling what reason why we are here while we
Speaker 1: do what we won't do. What we do here is
Speaker 1: in the building while we sing so beautifully, don't you chucking?
Speaker 2: Man?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Him, the one and.
Speaker 2: Only, the one and only.
Speaker 1: Huh why even fo you want to smoke? Yeah? What Yeah?
Speaker 1: All of that, all of that he's been setting on five.
Speaker 1: We got to smoke from him. Let's get right into it.
Speaker 1: The King smoky bro.
Speaker 2: Smoke tak. I'm taking you everywhere I go for that introduction.
Speaker 1: Man, man, man, let me ask you a question. Okay,
Speaker 1: let me ask your question. Do you know like do
Speaker 1: you do you ever get to like they said the
Speaker 1: guy on the matrix? He said, have you ever step
Speaker 1: back and marveled at it? It's beauty? Have you've gotten
Speaker 1: a chance to just understand what you've done?
Speaker 2: Well? Man, you know what, First of all, I am
Speaker 2: just really really really blessed man, you know, and especially
Speaker 2: especially now, if you could have seen it, then you
Speaker 2: would add some inkling of what I'm talking about it,
Speaker 2: especially if you see it now where I grew up.
Speaker 2: Any kid there, because we had a lot of groups
Speaker 2: and a lot of people singing, and other would not
Speaker 2: have thought that something like this could happen for them.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: I grew up in the hood. I grew up you
Speaker 2: know where, you know, with some gangster brothers. So I
Speaker 2: am overwhelmed with what God has allowed to happen in
Speaker 2: my life, man, you know, because like I said, this
Speaker 2: was my impossible dream as a kid. This is what
Speaker 2: I wanted for my life, but it was impossible to
Speaker 2: me because this possibly ever happened, you know, not from
Speaker 2: where I am, you know. So I'm living my impossible dream,
Speaker 2: and it's a blessing, man. And I don't take it
Speaker 2: for granted. And I don't triple on Smokey Robinson and
Speaker 2: all that, you know, that's just that comes along with
Speaker 2: this territory, you know what I mean. And when I
Speaker 2: see people come into show business and they have a
Speaker 2: hit record or get a little note and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: and they start tripping on themselves and think that, well,
Speaker 2: the world is aware of them now, so it can't
Speaker 2: possibly do without them. That's so stupid, man. I think
Speaker 2: I've seen thousands and I'm not exaggerating now, I've seen
Speaker 2: thousands of people come through show business, man, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. So I just I'm blessed man, and
Speaker 2: I'm very, very very happy to be able to live
Speaker 2: this life that I love so much.
Speaker 1: Well, let me say this. Today is Smoky Robinson Day.
Speaker 1: We know he probably got many of them around the world,
Speaker 1: of course, of course, but today on this pod, it's
Speaker 1: the King's day. Right. You say listen, you say you ain't.
Speaker 1: You don't trip on the Smoky Robinson thing. Today we
Speaker 1: get we tripped trip tripping Smoky Robinson. All right, you
Speaker 1: get the trip too, all right, whatever you get to
Speaker 1: stand on business, all right, I want to get I
Speaker 1: want to I want to get two things that are
Speaker 1: for me and my brother Jay Urgent. Off top. Well,
Speaker 1: we got these eyes on us off top. This is
Speaker 1: the fiftieth anniversary, of course, talk about that, man.
Speaker 2: Well you know what, man, I'm having two fiftieth anniversaries
Speaker 2: at the same time. Really, because it's a fifty Diniversity
Speaker 2: of a quiet storm. All yeah, quite storm was my
Speaker 2: debut back into show business. Man, because uh we of
Speaker 2: course everyone knows that we very started Motown. We started
Speaker 2: out in Detroit. That's where we're all from. I was
Speaker 2: born in Detroit. Blah blah blah blah. Were so well
Speaker 2: from Detroit. And then he decided along the way that
Speaker 2: he was going to he wanted motown to become an
Speaker 2: entertainment complex. So he wanted to make movies and do
Speaker 2: TV specials and stuff like that. And Los Angeles was
Speaker 2: the capital of that at that time, you know, for
Speaker 2: doing stuff like that, and Alli he came out and
Speaker 2: made ladies things the blues and you know, mahogany, you know,
Speaker 2: and so that was his that was his thought for
Speaker 2: for Motown. And I came out here kicking and screaming. Man,
Speaker 2: I came out to Los Angeles because I didn't want
Speaker 2: to move from Detroit. I thought we should stay there.
Speaker 2: You know, they even called Detroit motown and that, you know,
Speaker 2: so I thought, hey, man, we should stay here. So
Speaker 2: I was anyway, he convinced me that I had to move,
Speaker 2: and at the same time, I was retiring from the Miracles.
Speaker 1: And how old were you at this time.
Speaker 2: When I retired from the Miracles, I was thirty one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was thirty one and so but man, I did
Speaker 2: because the Miracles and I had been saying. Ron White
Speaker 2: and Pete Moore and I had been singing together since
Speaker 2: we were eleven years old.
Speaker 1: Man, oh wow, you know back in the days.
Speaker 2: And then we met. We met Bobby who was our
Speaker 2: other original Miracle member, and a guy named Sonny, and
Speaker 2: Sonny when we graduated from high school, decided he wanted
Speaker 2: to go to the Army because we weren't doing anything
Speaker 2: as a group. It was a thousand groups in Detroit,
Speaker 2: you know, we just singing around the parties and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. So he had his mother decided for him
Speaker 2: to go to the army, and his sister took his
Speaker 2: place at our group. So Man, we went to audition
Speaker 2: for Jackie Wilson's manager. Jackie Wilson was my number one
Speaker 2: singing idol as a kid growing up. I would have
Speaker 2: walked twenty miles to see Jackie, man because Jackie was
Speaker 2: the man. Okay, but anyway, we got to change. Jackie
Speaker 2: was from Detroit too, and we got a chance to
Speaker 2: go to audition for his managers and we did, and
Speaker 2: we went to and I tell everybody it was a
Speaker 2: god day because we went to audition for his managers
Speaker 2: and like I said, we had a girl in a
Speaker 2: group and I sang Hi, and rather than singing songs
Speaker 2: that were currently popular about other artists, we said, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're gonna sing five songs that I've written because I've
Speaker 2: been trying to write songs since elementary school. So I
Speaker 2: had a goofly note but full of song. So we're
Speaker 2: gonna sing five songs that I've written. So they could say, Okay,
Speaker 2: these kids got their own material, so we're gonna definitely
Speaker 2: sign them. Wrong. They didn't like us at all. Man,
Speaker 2: they did not like it because we work hearing to
Speaker 2: the Platters as far as they were concerned, because Flatters
Speaker 2: had Zula Taylor and Tony the guy sang high and all,
Speaker 2: we had the same for him, and they said, we
Speaker 2: don't need another Platters. Y'all got this girl in the
Speaker 2: group and the old So you'll never make it because the.
Speaker 1: Platters already out. You'll never make make it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you'll never make it. All right, Here's what he said,
Speaker 2: is that he said, you never make it unless you
Speaker 2: change your format. So we okay, good. So anyway, so
Speaker 2: they rejected us. However, during the course of that audition,
Speaker 2: there was a young man sitting over in the corner, and,
Speaker 2: like I said, I'm sixteen, so he don't look any
Speaker 2: older than nineteen or twenty at this point, you know.
Speaker 2: And I think he's sitting there because he's gonna audition
Speaker 2: after we finish, you know. And so we sang the
Speaker 2: five songs and they rejected us, and we're going out,
Speaker 2: and we're going out down the hall and the young
Speaker 2: man who had been sitting there watching came out behind us.
Speaker 2: He said, Man, wait a minute. So I turned around.
Speaker 2: He said, what'd you get the songs from?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 2: I said, I wrote him. I'm wondering why he's asking
Speaker 2: me that, you know, because you know, what, do you
Speaker 2: care where gun I'm from? So you know, I'm being nice.
Speaker 2: Point yeah, but I'm thinking, like man, because I'm I'm
Speaker 2: I'm you know, I'm disappointed, you know. So he said, yeah, Man,
Speaker 2: he said, I liked a couple of your songs. Man.
Speaker 2: So I said to myself, well, he wants to use
Speaker 2: a couple of my songs so he can audition with him.
Speaker 2: I see, you still think yeah, so I said, yeah, man,
Speaker 2: I said, well, well, thank you very much, man, he said,
Speaker 2: he said, no. When I buy records, even today, man,
Speaker 2: I look to see who wrote the music. I want
Speaker 2: to see who composes me if it's if it's a
Speaker 2: band singers, I want to know who actually wrote this
Speaker 2: music these people are doing here. So I do that.
Speaker 2: I always have done that. So now I got all
Speaker 2: of Jackie Wilson's records. Okay, So this dude says to me,
Speaker 2: he said, yeah, man, he said, I'm very gordy. What
Speaker 2: how could you possibly be very gordy? Man, I say,
Speaker 2: you mean very gordy? Who rolls's for Jackie? He said yeah.
Speaker 1: I said, so he was a guy already. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 2: He was ten years older than me. I just look,
Speaker 2: he just look young, girl, you know, I just want
Speaker 2: to see him the other day. You know, Bet was
Speaker 2: ninety five on his birthday. Man, he looked like he's sixty,
Speaker 2: you know. So anyway, so anyway, so uh so he said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I said, you berry Gordy. So that's why I say
Speaker 2: it was a god day, man, because Bet didn't have
Speaker 2: to be there that day. We didn't have to go audition.
Speaker 2: He was there to turn in some new songs to
Speaker 2: Jackie Wilson. He actually had lonely teer right, lonely teer
Speaker 2: dress with him that day. You know, he was gonna let.
Speaker 1: Had lonely tears drop. He was gonna let jacket here
Speaker 1: all day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolute, absolutely, you know what I'm saying. So anyway,
Speaker 2: he said he was him, and I could not believe
Speaker 2: this man. And he liked a couple of my songs
Speaker 2: and stuff. So to make a long story short, he
Speaker 2: he said, you got any more songs? I had a
Speaker 2: loose sleep notebook, man, like I said, full of songs.
Speaker 2: So he listened about twenty of them that day and
Speaker 2: he just critiqued him. So he started to work with me,
Speaker 2: and and and about a year and a half later
Speaker 2: he he put us with the record label. And because
Speaker 2: there was no there was no Motewn at the time,
Speaker 2: and uh, he put us with a record label out
Speaker 2: of New York End Records, and they had Little Anthony
Speaker 2: Imperials and the Chantels and people like that on the label.
Speaker 2: We were very excited. So I'd written this song called
Speaker 2: got a Job, in answer to the Silhouettes song get
Speaker 2: a Job, which was number one in the world at
Speaker 2: that time. So he recorded it on us and got
Speaker 2: a job. There was three charts at the time. There
Speaker 2: was the R and B chart, what they call the
Speaker 2: pop charts where all the white artists were, and then
Speaker 2: the classical chart, you know. So on the R and
Speaker 2: B chart, got a job, went to the top five,
Speaker 2: so we know that. Okay, that's that's that's a hit,
Speaker 2: you know. So we had four sizes with them, two
Speaker 2: forty five, you know, it was four sides. And so
Speaker 2: so come time to pay the royalties, man, this dude
Speaker 2: sent Barry check for the producer's royalties, the publishing, the writing,
Speaker 2: Irish royalties for three dollars nineteen cents, you know, for
Speaker 2: four CIDs three nineteen cents, you know.
Speaker 3: So I'm trying to put together inflation, baby, yeah, three
Speaker 3: nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 2: Just ain't that Arry framed it. He's got it. He
Speaker 2: framed it, and I think that was that was the
Speaker 2: start that broke the camel's back as far as the
Speaker 2: starting motown. I'm glad George going to did that, man,
Speaker 2: because he said, MANE say, I'm tired of this because
Speaker 2: ain't nobody paying. So he bought eight hundred dollars with
Speaker 2: his family started Motown, thank God, started Motown. And like
Speaker 2: I said, we moved out to Los Angeles. I'm I'm
Speaker 2: a vice president. So he's telling me when I was
Speaker 2: when I was in Detroit, he told me, he said,
Speaker 2: and my office was designed to induct new talent. I
Speaker 2: brought a lot of new talent into into Motown and
Speaker 2: stuff back in the day. And I love that. And
Speaker 2: then so he finally convinced me to move out to
Speaker 2: Los Angeles. Left I retired from the Miracles, and he
Speaker 2: he said, man, he said, you're my best friend. So
Speaker 2: I'm gonna change your office. I mean, he's gonna be
Speaker 2: the financial office. You're gonna sign all the checks. All
Speaker 2: the check's gonna come to you except for the payment
Speaker 2: of the records. And that's what you're gonna do. So
Speaker 2: I'm cool, man, and I've been, you know, on the
Speaker 2: road all over the world sing with the Miracles. I'm
Speaker 2: just do my job as a vice president, be there
Speaker 2: every day. Oh this is great, you know. And then Claudee,
Speaker 2: who was my wife, then we just had our two
Speaker 2: our two old oldest kids were born at that time.
Speaker 2: My son was four, my daughters two. You know, so
Speaker 2: I get a chance to stay at home, my family
Speaker 2: and all that and be there. So I'm going out
Speaker 2: there and you know, so, man, at first it was
Speaker 2: the bomb. I loved it because I'm going to the
Speaker 2: office every day. I'm going home every day. After the office,
Speaker 2: I'm signing a check. And when I first started signing,
Speaker 2: my name is William Robinson Junior. Man, So I started
Speaker 2: signing a check like that, William Robinson Junr. And after
Speaker 2: they signed a thout, you ought to see my signature.
Speaker 2: Now it's like that a thousand chicks. You know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying, You're gonna figure out something. So anyway, so
Speaker 2: I'm doing that, man. And after about two two and
Speaker 2: a half years, I found myself miserable. I was fucked
Speaker 2: up on the inside. I was just miserable. Man. Every
Speaker 2: day I was miserable. I was sad. And I'm not
Speaker 2: a sad person. I'm you know, I'm you know. One day,
Speaker 2: after about three years or so, Barry came to my office.
Speaker 2: He said, hey, man, he said, I need you to
Speaker 2: do something for me. I said, okay, man, what do
Speaker 2: you want me to do? I thought he's gonna tell
Speaker 2: me some corporate stuff, you know, because I've been doing
Speaker 2: my my my my status vice president like that. I
Speaker 2: would travel, I would go to New York and make
Speaker 2: deals with publishing companies. Dude, you know so, I thought
Speaker 2: he's gonna tell me something like that. You know. So
Speaker 2: he said, I need you to do something for me, man.
Speaker 2: He said, I need you to get yourself a band
Speaker 2: and going to the studio, make a and get the
Speaker 2: fuck out of here. I said, well, what's wrong, man?
Speaker 2: I said, I'm not doing my jo. He said, no,
Speaker 2: you're doing a great job, mate, But you're miserable. He said,
Speaker 2: you think you had that ship from me? He said,
Speaker 2: I'm a nigga from Detroit too. I'm a street nigga
Speaker 2: from Detroit. So I peeped you. You're my best friend,
Speaker 2: so you can't hide from me. He said, I see
Speaker 2: you miserable. It makes me miserable. I don't want to
Speaker 2: be miserable. So I need you to get the fuck
Speaker 2: out of my face.
Speaker 1: All sounded like me, so.
Speaker 2: I just grabbed it. Yeah. I heard him for about
Speaker 2: ten minutes, man, and then I went home and uh,
Speaker 2: and I told her that I was so happy, man.
Speaker 2: And then I said, okay, I always consider myself to
Speaker 2: be a quiet singer, you know. I said, but I'm
Speaker 2: gonna go back and I'm gonna take show business by storm.
Speaker 2: And I walked around, I thought about it. I said,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, quiet Storm, Wait just one second, you know.
Speaker 2: So I went to the piano and I started writing
Speaker 2: Quiet Storm. Man, and my youngest sister, who I had
Speaker 2: two sisters, and my younger sister was fourteen when I
Speaker 2: was born, but she was a hell of a lyricist, man,
Speaker 2: you know. So I started Quiet Storm, and I knew, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be working for the rest of this album.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do an album now, Man, I'm getting out of here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you ready, You're ready, I'm.
Speaker 2: Ready to go. So anyway, I took it to her
Speaker 2: and she finished up the leg for Quiet Storm, and
Speaker 2: the album became Quiet Storm, and it was my debut
Speaker 2: back in the show business.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: It was. It was what had me come back to
Speaker 2: doing what I absolutely love. And so it was my
Speaker 2: debut back in the show business. And then eventually, man,
Speaker 2: this young brother, Melbourne Lindsay, he was a DJ down
Speaker 2: in Washington, d C. And he had a late night
Speaker 2: show and he started to play a Quiet Storm at
Speaker 2: the beginning of his show every night, and then he
Speaker 2: changed his show to be the Choiirt Storm, and then
Speaker 2: radio stations all over the country started to have a
Speaker 2: Choie Storm.
Speaker 1: Ladies, gentlemen in the building right now. The Quiet Storm
Speaker 1: himself the reason you have a Quie wowarm Listen, you
Speaker 1: gotta understand. And I'm just you know, I'm just speaking
Speaker 1: to to impact us as artists R and b artists,
Speaker 1: our songs. The first place we would get spins, the
Speaker 1: first place they would say, you know what, We're gonna
Speaker 1: try you out on the Quiet Storm all right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where I started. I started on the Quiet Store.
Speaker 1: A man, those are those late night spans.
Speaker 3: Better believe it overnight or overnight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it went from having successful overnight spins to
Speaker 1: having mind spins in the morning show. But it starts there,
Speaker 1: the Quiet Storm. But listen, I've set in for for
Speaker 1: many a DJ on their Quiet Storm. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying.
Speaker 4: I've done a few, I've done plenty.
Speaker 3: I have a question too. Yeah, over time coining a
Speaker 3: lot of these things, did you ever think like I
Speaker 3: need to start trademarking any of it? You was just like,
Speaker 3: I'm just writing and I'm just.
Speaker 2: Clever at first. Yeah, at first, you know, I'm just
Speaker 2: I'm just writing. I think that when when something like
Speaker 2: that happens, Man, it happens basically on its own. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because I hadn't. I hadn't planned that, man, you know,
Speaker 2: I just I was just excited to come back and
Speaker 2: be able to go and do concerts again, and I'm
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be the white storm, you know, and then
Speaker 2: it just happened like that. Man. I hadn't planned it.
Speaker 2: I didn't even thought of that. Man, you know, I
Speaker 2: hadn't thought of that. When I write a song, I
Speaker 2: want to write a song. And I mean by that
Speaker 2: that I want to write a song.
Speaker 1: I want to write.
Speaker 2: If I had written it fifty years before I wrote it,
Speaker 2: it would have meant something to people, and currently it's
Speaker 2: gonna mean something when they hear it, and fifty years
Speaker 2: from now it's gonna mean something. He is here, so
Speaker 2: I want to I want to write a song. That's
Speaker 2: the thing that Barry when he started to mentor me
Speaker 2: on my songwriting, that he instilled that in me. I
Speaker 2: want to write a song, man, because if I write
Speaker 2: a song, I might go in the studio and record it.
Speaker 2: On myself or somebody else and not give it the
Speaker 2: right treatment. I'll give you a couple of stories on
Speaker 2: that too, that'll show you what I'm talking about, and
Speaker 2: not give it the right treatment. And later on, if
Speaker 2: it's a song, somebody could pick it up twenty years
Speaker 2: when I says, oh, I like the song and record
Speaker 2: it and it'd be a hit. You know, if it's
Speaker 2: a song, it's got that chance. So I want to
Speaker 2: write a song.
Speaker 1: I want to be baited. Man.
Speaker 2: You know it's six hundred years. We were still playing
Speaker 2: Beethoven's music. We're still playing Chopin, We're still playing Bach.
Speaker 2: You know, we're talking about where I grew up. Man,
Speaker 2: I had a great dose of music. Man. My mother.
Speaker 2: My mother passed when I was ten. But my mother,
Speaker 2: she well she would cuts you out in a minute.
Speaker 2: But she was like when the church three times a week,
Speaker 2: that kind of shit. But you know, she was a
Speaker 2: regular woman. She wanted to like this kind of person,
Speaker 2: you know, and she would play. I know once once
Speaker 2: I was playing Rutgers University with the with with the
Speaker 2: Miracles man and B. B. King Uh. They had re
Speaker 2: released Lucille.
Speaker 1: And and and and and.
Speaker 2: These white boys came to me after the show and
Speaker 2: they said, hey, smokey uh, have you heard this new guy,
Speaker 2: BB King? I said, B B King, Man, I said,
Speaker 2: my mother played BB King when I was a little boy.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying. So my mother played Johnny
Speaker 2: Hooker and BB King and Muddy Waters and people like that,
Speaker 2: and little somebody. There was a whole lot of littles
Speaker 2: back in the day. And then some days, for two
Speaker 2: and three days in row she wouldn't play nothing but
Speaker 2: Beethoven and Bach and Chopin and people like that. And
Speaker 2: then she would play the Five Blind Boys and the
Speaker 2: Voluntaires and Award Singers and you know, Mahiriot Jackson. And
Speaker 2: so I'm getting all this. And then I got two sisters,
Speaker 2: like I said, my younger sister fourteen where I was born.
Speaker 2: So now they're playing Count Basie and Duke Kellington and
Speaker 2: Sammy Davis and Frank Sinatra. And so I'm getting a
Speaker 2: great dose of music growing up, you know. So I'm
Speaker 2: I'm into all kinds of bulk and music and and
Speaker 2: what you know, listening to it and loving it. But anyway,
Speaker 2: like I said, you know, I never I never dared
Speaker 2: to dream that some of these songs would do what
Speaker 2: they what they have done, and what they have done
Speaker 2: for me, you know. But what I was gonna say,
Speaker 2: as far as as Barry goes with the with the
Speaker 2: not being satisfied with stuff, the greatest example I can
Speaker 2: give you probably is shop around. Okay, So shop Around.
Speaker 2: We had this artist, Barrett Strong, who had money. That's
Speaker 2: what I want, the best thing in life up for
Speaker 2: a year, you know. So he's got a really big
Speaker 2: hit there, and Barry came to and say, hey, man,
Speaker 2: I want you to do an album on Barrett Cool
Speaker 2: when we're doing ELM on Barrett Man. So I'm thinking
Speaker 2: about Barrett. You know what you got, the money, That's
Speaker 2: what I want. What you do with money, you shop.
Speaker 2: So the first song I'm gonna write is known be
Speaker 2: about that. So I'm gonna write shop Around. So I
Speaker 2: wrote shop around, and shop Around was one of those songs.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: Songs take different times at least for me, and shop
Speaker 2: Around took me about twenty five thirty minutes and it
Speaker 2: was done. It just flowed, just plump. I was so
Speaker 2: excited about it, man, and I want to office. Hey man,
Speaker 2: I said, I gotta smash it for Barrett Man. He said,
Speaker 2: you have me said, let me hear it. So we
Speaker 2: go down to the studio. We go to the piano,
Speaker 2: and Barry's an accomplished pianist, you know. So we go
Speaker 2: down the piano and I started singing shop round, you know,
Speaker 2: and after a while he starts playing on it. He said, hey, man,
Speaker 2: he said, wait a minute, No, I want you to
Speaker 2: sing this song. No, Barry Man, I wrote this song
Speaker 2: for Barrett Man. Money. That's what I'm all shopparound. Come
Speaker 2: on man, you know. No, No, Man, I like the
Speaker 2: way you sound on this. I want you to sing
Speaker 2: this song. Oh, come on, Barry, No, No, I'm on
Speaker 2: to jaff. We went through twenty five minutes of that,
Speaker 2: so he finally said he Man's going to the studio
Speaker 2: and recorded on You and the Miracles.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: I like the way you sound on this, so I said, okay.
Speaker 2: So I went in the studio and I recorded it
Speaker 2: on us and it Bear Strong was a bluesy singer
Speaker 2: as far as I was concerned. So that's how I
Speaker 2: wrote Chaperon and I recorded it just because you becoming
Speaker 2: young man. Then piano blo on, blown blown on on,
Speaker 2: and then you know all that you know, and it
Speaker 2: was kind of like slow and rocking and shit. So
Speaker 2: we put the record out. Record's been out for at
Speaker 2: least two weeks on the radio, okay, and three o'clock
Speaker 2: in the morning one morning, my phone rings and uh
Speaker 2: I pick it up. I said, hello, hey, man, it's me.
Speaker 2: It's very I said, yeah, man, I said, I kind
Speaker 2: of recognize your voice. I said, what do you want?
Speaker 2: He said, what's happening? Man? I said, what do you mean?
Speaker 2: What's happening? Man? It's three o'clock in the morning. What's happening.
Speaker 2: I'm sleep, man, that's what's happening. He said, Well, chaperon
Speaker 2: won't let me sleep. I said what he said, chaperon
Speaker 2: won't let me sleep. You did the wrong thing to it.
Speaker 2: You give it the wrong treatment. You did not give
Speaker 2: it the right treatment. It's a really good song and
Speaker 2: you fucked it up. So I got to do it again.
Speaker 1: It's on the radio.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly what I said. I said, Berry, the
Speaker 2: record's been out for two weeks on the radio. He said,
Speaker 2: I don't care. Man, it's not as good as it
Speaker 2: can be, and it can be really good. He said,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna change. I'm gonna change everything about it. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna change the sound, I'm gonna change the beat, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna change the rhythm. I'm gonna change everything about it.
Speaker 2: And it's going to number one. So I said, oh, man, okay,
Speaker 2: I said, but you know, he said no, no, no,
Speaker 2: he said, I'm changing everything. I said, okay, man, I'll
Speaker 2: see you tomorrow. He said, no, no, no, I mean right now.
Speaker 2: I said, running now ThReD Cid in the morning. Man,
Speaker 2: he said, don't care. He said. I called all the musicians.
Speaker 2: He said, I called them, and so you get the group,
Speaker 2: y'all come to the studio right now. We're gonna do
Speaker 2: it again. Thank god, thank god. We won and did
Speaker 2: it again because he changed everything. If you could hear
Speaker 2: the one I did and here the one that's the
Speaker 2: popular one, it's a whole another record. But that's what
Speaker 2: he did, he said. So see, he changed it, and
Speaker 2: the rest is history. It was the first million sell
Speaker 2: that Motown every yeah, yeah, the first million sell that town.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 2: But that's who that do it is. Man, He's one
Speaker 2: of those guys. That's why that's I tell people all
Speaker 2: the time, that's the success of Motown, man, Because people
Speaker 2: ask me all the time. You see, I grew up
Speaker 2: in a great neighborhood, man. I grew up down in
Speaker 2: Rossly for four doors down the street from Meretha Franklin
Speaker 2: lived right around the corner.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The fore Tops live right across the avenue by by
Speaker 2: by Pete who is one who's who was our bass singer.
Speaker 2: You know, the Temptations live right across this avenue right
Speaker 2: over there. And we had battles at high school. And
Speaker 2: you know, I grew up in a great neighborhood. You
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying. And people say all the time,
Speaker 2: why did Detroit have all those talented people? Man? He
Speaker 2: had to you know, all those people in Detroit. And
Speaker 2: I tell him, and I really believe this, in every village,
Speaker 2: every city, every township, every area where there are people gathered, Okay,
Speaker 2: probably ratio wise, there's that same amount of talent we have.
Speaker 1: We had Barry go. You know what I mean, somebody
Speaker 1: got to bring it all together.
Speaker 2: Somebody had to bring for a dude with a high
Speaker 2: school education to pull off something like Motown and have
Speaker 2: it be what it has become. That's a special dude, man,
Speaker 2: that's a special dude. Man. You know what I mean,
Speaker 2: so that's what we had. We had somebody who was
Speaker 2: there pushing us. And and you know, and Motown was
Speaker 2: a place of competition. It was, it was, it was,
Speaker 2: it was. It was such a wonderful, wonderful place, man,
Speaker 2: because it was not just our workplace, it was our
Speaker 2: hanging place. We have always had what we celebrated as
Speaker 2: the Motown family, because that's who we were, man, and
Speaker 2: that's who we are, those of us who are still alive,
Speaker 2: we still celebrate the Motown family. But we were a
Speaker 2: family because we weren't just stablemates. We see the temptations
Speaker 2: walking through the hallway. Hey man, how you doing. No,
Speaker 2: we hung out with each other. Yeah, that was our
Speaker 2: brother my brothers and sisters. We hung We want each
Speaker 2: other's homes. We had dinner, each other's houses, We had picnics,
Speaker 2: we had outings, we did everything together. When you went
Speaker 2: back to Detroit, you could have been on fifty one
Speaker 2: night a tour, and when you got back to Detroit,
Speaker 2: first thing you did was get yourself together, bet your
Speaker 2: clothes and go to Hittsville. Why because everybody was over there,
Speaker 2: and you knew whoever was in town was gonna be
Speaker 2: over there, and you're gonna hang. That's what we did.
Speaker 2: We hung, and we had the family kind of thing,
Speaker 2: and all those people we were brothers and sisters. And
Speaker 2: I go back now and I look at the pictures
Speaker 2: in the museum and stuff like that, and eighty five
Speaker 2: percent of them are gone. Eighty five percent of them
Speaker 2: are gone. And when you when you when you're a
Speaker 2: kid like that and you're growing up with all those
Speaker 2: people there, and the last thing you expect to see
Speaker 2: them dead. You don't expect to see nobody dead, you know,
Speaker 2: especially when when when it's your close partner, part like
Speaker 2: Marven for me, you know, dude that I was with
Speaker 2: every day all day long, damn near of my life,
Speaker 2: you know. Now respect to see him dead, damn.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's but we have the Motown family man, and it's
Speaker 2: a beautiful thing. It was beautiful, you know. We Very
Speaker 2: held a sign up in the in the office. He
Speaker 2: had this thing and says, competition breeds success because we
Speaker 2: were so competitive against each other. Man, we were knocked down,
Speaker 2: drag out competitive against each other. The producers and the
Speaker 2: writers and people are trying to get records out on
Speaker 2: the artists and stuff like that. And see the thing
Speaker 2: about Motown, which is nothing made it so unique is
Speaker 2: that if you were a producer or a writer and
Speaker 2: you had a song that you thought fit so and so,
Speaker 2: you could take it to so and so, and if
Speaker 2: they liked it, you were free to record it on them.
Speaker 2: It didn't matter who had the last hit record on
Speaker 2: them and all that stuff. It didn't matter about all
Speaker 2: that you got a song that they like, you can
Speaker 2: record it on them. So that's why the competition was
Speaker 2: so fierce. And every Monday morning we had meetings in
Speaker 2: Barrie's office and only the creative people were allowed in
Speaker 2: those meetings. Only the writers and producers. No secretaries, no
Speaker 2: people from the sales department, no, none of that of
Speaker 2: us up, just the writers and producers. Meetings start at
Speaker 2: nine a m. On Monday morning. If you got that
Speaker 2: nine oh one, you were locked out. You couldn't get in.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm saying it. But we go in there
Speaker 2: and we curitique each other's music, even though we were
Speaker 2: competing against each other. Like I said, the greatest competition
Speaker 2: ever had for getting records out on the Temptations was
Speaker 2: Norman Whitfield and Baard Strong. Norman could be in the
Speaker 2: studio working on something on Barrett, And like I said,
Speaker 2: we hung out there all the time all everybody and
Speaker 2: say hey, smoke, come in here, man. I want you
Speaker 2: to say ooh, I want you to stomp your feet
Speaker 2: or clap your hands or something like that. And I
Speaker 2: would go do it. Even though I know he was
Speaker 2: competing against me for record out on the Temptations, he
Speaker 2: would do the same thing for me because that's how
Speaker 2: it was. That's how we did. And in the Monday
Speaker 2: morning meetings, we just came in and critiqued each other's music, man,
Speaker 2: trying to get it better, trying to get I'll give
Speaker 2: you a great example of that, uh uh tracks My Tears.
Speaker 2: Tracked My Tears was one of many, many, many songs
Speaker 2: that the origin of that song is my guitar. So
Speaker 2: it's passed on now. Guy named Marv Tarplin with his guitar.
Speaker 2: He would put those guitar rips on the tape for
Speaker 2: me and give them to me until I could come
Speaker 2: up with a song for his music, you know. And
Speaker 2: so he had done that for the tracks of My Tears,
Speaker 2: and I just had him playing the guitar on tape
Speaker 2: and finally one day I came up with the three
Speaker 2: lines for the chorus. They're good, look at my face, smile,
Speaker 2: look at tray, close the sezar. The trays that you're
Speaker 2: gone and I'm here. No, the seasons are trays that
Speaker 2: I still love you, but you don't love me. No,
Speaker 2: Caesar are trays that I went through a lot of those, man.
Speaker 2: So one morning, this is so ironic. One morning I
Speaker 2: was in mirror and I'm shaving and I don't I
Speaker 2: don't have to shave it like once thy four or
Speaker 2: five days because hell won't grow on my face. I
Speaker 2: hated that in the in the sixties and seventy when
Speaker 2: of the guys the motown were growing beards and I
Speaker 2: couldn't grow one. I hated that.
Speaker 1: Man, You see that?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, warm thoughts. Man, you see a little pature.
Speaker 1: I'm pature, you know.
Speaker 2: So anyway, so I'm in the mirror and I'm shaving,
Speaker 2: and the thought just came to me, Man, what if
Speaker 2: a person cried so much until their tears left tracks
Speaker 2: in their face? And then I said, oh, ship, that's it.
Speaker 2: So that was how I was able to finish up
Speaker 2: the tracks of my tears. Okay, now tracked my tears.
Speaker 1: You gotta be from the snow Joy that took.
Speaker 2: That took maybe a month or so cruising, which was
Speaker 2: another song that he Marven had put his guitar riffs
Speaker 2: on tape and cruising. I loved his guitar so much
Speaker 2: until back in those days you could looper tape and
Speaker 2: I would look. I literally put me to sleep at night.
Speaker 2: It was so sensual and so sexy, and so I
Speaker 2: wrote a couple of songs of that, and they didn't
Speaker 2: work because they weren't central and sexy like that. It
Speaker 2: took me five years to come up with something for cruisers.
Speaker 2: Five years. It took me something to come up with
Speaker 2: something for cruising. And then once again it was by
Speaker 2: quite by accident, I come up with the first three
Speaker 2: lines of the course you Don't Fly Away. I'm glad
Speaker 2: you're going my way because I love it when we're
Speaker 2: traveling together. No, I love it when we're doing this.
Speaker 2: I love them and shit, man, I had that tape
Speaker 2: for five years, and one day it was at Christmas time,
Speaker 2: December here in Los Angeles, and I'm from Michigan, where
Speaker 2: in December the winters are brutal. I mean brutal, you
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Maybe.
Speaker 2: So I'm driving down Sunset Boulevard in December with my
Speaker 2: top down and they got Christmas decorations and people are
Speaker 2: walking around in shorts and tank tops and ship it's
Speaker 2: eighty degrees is wrong because in December, and I thought
Speaker 2: to myself said, damn, this is ridiculous, man, this is December.
Speaker 2: I'm cruising down so it okay, I like this out
Speaker 2: of that word cruising, put it on the end of
Speaker 2: the thing, and that allowed me to finish that song.
Speaker 2: But life, yeah, life, absolutely.
Speaker 1: Let's stop a cruising. Let's stop right, cruise, I do that,
Speaker 1: Let's stop. There are two things that I need to
Speaker 1: know about cruising. First, I need to know about the
Speaker 1: session of cruising. Okay, what does this the session? What is?
Speaker 1: What is it? Give me? If i'm if I walk
Speaker 1: in the studio, what do I see?
Speaker 2: There was a guy named Jean Paige. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you ever met Jean. Jean Page was an arranger.
Speaker 2: He was one of the greatest UH rhythm and blues
Speaker 2: pop for arranger, of the greatest record industry arrangers that
Speaker 2: I've ever heard in my life. You take Jeene Page
Speaker 2: your raw thing, You're raw tape And when he got
Speaker 2: through with it. It was over, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: So I took gene page after I put after I
Speaker 2: had recorded the the the uh the rhythm track, and
Speaker 2: put the vocal down on cruising. I took it to
Speaker 2: Jean when I say, here baby, that's why I got back.
Speaker 1: So he hired the string.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he hired the string. He but he did
Speaker 2: the arrangements.
Speaker 1: Arrangements, so he's he's Quincy Jones right now doing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, indeed, the bass player, this is what you do,
Speaker 1: and and this is all these are all live instruments.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that's music, man, that's one man. I record
Speaker 2: live all the time. Man, I like to I like
Speaker 2: to sing while they're playing.
Speaker 1: Still, you like to sing while they're playing, ask.
Speaker 2: Him, that's what we did this time. I like to
Speaker 2: sing while they're playing. I like to sing. I prefer
Speaker 2: that because you see that that that's that's like when
Speaker 2: when we're doing concerts. I don't know if I've ever
Speaker 2: sang the same song exactly the same way ever, because
Speaker 2: you know the cats are playing, it's different. Hear some
Speaker 2: ship to guitar player. But it aspires you to do
Speaker 2: something else, you know, And he's gonna hear something that
Speaker 2: the bass player player, and he's gonna inspire him to
Speaker 2: do something else. You know what I'm saying. So it's
Speaker 2: it's it's it's inspirational. So so yeah, so I love
Speaker 2: recording when when they record.
Speaker 1: Okay, so cruising, cruising, Like I said, man, so do
Speaker 1: me this, do me this moment. Okay, the first time
Speaker 1: you hear d'angelo's cruising, Okay, what are your thoughts when
Speaker 1: you hear it?
Speaker 2: Well, see, first of all, D'angelo's my little brother. I
Speaker 2: love him. He's I know his mama and all them,
Speaker 2: you know, so he's a cool dude. And what did
Speaker 2: I think when I heard it? I thought, yeah, b
Speaker 2: oh great, that's the same thing I think when I
Speaker 2: hear anybody doing any of my songs, I mean a songwriter.
Speaker 2: I hope that that happens all the time.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, I know when when the kids first started
Speaker 2: to sample music and doing all the people come to me,
Speaker 2: hey man, they sampled your music? Did you up to
Speaker 2: no sample all of mine?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Sample every song I ever wrote in my life, because
Speaker 2: when you sample it, that says to me that out
Speaker 2: of the billion songs that are on earth, you know
Speaker 2: that you had a choice of you know, and plus
Speaker 2: you a songwriter, your say off, you chose one of mine, yes,
Speaker 2: to incorporate in your music order to the bet just
Speaker 2: sing period. Thank you. So D'Angelo, like I said, he's
Speaker 2: a talented young man, and he sang it, and I
Speaker 2: was flabbagasted, and in fact, they surprised him he did.
Speaker 2: I forgot what the TV show was now, but anyway,
Speaker 2: he was gonna do this TV show and he was
Speaker 2: singing cruising and they called me and told me what
Speaker 2: was happening. And so the TV show starts and he
Speaker 2: gets there and he sings the first verse, and then
Speaker 2: they had me walk out to sing the second person.
Speaker 1: It was we in the mall.
Speaker 2: We had the mall. It was crazy, but but but
Speaker 2: I loved when he did that. Man he's got such
Speaker 2: a funky version of him, but the angel's funky anyway.
Speaker 3: So yeah, now I love I love what you said
Speaker 3: about that, because I think there's sometimes there's this line
Speaker 3: in the sand where you know you have you have,
Speaker 3: which they have all the right to feel that way,
Speaker 3: but you have certain artists who are just like I
Speaker 3: don't want anybody touching my music. Make your own music,
Speaker 3: and you know y'all.
Speaker 1: Need to be more creative. You said it, I didn't.
Speaker 1: Y'all said it?
Speaker 2: Yeah stupid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there goes the answer to that.
Speaker 2: That is what it is, absolutely because first of all,
Speaker 2: like I said, it, flattery and then you're going to
Speaker 2: earn some money.
Speaker 1: So why would you protest that that?
Speaker 2: Why would you protest that?
Speaker 1: Speaking of speaking of money, speaking of money.
Speaker 2: The best things in life are free, but you can
Speaker 2: give them no.
Speaker 1: Money.
Speaker 3: Going to that part, because you spoke earlier about the
Speaker 3: finances with these other labels before you guys started Motown,
Speaker 3: did you have any understanding at this point, like when
Speaker 3: you first really kicked it off, got your first hit
Speaker 3: records wrote you know, got a then you get your
Speaker 3: smash record shop around. Did you really understand the publishing
Speaker 3: side and you know, the royalties and different things that
Speaker 3: a lot of artists didn't know for a long time.
Speaker 1: No, you were part of the business.
Speaker 2: No, No, I didn't understand that until Barry explained it
Speaker 2: to me. See, I don't know. No, you know, see
Speaker 2: when you're a kid like that man, because we were kids,
Speaker 2: you know, sixteen and and then then you know, I
Speaker 2: think about this too when I got when I turned nineteen.
Speaker 2: I married Claude, who was a girl in a group.
Speaker 2: In nineteen and Barry had just started Motown and I
Speaker 2: was making five dollars a week because I was there
Speaker 2: was only five people who worked there there him and
Speaker 2: four others of us, you know, so it was considered
Speaker 2: our car fair to get there. But we made five
Speaker 2: dollars a week, and you just but I was nineteen
Speaker 2: and I got married because I thought I was a man.
Speaker 1: Because I was going to ask you why you got married,
Speaker 1: and I stoked, I was a man.
Speaker 2: Okay, And here's my girlfriend. She's traveling with us anyway,
Speaker 2: and many times her mother had to go on the
Speaker 2: road with us because you know, the chaperone her and
Speaker 2: she had because she's the only girl in the group.
Speaker 2: And blah blah blah. But I got married when I
Speaker 2: was nineteen. If one of my kids had come to
Speaker 2: me when they were nineteen, dad get married.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you shutting, shutting down, saying but I thought I
Speaker 3: was a man.
Speaker 2: Man that was me. Find out a week we started motime.
Speaker 1: You see this five dollars you know that I can
Speaker 1: take you place.
Speaker 2: Absolutely man. But yeah, so it was it was. It
Speaker 2: was something man.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It's a great it's a great life legacy, man. And
Speaker 2: to think that how we started and what was going on.
Speaker 2: Like I said, it was five people there and in
Speaker 2: the day that very started more time, Yeah, he had.
Speaker 2: It was Brian Holland, who was one of the Hollands
Speaker 2: Holland writing team. He was there, lady named Jamie Bradford,
Speaker 2: Barry's then wife, and lady named ray Noma, and me
Speaker 2: and Barry and Barry set us down and he said, amen,
Speaker 2: He said, I'm gonna start my own record company. Anybody
Speaker 2: paying set I'm own record company, and we're gonna be
Speaker 2: the crew. And we're not just gonna make black music.
Speaker 2: We're gonna make music for the world watching. See, We're
Speaker 2: gonna make music for we will we will always have
Speaker 2: some great beasts and some great stories and that's gonna
Speaker 2: be our quality control to have that when we put
Speaker 2: our records out. But we were gonna make music for
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I did it, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And we shop around being like like you said,
Speaker 3: it was the first million seller for y'all.
Speaker 1: Did you see real money on that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we did. No, No, we didn't see real
Speaker 2: the real money that we could have seen because Moretown
Speaker 2: was new, so the distributors weren't paying, you know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So they were withholding.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, man, but you knew what they what happened
Speaker 2: for us, which was so great man. They were holding
Speaker 2: at first, but when Chop Bron came out, some of
Speaker 2: them were still wortholding. But we came right back and
Speaker 2: we had please mister postman and brooted and blocked the block.
Speaker 2: We kept bombarding them with hit records, but legal that
Speaker 2: because they wanted to the legally, Who's gonna come and investigated?
Speaker 2: Who's gonna come and say if you go there and say, well, no,
Speaker 2: we know we sold one hundred thousand records and distribution,
Speaker 2: No you didn't. He's so fifty. Who go, who's gonna know?
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, Who's gonna know that? That's
Speaker 2: what happened. So yeah, they But like I said, the
Speaker 2: great thing for us, man, was we bombarded them. We
Speaker 2: kept them so they would give us our money before
Speaker 2: we even send some records because they wanted those records.
Speaker 2: You know, it got the front. Like the radio stations,
Speaker 2: a lot of the companies were paying and they have
Speaker 2: their records played. You know what I mean. The guys
Speaker 2: would call us and say, hey man, please let us
Speaker 2: have a new Supreme record before you get and I'm
Speaker 2: talking about white stations. Let us have the new Supreme
Speaker 2: record before you give it to anybody else. We'll play it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: We kicked their ass. Man.
Speaker 1: Were y'all making money on the road? Oh yeah it was,
Speaker 1: but not much.
Speaker 2: Yeah when you first, when you first start out, you
Speaker 2: want to let me tell you that we first start out,
Speaker 2: we won't make it any money. Okay. Uh. The first
Speaker 2: professional gig, really professional gig the Miracles and I ever
Speaker 2: did was that the Apollo Theater in New York on
Speaker 2: the Ray Charrolds Show. Okay, now, I just played the
Speaker 2: Apollo just recently too. I will play the Apollo as
Speaker 2: long as it's standing because it's it's Black music tradition,
Speaker 2: you know. I just play. I just closed it down.
Speaker 2: In fact, they closed it down and it's going to
Speaker 2: be closed now for three or four years while they renovated.
Speaker 2: You know. But if they tear everything else on one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty fifth Street down, I hope they leave
Speaker 2: the Apollo standing. The Apollo is Black music tradition. When
Speaker 2: the Miracles on our first one in there, man, the
Speaker 2: fair first time we're on the ray Child Show. We
Speaker 2: go there and like I said.
Speaker 1: We just kids.
Speaker 2: I think I must have been about maybe seventeen or
Speaker 2: something like that. Anyway, just gogate from high school. So
Speaker 2: we have a record called Bad Girl and it's on
Speaker 2: Chess Records out of Chicago. So it's making a little
Speaker 2: bunch of noise for us. It started us to getting
Speaker 2: some gigs and blah blah blah. When the ray Child
Speaker 2: Show as Apollo Theater, we weren't making any money, but
Speaker 2: we were so terrible. Mr Schiffman, the guy who owned Apollo,
Speaker 2: called Bury and told me he want his money back.
Speaker 2: Yet he wanted his money. Hey man, we didn't even
Speaker 2: make enough money to get out of the hotel at
Speaker 2: the end of the week. We didn't. He was only
Speaker 2: Now there's five of us and he's only paying us
Speaker 2: like seven hundred dollars and we're in New York from
Speaker 2: New Charge. He's only seven hundred dollars a week. We
Speaker 2: got a hotel. The hotel is more than that, you
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying. But he wanted that back.
Speaker 1: Give me that back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were terrible, man, I mean I agree with him.
Speaker 2: If if we hadn't been an actor, had a record
Speaker 2: out where they considered you to be a professional, the
Speaker 2: dude who danced and pull you off the stage with
Speaker 2: the host sad Man would have came and got us.
Speaker 2: You know, he came and got us.
Speaker 1: Who was your favorite artist to write for?
Speaker 2: To write for? Uh? Well, you know what I I
Speaker 2: I enjoyed writing for everybody, man, because, like I said,
Speaker 2: those people are my brothers and sisters. And you know,
Speaker 2: people ask me questions about some of the songs that
Speaker 2: they heard by other artists that I'd written. For example,
Speaker 2: my Girl, you know, my Girl has become for me
Speaker 2: as a songwriter, like an international anthem or something. Man,
Speaker 2: should we go places where we're getting ready to go
Speaker 2: overseas now in June, but we go places where they
Speaker 2: don't even speak English. Sixty percent of the people in
Speaker 2: that audience don't even speak English, okay, and they hear
Speaker 2: boom boom boom boom boom, and they know the song,
Speaker 2: they know the words. So stuff like that has happened
Speaker 2: totally unexpected as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 1: But it just.
Speaker 2: As a songwriter, I can't beat that. I cannot beat
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff happening, especially when it happens unexpected,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. I'm not expecting that. In fact,
Speaker 2: I don't expect any any awards or anything like that,
Speaker 2: anything like that that I've ever gotten. I wasn't expecting it,
Speaker 2: because you know, it's just icing, because you know, like
Speaker 2: I said, I'm just blessed man, unfortunate. I get a
Speaker 2: chance to live my life doing something that I absolutely love,
Speaker 2: have a job that I look forward to going to.
Speaker 2: Because we were getting ready to go out, let's see
Speaker 2: next week, the end of next week, and we've been
Speaker 2: off now since December, so I'm ready.
Speaker 3: Have you ever done anything else like as an occupation
Speaker 3: as it always because you said.
Speaker 1: You started that? Ever? You mean ever, have you ever
Speaker 1: had another job?
Speaker 2: I've had every job you can think of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Look, my mom passed when I was ten, Like I said, Okay,
Speaker 2: so my my oldest sister came back to live in
Speaker 2: the house. And when she came to live in the house,
Speaker 2: she already had six kids. She ended up having ten kids. Man,
Speaker 2: so there was like eleven of us. So my brother
Speaker 2: in law, who I love, I can't tell you how
Speaker 2: I felt about him. He's gone now. But he was
Speaker 2: my man because my sister came and I had another
Speaker 2: sister who was younger than her, and she didn't have
Speaker 2: no kids. And she could have said, okay, well I'm
Speaker 2: I'm gonna take my brother, and but my older sister
Speaker 2: who had all those kids, say I'm taking my brother,
Speaker 2: you know. And he could have said, no, you ain't
Speaker 2: I all these kids who work. But he treated me
Speaker 2: like I was his own son, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: He never ever made any difference between any of us.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So But anyway, she ended up having ten kids. So
Speaker 2: now I was eleven. There's no way from the time
Speaker 2: I was ten years old.
Speaker 1: I was gonna go with my brother.
Speaker 2: La'll say, hey, man, you got fifty cent or you
Speaker 2: got a dial or something like that. There was an
Speaker 2: old Jewish man had a grocery store around the corner.
Speaker 2: At the time, the neighborhood was just passing over, you know,
Speaker 2: black people just taking over. The still a few Jewish
Speaker 2: people in the neighborhood named mister Hackerman. So I went
Speaker 2: around there was ten years old. I said, mister Hackerman,
Speaker 2: could you give me a job? They call me smoking Joe.
Speaker 2: At the time, everybody in the neighborhood called me smoke
Speaker 2: at Joe.
Speaker 1: Why did they call you smoking?
Speaker 2: They call me smoke at Joe because I had an uncle,
Speaker 2: my uncle Claud. He was also my godfather. And when
Speaker 2: I was three or four years old, if you ask
Speaker 2: me what I wanted to be, I would tell your
Speaker 2: cowboy because I loved cowboys, you know. So my uncle
Speaker 2: Claud used to take me to see cowboy movies and
Speaker 2: I especially left the ones who sang Dean Autry, Roy Rogers.
Speaker 2: They had guitars and they saying and so I loved them.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: So he had a cowboy name for me, smoking Joe.
Speaker 2: If anybody asked me what my name was back in
Speaker 2: those days, my name is smoking Joe.
Speaker 3: We need cowboy names, give us cowboy nassy before the
Speaker 3: day is over.
Speaker 1: I need a cowboy name.
Speaker 2: Man. Yeah, so smoke at Joe. And uh so, everybody,
Speaker 2: including my teachers, until I was about twelve years old
Speaker 2: or so, called me smoking Joe. Okay. And then when
Speaker 2: I got to be about twelve, so they dropped the
Speaker 2: Joe off. I guess that was long and drawing off
Speaker 2: for them, and I just became smoky. And people think
Speaker 2: that I became that after I got in show business,
Speaker 2: I named myself Smokey Robinson. But that's been my name
Speaker 2: all my.
Speaker 1: Life, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so uh yeah, and so anyway, he had this
Speaker 2: cowboy name for me. It was, which is Smoky Joe,
Speaker 2: and that's what people called me. So I loved the
Speaker 2: cowboys and saying. So if you asked me what I
Speaker 2: wanted to be until I got to be about eight
Speaker 2: or nine years old, I will tell you I wanted
Speaker 2: to be a cowboy boy. I want to be a
Speaker 2: cowboy because that's my that's my goal, be a cowboy
Speaker 2: and be a cowboy that sings and have a horse.
Speaker 1: That's what.
Speaker 2: Detroit, you know. But then when I got to be
Speaker 2: about like I said, after my mom passed when I
Speaker 2: was ten and all that, I've always been heavily into sports.
Speaker 2: And I played football and basketball for my high school
Speaker 2: and in the summertime, I played summer league baseball, which
Speaker 2: at that time was my favorite sport at the time,
Speaker 2: you know, because and I loved baseball, and I'm not bragging,
Speaker 2: I could really play baseball pretty good. And I thought
Speaker 2: that I was going to be a baseball player. I thought, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to pursue this. I'm going to be a
Speaker 2: baseball player. And I think about it now and if
Speaker 2: I had been the greatest baseball player in the history
Speaker 2: of the game since they came up with baseball, the
Speaker 2: greatest person to ever pick up a batter or a
Speaker 2: glove or a ball, if I had been that person,
Speaker 2: my career would have been over fifty years ago. You
Speaker 2: know what, I'm fifty years ago, man, because you know
Speaker 2: I think about in sportsman, you get old fast. A Kareem,
Speaker 2: who is my brother. Kareem called me. He's getting ready
Speaker 2: to retire from the Lakers. And I had sang the
Speaker 2: national anthem at the World Series in Boston and he
Speaker 2: saw me. So I said after that, I'm never gonna
Speaker 2: sing it again. I'm never gonna sing the national anthem
Speaker 2: for a sports event again. I did it. That's what
Speaker 2: I wanted it. So Kareem called me. He say, Man,
Speaker 2: he said, I'm gonna reay retire. He said, So, I'm
Speaker 2: retiring this this Saturday night, and then they're doing a
Speaker 2: big thing for me at the at the game, and
Speaker 2: I won't you come down sing the national anthem? I said, Kareem, Man,
Speaker 2: you know, I said, when he said, man, this is me,
Speaker 2: come on down sing national anthem. So I said, okay,
Speaker 2: So I get down there all in the forum and
Speaker 2: shit like that. This signs up on the old man.
Speaker 2: The old man is retired.
Speaker 1: And they ring like a rocket share the old man.
Speaker 2: Is retiring on this was thirty three.
Speaker 1: Fuck.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I always would retire.
Speaker 2: Three three. He was old man, you know, so wow wow.
Speaker 1: If I mean, if we're just looking, Kareem looks sixty two. Hey,
Speaker 1: you know, Kareem no karate, I love Korea. You shot
Speaker 1: get your head. But back in those days, like guys
Speaker 1: that went to high school, they look like grown men
Speaker 1: with full families, and the look was just different when
Speaker 1: until you said it, I had never put a number
Speaker 1: on it. You know, when I was a kid, I
Speaker 1: thought Kareem.
Speaker 3: Was especially having all the scoring records everything you said,
Speaker 3: thirty three, it is wow wow, But that's reality. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And like you said, even if you're the best of
Speaker 3: the best at something, I mean, like Lebron is now forty,
Speaker 3: but people acting like that is.
Speaker 2: He's but even in that, yeah, how many more.
Speaker 1: Hits did you have after forty?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, Like you still had ha,
Speaker 3: you know, just the record you have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know another thing about it is that
Speaker 2: and like I told you guys this earlier in this
Speaker 2: in this interview and the talk we're going on at
Speaker 2: the end of the next week. And I'm looking if
Speaker 2: I can't wait and I'm eighty five, still doing it.
Speaker 1: You're eighty five? Yeah, oh, let me think.
Speaker 2: Five. You say that and I can't wait.
Speaker 1: Listen eighty five. Yeah, And I want to get I
Speaker 1: want to make sure just we just we touch on
Speaker 1: this too, because we have to touch on this. Now.
Speaker 1: You have a residency, yeah, yes, at the Venetian. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can you get us a room? I mean you got
Speaker 1: to hook up your little little little player price for
Speaker 1: the room. Like people like like y'all want to come,
Speaker 1: we do well because like when you get there, it's
Speaker 1: like what you set out for your music to be.
Speaker 1: That is the place where that statement is made because
Speaker 1: that is that is all walks of life.
Speaker 2: Okay, I want to tell you something about that too.
Speaker 2: This is not my first residency in Vegas. I've been
Speaker 2: having residencies in Vegas since nineteen eighty you know what.
Speaker 1: Pop yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, I want
Speaker 1: to tell you how that happened, mat because I never
Speaker 1: really wanted to play Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: I never really wanted to play that because the first
Speaker 2: actor we ever had to play Las Vegas was the Supremes,
Speaker 2: and then we had the Temptations and they played it,
Speaker 2: and of course I went to see both of them
Speaker 2: while they were playing there. And back in those days,
Speaker 2: your least amount of time that you could be booked
Speaker 2: in Las Vegas for something like that for a residency
Speaker 2: was a month four weeks. You worked every night of
Speaker 2: the week, with the exception of Monday, and you did
Speaker 2: two shows a night, sometimes on Saturday. Every other Saturday
Speaker 2: you did three because there was a breakfast show you
Speaker 2: did that. It was a slave house. As far as
Speaker 2: I was concerned, Las Vegas was someone, you know, shit,
Speaker 2: I don't want to play here. I am not going
Speaker 2: to play it. And then they had to kind of
Speaker 2: change what they were singing and singing, you know, top
Speaker 2: hat and cane kind of music and some some of
Speaker 2: those kind of songs, you know, and I don't wanted
Speaker 2: to do that. So my agent called me in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty they said, hey, man, you want to play Vegas.
Speaker 2: I said no, I told you, I don't want to
Speaker 2: play Vegas. He said, no, I got a different deal
Speaker 2: for you. He said, Dean Martin, he's playing at the MGM,
Speaker 2: and he's got two shows a night like everybody else.
Speaker 2: He's gonna do the eight thirty show, but he don't
Speaker 2: want to do the eleven o'clock show. So you want
Speaker 2: to go and you can just do the eleven o'clock show.
Speaker 2: He's to be one show a night. I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's saying you can sing your own music. When I said, okay, cool.
Speaker 2: So that was my first time going and doing a
Speaker 2: residency in Las Vegas. So but I played it where
Speaker 2: in Vegas? Man, that was at the MGM. Now, my
Speaker 2: main residency was at the Desert End. Steve win brought it.
Speaker 2: Now it's the Wind Hotel. Okay, but I was there.
Speaker 2: I had residents there for four years, you know, and
Speaker 2: so he you know, he bought the hotel, change up everything.
Speaker 2: So now, for a while, Vegas was considered and I
Speaker 2: would tell young young X about going to play Vegas
Speaker 2: and they said, no, man, I want to play that.
Speaker 2: It's the graveyard because that's what it had become because
Speaker 2: Steve Winn and some of the other powers that be
Speaker 2: in Las Vegas had started buying up. They bought up
Speaker 2: all the golf courses and I played golf. They Barbalo,
Speaker 2: and they were trying to make Vegas into a family
Speaker 2: town because they wanted the money from the from the
Speaker 2: average dude lived in the neighborhood. And they were, you know,
Speaker 2: high rollers came there. When I first started play Vegas
Speaker 2: Man in nineteen eighty, people came there, came to the
Speaker 2: show in tuxedos and laid hand them downs and shit
Speaker 2: like that. You know, it's high rollers and that's what
Speaker 2: that's who was coming to those shows and stuff, you know.
Speaker 2: And there was a name act at every hotel on
Speaker 2: the strip at that time, Lizman, Nelly and this. Rather
Speaker 2: there's a name making every hotel. So it changed because
Speaker 2: they tried to make it a family town because they
Speaker 2: wanted that money from the guy who lived in the
Speaker 2: average neighborhood. They weren't satisfied with just getting money from
Speaker 2: the high road people had it, but they wanted them
Speaker 2: to be able to bring his kids there and while
Speaker 2: he gambled, they could have a theme park or some
Speaker 2: shit like that. So they started doing that and they
Speaker 2: killed Vegas Vegas just went into the dodrooms. You know,
Speaker 2: people stopped coming. They killed it, you know, But now
Speaker 2: it's back again, and you know, all the young people
Speaker 2: are playing there. I can't wait to see new addition
Speaker 2: because they said, they told me that they're just racking
Speaker 2: it back out there here, So I can't wait to see.
Speaker 2: And I have a home in Vegas also, so I'm
Speaker 2: gonna go see them when I go home to Vegas.
Speaker 2: But everybody's playing there again now, and it's it's alive
Speaker 2: again now. So I have the residency now at the Venetian,
Speaker 2: and I'm really happy about that too, because as far
Speaker 2: as I'm concerned, the Venetian is the most beautiful room
Speaker 2: in Las Vegas, just like a miniature Cartergate Hall or
Speaker 2: something like that, you know there.
Speaker 3: So it's just the Venetian, are you talking about, like
Speaker 3: the main suite, actual theater, theater?
Speaker 2: I thought it was the Venetian showroom?
Speaker 1: Is it? I think so? But you performing there, so
Speaker 1: you believe anything else.
Speaker 2: What's the date for April third fifth and six.
Speaker 1: Third fifth and six. I'm putting that in my I'm
Speaker 1: putting that in my calendar.
Speaker 3: Come on down, Yeah, I need I need to be there.
Speaker 1: I got to say, brother eighty five, you look a
Speaker 1: thank you, vin what you're doing? You juicing?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: What what you got going on here? What's the health?
Speaker 1: What's the regiment? Baby?
Speaker 2: You know? I tell people that I think the main
Speaker 2: thing that's happened for me, man, and this once again
Speaker 2: one of those things that I didn't intend to happen,
Speaker 2: but it did. God has led me in so many
Speaker 2: different directions man, that I didn't intend to go because
Speaker 2: I've been doing yoga, like I said, for fifty years.
Speaker 2: Fifty Yes, yoga is one of the best things that
Speaker 2: anyone can do for their lives. Really, yes, Why because
Speaker 2: as you get older, you start to shrink, and I
Speaker 2: mean you shrink, and this is no bullshit, you actually shrink.
Speaker 2: I used to be six feet tall, Okay.
Speaker 1: You used to be six feet tell yes, when I.
Speaker 2: Was playing basketball and football, shitting in high school and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. And then for a long time after
Speaker 2: the miracles, and I was going on until I was
Speaker 2: probably about forty or fifty. Then you just start to
Speaker 2: come down. I don't know why, but I say, now,
Speaker 2: yoga there's a fluid that flows from the base of
Speaker 2: your spine to the base of your brain, and in men,
Speaker 2: as you get older, it starts to slow down, which
Speaker 2: gives you arthritis or what you know, cramps and all
Speaker 2: stuff like that makes you stiffen and shrink. Okay, when
Speaker 2: you see old guys and you see that you just
Speaker 2: scoliosis and all that kind of stuff like that, those
Speaker 2: are things that you have to combat. Okay. So yoga
Speaker 2: keeps your body and your muscles and your veins and
Speaker 2: all the keeps the blood flowing, keeps his fluid flowing,
Speaker 2: It keeps your body, keeps your muscles uh loose or
Speaker 2: limber like, keeps you keeping and it's just so good
Speaker 2: for your health to keep that happening like that. But
Speaker 2: like I said, also now, I've always been active. So
Speaker 2: every other day I lift my weights and I I'm
Speaker 2: back to doing something too that I hadn't done in
Speaker 2: a long time. I'm doing some chin ups now. Because
Speaker 2: when I was when I was, when I was younger man,
Speaker 2: especially when I was playing sports, I could do fifteen
Speaker 2: twenty chips man. And so one day I go down
Speaker 2: to the gym, and this is probably about two months ago,
Speaker 2: and I said, well, I guess I do my five chinups.
Speaker 2: I did one. Well that's one y one?
Speaker 1: Are you the only person with two stars on a
Speaker 1: walker than.
Speaker 2: As far as I know, miracles and singular?
Speaker 1: Yeah and solo? Maybe you're Michael Jackson, because did Jackson?
Speaker 1: I should be.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they should be Yeah you Mike Yeah.
Speaker 1: Kennedy Center Honoree, Library of Congress, Gershwin Prize a Popular Song?
Speaker 1: What happened to you? Done that?
Speaker 2: You want to do? You know what I'd like to do? Man,
Speaker 2: I'd like to have a really nice part in a
Speaker 2: really nice movie. I don't mean star in the movie
Speaker 2: or nothing like that, but I'd like to do that.
Speaker 1: You know what, do you see yourself as a villain
Speaker 1: or you want to say the day? Are you a llawyer?
Speaker 2: I don't care if it is a nice part, it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter that.
Speaker 1: Come on, come get the young man. Let him be
Speaker 1: a instructor.
Speaker 2: My brother, straight young you know what you be doing?
Speaker 1: Yoga? But he guilt James two weeks ago?
Speaker 2: Oh Freddy dead? You know he killed him.
Speaker 1: So you never got in any of the Motown movies. No,
Speaker 1: you guys were making them. No, you really was against it.
Speaker 2: You were like, I'm cool, No, no, no, no, no, I
Speaker 2: wasn't I wasn't against it, but there see those movies
Speaker 2: were we were focusing on Diana. Yeah, you know, so
Speaker 2: that was that was what happened with that. I don't
Speaker 2: think any of the Motown people were in those movies.
Speaker 2: They're just her and Billy d Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I when I think about.
Speaker 3: That, yeah, wow, I never thought of it like that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: only other only other Motown artists that was in the
Speaker 3: Wiz obviously was her and Mike.
Speaker 1: It was her. Wow, yep, y'all cook Man, y'all, y'all
Speaker 1: you guys. And it's the formula is I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just as real as it gets. I mean, it starts
Speaker 1: with you know, it's the music and how the music
Speaker 1: is made. It's rating it with the best of the
Speaker 1: best doing the best work together. It's the best musicians,
Speaker 1: it's the best conductors, it's the best songwriters, the best
Speaker 1: like it's all of these things that come together that
Speaker 1: I think it is so different now, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, like the idea of but I feel like
Speaker 1: it's coming back of Like even with my kids, my
Speaker 1: daughters and her listening to older sounding music, you know,
Speaker 1: wanting to see older sounding bands because a lot of
Speaker 1: these new new bands like Overseas and all over the place,
Speaker 1: like they're grabbing the Motown formula to make their music.
Speaker 1: It's very nostalgic, very nostalgic, and it's it's it's just
Speaker 1: stood the test of time in a way where it's
Speaker 1: just like I mean, I don't think there will ever
Speaker 1: be another Motown.
Speaker 2: I don't either. Yeah, I doubt that seriously. You know
Speaker 2: the times and that we live in now, we're not
Speaker 2: allowed that anyway.
Speaker 3: So because so many people just want to be buried,
Speaker 3: like you got to let bury be buried and then
Speaker 3: every and you lets smokey be smoky. I think people
Speaker 3: now I felt like you guys, competition was healthy. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: the competition isn't as healthy anymore.
Speaker 2: No, No, people.
Speaker 1: Want each other spots. They don't want to work together,
Speaker 1: killing each other killing right instead of working with each other.
Speaker 3: Like people look at Thank and I and get surprised
Speaker 3: that we've been working together for so long, and I'm like, why,
Speaker 3: it's my guy, it's my brother, Yes, Like I don't
Speaker 3: see no other way. But it's it's so much of
Speaker 3: a rarity now, especially like you said, you guys would
Speaker 3: come off of fifty one City tour and then fifty
Speaker 3: one and go right back to Hitsville and hang out.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that that's amazing.
Speaker 3: But before you go there, because you know, I got
Speaker 3: you know, I listen, I am known for the foolishness.
Speaker 1: So I gotta asked.
Speaker 3: You know, smokey, don't don't, don't yoga me, don't punch
Speaker 3: me an eye.
Speaker 1: I gotta ask about gang banging. I gotta ask about
Speaker 1: gag banging.
Speaker 3: It's it's such a viral thing in the hood that
Speaker 3: we all randomly just bust out start singing all the time.
Speaker 2: I hope, so, yeah, I hope so because when you're
Speaker 2: listen to what it's saying, it's a it's a it's.
Speaker 1: A message, very serious song.
Speaker 2: It's a serious message. As I was doing a spiritual
Speaker 2: album at the time, and I was writing spiritual songs
Speaker 2: and gang banging it has a very important message because,
Speaker 2: like I said, or some see gang banging hatred itself.
Speaker 2: It's the most ridiculous, uncalled for, absurd emotion that we
Speaker 2: have as men. You know, it's it's it's it's such
Speaker 2: a it's such a shame because of the fact that
Speaker 2: many times I've said this, I wish we could be
Speaker 2: attacked by Zetra, you know, some planet from out of
Speaker 2: space or something like that, and we would be attacked
Speaker 2: by them, and we have a four or five day
Speaker 2: war which we would win. Or to give us a
Speaker 2: chance to see they were all fucking earthlings. We're all
Speaker 2: the same. We have different colored skin, we have different
Speaker 2: color eyes, and different textures of hair and a but
Speaker 2: we're human beings. And you don't get no bigger than that.
Speaker 2: You don't get no better than that, and you don't
Speaker 2: get no better than anybody else who is a human being,
Speaker 2: you know. So for men to be hating on each
Speaker 2: other because of the color of this, because of some
Speaker 2: religious belief, or because of any reason, it is absolutely absurd,
Speaker 2: you know. So gang banging is that message. And like
Speaker 2: I said, you don't even know where it started. You
Speaker 2: have no idea where that shit started. All you know
Speaker 2: is you grew up and somebody told you to hate
Speaker 2: this person. Somebody told you to hate him because he
Speaker 2: lives on that side of the tracks, or he lives
Speaker 2: in this block and you live in it. Or he
Speaker 2: got on red and you got on blue. Somebody told
Speaker 2: you to hate him. Why do you hate well, because
Speaker 2: that's the tradition. That's where it came down like that.
Speaker 2: I'm supposed to hate him because it came down from
Speaker 2: your great great great great grandfather started some shit like that.
Speaker 2: And you haven't come to your senses enough to see
Speaker 2: that we're all human beings or the same thing. If
Speaker 2: you skinned everybody alive, you would know who was. All
Speaker 2: of our veins are in the same place. Our hearts
Speaker 2: are kidneys, you know what I mean. We're gonna hate
Speaker 2: on somebody because outwardly they're different. Bullshit, And it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: It's the most ridiculous emotion that we can have as people. However,
Speaker 2: it's being combated by love, which is the most powerful.
Speaker 2: Even those who are like the ones I just mentioned,
Speaker 2: those who are hating, they hate calling themselves loving something
Speaker 2: to hate for I hate you because you're black, I'm white.
Speaker 2: I love my race. So that's a love thing happening.
Speaker 2: But I hate you, well, I hate so and so
Speaker 2: on and so on and so because see they hate
Speaker 2: for protecting. They call it that's protective love. But it
Speaker 2: is a form of love. They're loving something that gives
Speaker 2: them the reason or the excuse for hating something else.
Speaker 2: So but we need to get that together because you know,
Speaker 2: and especially here in the United States, we need to
Speaker 2: get that together. Every powerful nation that there's ever been
Speaker 2: in the history of Earth has fallen from within and
Speaker 2: about war about somebody can want with taking this ship.
Speaker 2: It's about us killing ourselves within. Like every other powerful
Speaker 2: nation in the history of mankind. You know, they've all
Speaker 2: fallen from within because somebody gets the notion that they're
Speaker 2: better than somebody else.
Speaker 1: Or you know how don't create the hate. Wow, brother
Speaker 1: Smoky Robinson, this is the top five? Who are your
Speaker 1: top five R and B singer?
Speaker 2: Uh? Well, I have to be retro on you man.
Speaker 1: Let's go come, Let's go on.
Speaker 2: Jackie Wilson, Sam Cook, Yes, rach y'all, Clyde McPhatter, and
Speaker 2: Nolan Strong.
Speaker 1: Oh going there? Five.
Speaker 2: Do you know who Nolan Strong was?
Speaker 1: I do not know who knows.
Speaker 2: Nolan Strong was a guy in Detroit. He had a
Speaker 2: group called the Diablos and they were the group in Detroit.
Speaker 2: They made records, you know, they had a song called Audios,
Speaker 2: My Desert, Love and the Wind and all those songs
Speaker 2: like that. But he was a high tenor singer. So
Speaker 2: all those guys, those were my singing itols as a
Speaker 2: kid growing up man, And like I said, Jackiet was
Speaker 2: number one Jackie. I think about Michael Jackson and when
Speaker 2: I first saw him, he was like ten years old.
Speaker 2: He was like a little manager. But I called him
Speaker 2: Jackie Brown because he was a cross between Jackie Wilson
Speaker 2: and James Brown. And he was doing them, I mean
Speaker 2: doing them. He's ten years old, And I think about Michael,
Speaker 2: and Michael was so extremely talented. You know, when you
Speaker 2: look at Michael, Michael changed the look of show business.
Speaker 2: He changed the entire look of show business. Because all
Speaker 2: the kids nowadays are dancing with the dancers on the
Speaker 2: stage and this and that and other. Michael started that.
Speaker 2: Michael was on stage with thirty dancers who had been
Speaker 2: dancing since they were five years old. There was the
Speaker 2: profession that's what they did professionally, and he was out
Speaker 2: dancing all of them.
Speaker 3: So before Mike, I ain't never thought about that. Before Michael,
Speaker 3: you were in the group. He was the dancers that
Speaker 3: were dancing when you were your group member.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Michael Jackson come along and hires and hires professional dancing.
Speaker 2: And changed the look of show business. All the kids
Speaker 2: started doing the same thing. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2: He was a very brilliant thinking young man to be
Speaker 2: his age, you know, because not only did he look
Speaker 2: at the top R and B guys like Jackie Wilson,
Speaker 2: and he studied Fred Astare absolute Yeah, the Nicholas brothers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think about that all the time. You know, Michael
Speaker 2: did the moonwalk on Mojohn twenty five and people say.
Speaker 1: Oh, he made that up.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't. The Nicholas brothers did that in Stormy Weather,
Speaker 2: which was a movie with Lena Horn. You guys know
Speaker 2: who Lena Horn wast Okay, So Lena Horton made a
Speaker 2: movie back in the day in the forties, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe before I was even more, called Stormy Weather, and
Speaker 2: the Nicholas brothers were in there and they did the
Speaker 2: moonwalk in that movie. So you know he studied everybody, man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was just were you there the day they
Speaker 1: came in auditioned?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah at that point you were. You were a an
Speaker 3: R at the label light, a vice presidents the whole time. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So I was, what do you what do you say
Speaker 3: when y'all get back into the war room in the
Speaker 3: creative room after the Jacksons that performing. You see this
Speaker 3: kid perform for you guys like.
Speaker 1: Like, what was that? What is the like, Yeah, what's
Speaker 1: the conversation after you see that?
Speaker 2: Well, the fact that we knew that we had something phenomenal,
Speaker 2: you know, for those boys to be their age, the
Speaker 2: age that they were, especially Michael, and to be that talented,
Speaker 2: we knew that we were onto something really good because, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, and Michael turned out to be I guess
Speaker 2: the most renowned.
Speaker 1: Artists ever ever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, do you immediately start hearing songs as
Speaker 3: a songwriter when you see them, You're like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 2: No, man, I not for them, you know. I wasn't
Speaker 2: even really thinking about recording anything on them. However, thanks
Speaker 2: to Michael Jackson or whoever decided they were going to
Speaker 2: do that, Michael took one of my songs and now
Speaker 2: it's his song. I wrote a song I was probably
Speaker 2: about twenty one years old.
Speaker 1: Cause Who's Loving You?
Speaker 2: Who's Loving You was on the other side of shop
Speaker 2: Around in fact, you know, and after shop Around they
Speaker 2: had warned it out on the radio and something like that.
Speaker 2: They started to play Who's Loving You by the Miracles
Speaker 2: of Me, and it was a slight hit.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So, Now, like I said, when I wrote that song,
Speaker 2: I had to be at least twenty or twenty one.
Speaker 2: I had had some life experience. I was married, I
Speaker 2: had some life experience. You know, here comes a little
Speaker 2: dude eleven years old. I know, damn well, you don't
Speaker 2: even know what that song is talking about, you know
Speaker 2: what I'm saying and singing to the point whereas now
Speaker 2: it's his song. You you know what I'm saying. If I
Speaker 2: do a smidgeing of it in person and young people there,
Speaker 2: they come to me and why are you singing Michael
Speaker 2: Jackson's song, because that's whose song it is? Now baby,
Speaker 2: thank god? Because he made it a standard. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: and everybody that you hear singing and now sings it
Speaker 2: like Michael. You know, so thank god he recorded it.
Speaker 2: But like I said, here's a little due eleven years old.
Speaker 2: He don't even fuck he's singing about and sing it
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 3: You know, my whole life, I thought you wrote it
Speaker 3: for the Jackson See, I'm like I knew you wrote.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought you wrote it for them.
Speaker 2: Well apparently I did without I did, but not even
Speaker 2: knowing it.
Speaker 1: Okay, brother Smoky your top five R and B songs.
Speaker 2: You know something, man, I cannot possibly tell you what
Speaker 2: my top five R and B songs are, any songs whatsoever, Because,
Speaker 2: like I said earlier.
Speaker 1: Do it, I grew up.
Speaker 2: I grew up in a home where I got a
Speaker 2: great dose of all kinds of music you can think of.
Speaker 2: I am a song lover. Well, how about I love songs.
Speaker 2: If I could tell you my top five songs, there
Speaker 2: would probably be songs that I had absolutely nothing to
Speaker 2: do with ever in life. I don't know, because I
Speaker 2: love songs. I'm a song lover. I have loved songs
Speaker 2: since I could hear. You know, I've been listening to
Speaker 2: songs and music. The first voice I ever remember hearing
Speaker 2: in my life was Sarah, and I forgot what songs
Speaker 2: she were singing is whatever it was because my sister
Speaker 2: were playing her. I had to be two or three
Speaker 2: years old. But that's the first voice I ever remember hearing.
Speaker 2: So I've been hearing songs all my life. I love songs.
Speaker 2: I can't tell you what my favorite songs are. I
Speaker 2: can tell you my favorite album, Ok, my favorite album
Speaker 2: of all time is What's Going On by Marvin Gaye.
Speaker 2: I have a front row seat to that album. I
Speaker 2: was with him when he was writing it. I be
Speaker 2: at his house he's writing it, and he said to me, smoke,
Speaker 2: I ain't writing this album. Man, God is writing this album.
Speaker 2: I'm just sitting here. I'm the catalyst, and God is
Speaker 2: writing this album. When I listen to what's going on.
Speaker 2: I believe him because it's prophecy. It's more poigned today
Speaker 2: than it was when he wrote it than it was
Speaker 2: when it came out. It was pointed, but it's more
Speaker 2: pointed today then it was then. Everything that he's talking
Speaker 2: about it's happening right now in abundance. Okay, it's my
Speaker 2: favorite album of all time. I haven't heard anything that
Speaker 2: I thought matched it as an album.
Speaker 1: All the songs off that.
Speaker 2: Album absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1: Let's make a Vultron a super R and B artist, right,
Speaker 1: We're going to take characteristics from any artist that has
Speaker 1: ever lived and build one super artist. So we want
Speaker 1: to know who you're going to get the vocal from,
Speaker 1: the performance style, the styling of the artist, the passion
Speaker 1: of the artists, and for you special for you, who's
Speaker 1: going to write for this artist? The first guys and girls,
Speaker 1: it's your world. It can make. You can do whatever
Speaker 1: you need. One vocal, that's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I got the vocal. What else do I need?
Speaker 1: Perform style?
Speaker 2: Performance style that would have to be Michael Jackson.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, you're versed in.
Speaker 2: Between Michael Jackson and Jackie Wilson, it would be.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, Michael Wilson. Okay, yeah. Uh. Styling, the style
Speaker 1: of the strip, the clothing apparel.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, back in the day, the Miracles not
Speaker 2: a real sharp.
Speaker 1: We were real shure. You know.
Speaker 2: We decided, you know where we came from. We decided,
Speaker 2: when we finally got some money and make some money,
Speaker 2: we were gonna get ourselves some clothes because the first
Speaker 2: we didn't have no clothes. So we were real sharp.
Speaker 2: So we have to be up and there.
Speaker 1: Some styling, the miracles, the passion of the artists who
Speaker 1: mean it.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that probably every artist that I've ever
Speaker 2: known and never close to has that. Man, if you don't,
Speaker 2: you ain't gonna make it. You don't have that, you
Speaker 2: are not going to make it. There are too many
Speaker 2: people with it who are not making it, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. So if you don't have it, it's
Speaker 2: almost impossible for you to make it. I've told many
Speaker 2: a young artist that you know, you think you can sing,
Speaker 2: let me take you to my church on Sunday. You're
Speaker 2: her sister Maybell Clanton. Yeah, you ain't never heard of life?
Speaker 2: Who were seeing you under the table? You know what
Speaker 2: I mean? She mean it absolutely so you know, but
Speaker 2: if you don't have that, man, you're not going to
Speaker 2: make it. And like I said, many artists have it
Speaker 2: and they're not going.
Speaker 1: To make it. Give me one that has.
Speaker 2: Just pick one that has what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Now that you've seen you're just like, oh yeah, they
Speaker 1: got the passion.
Speaker 2: Damn everybody I know, man, have to be a new artist.
Speaker 2: Like I said, Man, I'm not kidding. Everybody has that,
Speaker 2: especially the people who you're aware of the they have
Speaker 2: that basically. Man. Now, there are a few people who
Speaker 2: have always gotten by without it. You know, there are
Speaker 2: people who've gotten by that had some songs that I
Speaker 2: didn't think was you know, with the world loved it.
Speaker 2: So there you go. So there are people who've gotten
Speaker 2: by without it. But most people have that passion, and
Speaker 2: especially nowadays, you know, you look online and there's a
Speaker 2: million kids online, man, that have that passion. That's struggling
Speaker 2: trying to get just their voices heard or something. That's
Speaker 2: why it's so difficult nowadays that first of all, there's
Speaker 2: no record business. That's out of the question, and there's
Speaker 2: so many you know, people downloading and taking people's music
Speaker 2: free and doing all the things that are happening now.
Speaker 2: It's a whole other world. But the passion.
Speaker 6: Is there.
Speaker 2: I look at some of these kids online. I don't
Speaker 2: know why, but he's done anything. Yes, I do, because
Speaker 2: you can't. Because I've got two singers I've been working
Speaker 2: with for the last five years. I can't get it.
Speaker 2: I can't get a break to at a bomb and
Speaker 2: one girl writes songs like Gershwin. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: I can't get a break for nothing. Because there's so
Speaker 2: many people doing it, and there's so much passion out there,
Speaker 2: and so many challenged people see it. It's a different
Speaker 2: world because challenged people can just play themselves now. They
Speaker 2: don't have to wait for a record company or anybody.
Speaker 2: They can just put their own selves out there. So
Speaker 2: there's thousands of them.
Speaker 1: So the way the way you build, the way you
Speaker 1: build the artists just pick one. You don't have to
Speaker 1: be a favorite passion I just just wanted to build them,
Speaker 1: to build a d this build them building smoke, come
Speaker 1: on smoking just what Oh my goodness, you ain't gonna
Speaker 1: urt nobody feeling smoke, I promise. Oh there it is there,
Speaker 1: we got we got my fashion. Oh listen, Yes, yes, sir.
Speaker 2: Marvin Gay was one of the most passionate people I've
Speaker 2: ever known. I've ever worked with him, you know.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you a question. When you said
Speaker 1: you were you know, you were with Martha during this
Speaker 1: whole time of the What's going On album and God
Speaker 1: is writing his album? Did you contribute any to that
Speaker 1: or you were there just watching it happen?
Speaker 2: How was there just watching it happen. I didn't contribute
Speaker 2: anything to it, you know, just my listening, you know,
Speaker 2: giving him an ear. But I didn't contribute. I didn't
Speaker 2: make suggestions. I didn't do any of that because it
Speaker 2: was happening. It was happening, and Marvin was one of
Speaker 2: the greatest singers I think they ever sang.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I used to love working with him because Marburn was
Speaker 2: always late.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: He was my brother, but that dude was late for everything, man,
Speaker 2: all the time. He got to the point whereas if
Speaker 2: I had a session with Marvin and my session was
Speaker 2: gonna start eight o'clock, I tell Marvin, man, session starts
Speaker 2: at six thirty so, and then he'd still be late.
Speaker 2: He wouldn't get that to nine. You know when he
Speaker 2: goes oh smoke man. I saw him in certain system,
Speaker 2: but I knew that when he got there and I showed.
Speaker 1: Him my song Man going down boy.
Speaker 2: I used to tell them all the time he marvurnized
Speaker 2: my songs. You know what I'm saying, because this brother
Speaker 2: would do shit vocally. I hadn't even dared to dream
Speaker 2: of on my song. But like he knew it before
Speaker 2: he got there. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: When he got to Motown because he's from d C.
Speaker 2: He's from d C. When he first came to Motown.
Speaker 2: Let's see, gosh, he was brother. He was in this
Speaker 2: in his late twenties.
Speaker 1: He was already in his late twenties when he got
Speaker 1: to Motown.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he came late.
Speaker 1: Didn't know that, Yeah, he came late.
Speaker 2: There was a dude named Harvey Fuquah. You guys know
Speaker 2: who Harry Fulkat was harm Fukuh. There was a group
Speaker 2: called the Moon Glows, and back in the day, they
Speaker 2: were like the group in the hood. Okay, a lot
Speaker 2: of groups, man, but the Moon Glows. So Harvey Fuka
Speaker 2: was the founder of that group, and so I've been
Speaker 2: following his music since I was a kid, since I
Speaker 2: was ten years old, you know. And anyway, so eventually
Speaker 2: he came to work at Motown and he still had
Speaker 2: this group, the Moon Glows, and one of his members
Speaker 2: had left, so he wanted to hire another member. So
Speaker 2: they were in Washington, DC, said, and Marvin came and
Speaker 2: sang for him. So he hired Marvin. Marvin's a new
Speaker 2: Moon Glow. So we're having a Christmas party one year,
Speaker 2: and he brought Marvin to the Christmas party and so
Speaker 2: we're down in the Hitsville studio and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: That's what the main stuff that people all over the
Speaker 2: Hissfield building. But a lot of people gathered in the
Speaker 2: studio where all the instruments were blah blah blah, just
Speaker 2: mingling and having a good time. So Marvin goes over
Speaker 2: to the piano and he sits down and he starts
Speaker 2: playing the Christmas song and singing it chest Nuts roast.
Speaker 2: So he gathers the crowd, everybody starts because his voice
Speaker 2: was just one of the crowd gathering voices. So him
Speaker 2: back gets around in me saying it. And so Anna,
Speaker 2: who was Barry's sister, went up to the control and
Speaker 2: to Barry say, you need to come down here. This guy,
Speaker 2: you know, because Barry came down heard him and he sang.
Speaker 2: And that was when he first you know, Barry asked
Speaker 2: him if he wanted to come to Motown. He said
Speaker 2: he couldn't because he was the move over. The Harvey
Speaker 2: was standing there. Harvey said, man, you had to come
Speaker 2: to Motown. He said, I even work for Motown. Now,
Speaker 2: you had to come to Motown. So he did. And
Speaker 2: when he first came, he didn't want to be Marvin Gay.
Speaker 2: He wanted to be Nacking Cole Well, Frank Sinatra, somebody
Speaker 2: like that. That's why, that's how you wanted to sing.
Speaker 2: And so we recorded some mister Sandman.
Speaker 1: Y'all were doing this type of record and.
Speaker 2: So finally, man, uh, this dude, Mickey Stevenson who was
Speaker 2: our first a and our director there. Mickey is still
Speaker 2: Brownie is still my brother. He's the momb guy. He
Speaker 2: wrote Dancing in the Streets in Marvin But anyway, Mickey
Speaker 2: convinced him to be Marvin Gay because he told me, Sa, man,
Speaker 2: you ain't gonna hits like this. He said, you need
Speaker 2: to sang because you can sang. So they wrote this song,
Speaker 2: Stubborn kind of Fella, and that was the beginning of
Speaker 2: Marvin Gay.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So Marven, like I said, he come to the studio
Speaker 2: and he just killed your song. Just do some ship
Speaker 2: that you hadn't even thought of. You know. He was
Speaker 2: a great singer.
Speaker 1: Last quality for you're vault trying who's writing for this
Speaker 1: artist that you just put together?
Speaker 2: Kenny Edmonds and Dining Warren?
Speaker 6: Hmmm, yeah, the face and dying.
Speaker 1: Warn Jesus Christ, that is gonna be amazing. Yes, God, Lee,
Speaker 1: I wasn't ready for that one. How wasn't hanging out
Speaker 1: with Rick James a party?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I got any more trouble with that. But
Speaker 2: Rick was my brother. Rick was Rick was the bomb
Speaker 2: to hang out with, man, especially back in those days
Speaker 2: since I was getting high, you know, you know, so
Speaker 2: Rick was, you know, but he was a great dude.
Speaker 1: Man was yeall was standing on the.
Speaker 2: Extremely talented man.
Speaker 1: How underrated is he as a vocalist? To me? I
Speaker 1: think he's one of the girls.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know how they rate him, man, but
Speaker 2: he was just a great talent about him. No, no, no,
Speaker 2: they don't.
Speaker 1: They talk about him as a rock star.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but Rick was a great talent.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: He was a great talent musically.
Speaker 1: He was just yeah, yeah, man.
Speaker 2: But he was a great dude to hang out with. You.
Speaker 2: We had a lot of fun, man, Yeah, we had
Speaker 2: a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Where did ebony eyes come from?
Speaker 2: I have no idea. I had retired at that time.
Speaker 2: That was during my retirement, and Rick called me, smoke
Speaker 2: come down to the studio, man, I wrote the song,
Speaker 2: What you sing with me? I said, no, Rick, I'm retired. Man,
Speaker 2: I'm not come to man. Come on down there, now,
Speaker 2: you do you come down here and sing with me? Man,
Speaker 2: come on there. So I went and I did it
Speaker 2: and we had a great time. And then we did
Speaker 2: a mini movie video because we shot it for three
Speaker 2: days all over Los Angeles and I had a film crew.
Speaker 2: We went all over shooting it.
Speaker 1: You high every day at gotta hear record as record.
Speaker 2: Rick was a musical genius.
Speaker 3: Man Smokey Robbins, Smoky Smokey Joe himself the smoke. The
Speaker 3: smoke the Rick James smoking tells us a story funny
Speaker 3: of fucked up, are funny and fucked up. The only
Speaker 3: rule to the game is you can't say no names.
Speaker 2: Okay, when you say funked up, do you mean fucked
Speaker 2: up high or just fun up?
Speaker 1: Any wherever you would like to go? Wherever you wherever
Speaker 1: the smoke le.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll tell you something funny. There's a friend of
Speaker 2: my very very very close friend. He's passed on now,
Speaker 2: but he was my very very very very close friend.
Speaker 2: And we're in the car one day and uh, he's
Speaker 2: reading a comic book, okay, and he's reading a comic
Speaker 2: book about Daffy Duck. Okay, okay, And all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: it was about five of us in the car and
Speaker 2: we we we we didn't even We never let him
Speaker 2: live this down, because all of a sudden his brother
Speaker 2: comes out. He's reading this combook and he.
Speaker 5: Says, boy, man, oh, that Daffie Duck is a smart motherfucker,
Speaker 5: like Daffie Duck had written that.
Speaker 4: Y'all, So how about that? How is that good enough
Speaker 4: for you?
Speaker 2: Daffy Duck is a smart mother.
Speaker 1: There's so many layers to a nigga thinking it's actually
Speaker 1: is actually articulate greatness. You hear what this nigga da?
Speaker 1: He just said, I'm telling you this nigga's own the something?
Speaker 2: What man? Yes?
Speaker 1: So how about that Daffy's killing me right now? Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. That is that is that is high. That
Speaker 1: is when when Daffy speaks to you, you know that
Speaker 1: is never spoke to me.
Speaker 2: I thought that was what else you want to know?
Speaker 1: It is something, It is something that I do want
Speaker 1: to know.
Speaker 3: And in your your take on it, because you you
Speaker 3: you mentioned it a little bit as far as it
Speaker 3: not being a music business anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right. Do you feel that we need gatekeepers again?
Speaker 1: That is just too open.
Speaker 3: It's just like the fields are just too free for
Speaker 3: all control. Like do you feel like we need gatekeepers again?
Speaker 2: And I feel like we need them, but it will
Speaker 2: never happen and it's too vast, see because it's available
Speaker 2: to everyone, so there's no controlling that. There's no there's
Speaker 2: no there's no coming in putting the control on it,
Speaker 2: you know, like it used to be when they when
Speaker 2: you had record companies. You had record companies and a
Speaker 2: lot of them weren't paying people, but they were still
Speaker 2: record companies where you had a place where you could
Speaker 2: go and know that some type of organization or something
Speaker 2: like that is going to release your music and have
Speaker 2: some kind of keep watch on it and so on
Speaker 2: and so forth. We don't have that anymore, and we
Speaker 2: will never have it because of the computer. You know,
Speaker 2: I really think that the computer will probably be our
Speaker 2: demids eventually later on down in light.
Speaker 1: In our society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, because now they're coming out with AI
Speaker 2: and all that ship like that. Whether somebody can do
Speaker 2: do your not only do your image, do your voice,
Speaker 2: and nobody's gonna know the difference, that's very dangerous man.
Speaker 2: You know. AI is good for technical stuff and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. It's good they made those kinds of advances.
Speaker 2: But when it gets to the point whereas you're cloning people, right,
Speaker 2: that's that's really deep man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know that's real.
Speaker 2: That's scary.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like there is anything that gets us
Speaker 1: even close to the feeling and the space that we
Speaker 1: were in musically? No, No, I don't think.
Speaker 2: I don't think that will ever happen again, like I said,
Speaker 2: because it's too free for all.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's too it's too it's too open, it's too available,
Speaker 2: because it's it's it's it's online. Because then make any
Speaker 2: kind of music they want to say whatever they want
Speaker 2: to say. There's no senses, there's you know, there's there's
Speaker 2: no nothing. So it's just out there. It's just whatever
Speaker 2: happens happens. You know, there's some people and like I say,
Speaker 2: I you know, I listened to young people. I think
Speaker 2: there's some young people making some great music. You know,
Speaker 2: but then the line is open so that the will
Speaker 2: that squeaks gets the oil. So all the the negativity
Speaker 2: is what's put out front. See that bugs me about
Speaker 2: people talking about the kids who rap. You know, they're
Speaker 2: gonna base all rap on some negative rap. You know,
Speaker 2: there are negative songs in every genre you can think of.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe not classical because there's no words and you
Speaker 2: can't you can't real with thee but thinking. You know,
Speaker 2: but when I was a kid man, when I was
Speaker 2: a teenager, and I don't know how this could ever happen.
Speaker 2: I never figured out how you could do it. But
Speaker 2: they said, if you play this record backwards, you're gonna
Speaker 2: get a satanic message.
Speaker 1: Right, you know, all the time. Yeah, because you heard that.
Speaker 2: And there were people making negative music back then. So
Speaker 2: people making negative music since they've been making music. So
Speaker 2: you can't blame that on today's generation and say that
Speaker 2: you know they're they'll make it. It's just the fact
Speaker 2: that there's no census now, you know. I know that.
Speaker 2: Back in the day, Man, we be on the bus
Speaker 2: and we like, we're doing a mototime review or something
Speaker 2: like that, and we've been going on the bus all
Speaker 2: and the guys who were on the bus we were
Speaker 2: laughing talking about Man, you know what, these days, somebody
Speaker 2: can make it. Ready, give me some pussy, and we laughing,
Speaker 2: give me some pussy. It's a nerd lyric nowadays, you
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying. That's a nerd Yeah, that's a
Speaker 2: nerd lyric, you know. So it's just that there's no census,
Speaker 2: so people can say anything they want to say and
Speaker 2: it's wide open.
Speaker 1: You're not necessarily the powers or even the the machine
Speaker 1: itself is not running on music. It's running on engagement.
Speaker 2: It's running on whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1: How do we get attention? Whatever?
Speaker 2: Well, you know what, man, just make some good music
Speaker 2: because it's going to always be room for it, you know.
Speaker 2: And I think in a way, some of that's kind
Speaker 2: of returning, you know, it's kind of returning to where
Speaker 2: people are listening and they want something milder of something,
Speaker 2: you know, listenable to it.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like, yeah, I think I think people
Speaker 1: people can only go for so long without feeling or
Speaker 1: wanting to feel exactly you know what I mean, wanting
Speaker 1: to be loved, wanting to be held, wanting to be appreciated,
Speaker 1: and and when they really want that, they have to
Speaker 1: go back and get it. And that's the power of
Speaker 1: of of what you were able to do.
Speaker 2: What do you think about the people whore knocking Beyonce
Speaker 2: for singing country music?
Speaker 1: I think Beyonce should be able to sing whatever she
Speaker 1: wants she like singing.
Speaker 2: I don't even understand that. I don't even want to
Speaker 2: stand the country artist protesting that, because Beyonce is one
Speaker 2: of the biggest artists on earth, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And if she feels enough about your music that she
Speaker 2: wants to participate in it, why would you protest that.
Speaker 1: But it's also the other part is like a lot
Speaker 1: of us don't know music history of understanding where it's
Speaker 1: just it's ridiculous, like they don't want it to go
Speaker 1: back there, like we like we have to hear it
Speaker 1: singing country. Excuse me, we don't know it because you'll
Speaker 1: have our people saying, why is she doing country music? Man?
Speaker 2: I've talked to a few of them, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, a few black people, and I had to
Speaker 2: tell them off. You know, how dare you say that?
Speaker 2: Are you fucking kidding? You know what do you what
Speaker 2: do you remember about.
Speaker 1: That some of the original cowboys, those black men. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: I think that.
Speaker 3: I think they're in my opinion, I believe that they
Speaker 3: they don't want that history to repeat itself where it
Speaker 3: comes back to where it originated from. It's like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: we created it.
Speaker 2: Too bad.
Speaker 1: It's too bad.
Speaker 3: Because and we need artists of Beyonce's stature.
Speaker 1: To say, hey, I'm going to do it.
Speaker 2: And also, if you study music history for the United
Speaker 2: States of America, all American music started in the cotton field.
Speaker 1: Who's in the cot All of.
Speaker 2: It started out there with for harming and praising the
Speaker 2: Lord and stuff. They didn't have nothing else to do.
Speaker 2: They couldn't entertain themselves any other kind of way, and
Speaker 2: eventually that turned into the Blues talk about it, and
Speaker 2: eventually that turned into a country and that turned into
Speaker 2: R and B and.
Speaker 1: Whatever, you know everything.
Speaker 2: But the source is the cotton field. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: that's that's where that came from. That's where American music originated,
Speaker 2: in the cotton field with them out there humming and
Speaker 2: entertaining themselves. And you know the world really, Yes.
Speaker 1: We appreciate you, brother, We think appreciate Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a great time. I told my wife, I said, we
Speaker 1: got smoking. I told everybody. I told everybody.
Speaker 3: You know, you don't hang out with smoking today, right probably,
Speaker 3: but I'm hanging out with smoking today.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're doing. She's hanging out with smoking.
Speaker 1: She watched me get dressed. You you got smoking.
Speaker 2: Oh you guys, this is so loose.
Speaker 1: I love yeah, because we need we need you. We
Speaker 1: need this. We need it so they can hear it
Speaker 1: and see it and understand that what you were doing
Speaker 1: then was so important and so impactful that you are
Speaker 1: still doing it now at a level like my brother
Speaker 1: you said eighty five, you are still they still say, hey,
Speaker 1: we need him in the Venetian Theater. People want to
Speaker 1: see him. That's the impact of just doing what you
Speaker 1: love and doing it at the highest level and and
Speaker 1: just doing that. The king, come ontown, the king, Come on,
Speaker 1: you're the king. It's your day. You say you can.
Speaker 1: You can do that if you want to.
Speaker 3: I just got to ask one thing too on air,
Speaker 3: Will you be our mentor.
Speaker 2: If there's something I can mentor you in it's gonna
Speaker 2: positive make something positive happen in your life? Almost only will.
Speaker 3: That's all that, because I feel like in our industry,
Speaker 3: guys and women of different generations, we don't we don't
Speaker 3: ask enough. Yeah yeah, and not even asking of like, oh,
Speaker 3: I want to give me my no.
Speaker 1: Knowledge advice, Yes.
Speaker 2: You know something, I'm gonna tell you something, man. And
Speaker 2: you're saying something that is so profound to me right
Speaker 2: now because there was a time in my life till
Speaker 2: I got older and recognize the fact that it would
Speaker 2: never ever be possible even you know, but when I
Speaker 2: was like eighteen nineteen, my dad was an older guy.
Speaker 2: You know. My dad was like forty five when I
Speaker 2: was born. You know, So my dad was an older guy,
Speaker 2: and you know, I would hear him and his friends
Speaker 2: talking about stuff, and I would think that they were
Speaker 2: ignorant I think, Okay, here I am, and they don't
Speaker 2: know as much as I do because I'm out on
Speaker 2: the streets and I'm doing that was so stupid. H
Speaker 2: I will never my dad's gone now, but I would
Speaker 2: if he had, I would never have known as much
Speaker 2: as he knew. Because the greatest teacher that we have
Speaker 2: is time. And if you're looking and if you're listening,
Speaker 2: you learn all the time. You learn something new all
Speaker 2: the time, you know what I mean. So there's no
Speaker 2: way I could have ever caught him, you know. So
Speaker 2: that's what's happening now. You have to let people know that,
Speaker 2: you know, time has taught me a little more than
Speaker 2: taught you so far, because it's the greatest teacher we have.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm gonna be calling, yeah, because I got questions.
Speaker 3: We got.
Speaker 2: Call come on over. And I love the thing. I
Speaker 2: love the fact that you guys even doing this. Man,
Speaker 2: this is beautiful.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what we run on there. You.
Speaker 2: I really really hope you guys get a chance to
Speaker 2: come to Vegas.
Speaker 1: What do you mean? Yeah, I'll be there, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: My name is Tank, I'm Valentine and this is the
Speaker 1: R and B Money Podcast. The authority on all things capital.
Speaker 1: You can't tell us nothing, nothing because Smoky Robbins, Yeah
Speaker 1: all right, Smoky to safe. Yeah yeah baby, yeah yeah baby.
Speaker 1: I was here, all right,