When Smokey Sings

"Debonair lullabies in melodies revealed
In deep despair on lonely nights
He knows just how you feel
The slyest rhymes - the sharpest suits
In miracles made real"

I grew up in the Detroit area in the sixties and remember very well the music of the day. I was eight years old when Dianna Ross and The Supremes appeared for the last time together on “The Ed Sullivan Show”. It was a Sunday night and my mother made me take a bath before the show started or I wouldn’t be able to watch. The whole family sat there together, sans my dad, and watched them sing “Someday, We’ll Be Together”. I vividly remember thinking that maybe they were singing about themselves and that they would be together again. I remember feeling so sad to think that they were through. Looking back on it now I can’t help but think how strange it was for an eight year old to be so concerned about the happenings of the music industry.

Growing older I would go through stages of the different types of music I would listen to. Scanning the fm dial I would stop and listen to a number of different songs one day and not want to hear it the next. I would always stop, however, when it would land on an old Motown song. After looking into a number of these songs I found that the ones I enjoyed the most were songs by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles.

Smokey was the man. He wrote like no one else of his time. From party songs, “Going To A Go Go” and “Money” to the sweetest love songs imaginable. “My Girl”, “La La Means I Love You” and “Ooh Baby Baby”. He described our feelings, not only with the pen, but with a voice that brought tears to angels. Smokey was so smooth on songs like, “The Tracks Of My Tears” and “You Really Got A Hold On Me” that when he sang “The Tears Of A Clown”, an incredibly sad song, he makes it sound like he was the happiest guy on earth. He really was amazing. I think I can safely say that without him, Motown would have never been anything like the monster it became.

The first five lines of this essay are from a song by the eighties band ABC called “When Smokey Sings”. In the song the band praises Smokey for all the feelings he’s brought to them. During the tenure of the band there would be critics who would compare Martin Frye’s voice to the young Smokey Robinson. Frye addresses the critics in the song with the lyric “Should I say yes, I match his best, then I would be a liar”. Because as he says later on in the song, “Nothing can compare, nothing can compare when Smokey sings.