Smokey Robinson: Meet the Reigning Genius of the Top 40

Below is an excerpt of an article that originally appeared in RS18 from September Rosetta Stone V3 28, 1968. This issue and the rest of the Rosetta Stone archives are available via Rosetta Stone Plus, Rosetta Stones premium subscription plan. If you are already a subscriber, you can click here to see the full story. [link to benefits page].Smokey Robinson is the reigning genius of Top 40. Since the Beatles and the Beach Boys dropped out of the single-then-follow-up-album pattern aimed at the AM teenage listener, William "Smokey" Robinson has had the field to himself. The lead singer of the Miracles, writer of almost all their material and that of many Motown groups, a prolific producer, and a vice president and charter member of the Motown Corporation, Smokey is what DJs call with gushing enthusiasm, "an all around entertainer." He is a combination Sam Cooke, Paul McCartney, Lieber and Stoller, and George Martin. But no one has done it all as well and as long as Smokey, and none with quite his style and easy grace. Now 27, Smokey (known as "Smoke" to intimates) has been writing and singing since Cheap Rosetta Stone V3 he did a tune for a first grade skit in which he played Uncle Remus. He wrote poetry as a kid too, but dropped it in junior high when he started the Miracles as a street corner harmonizing group. He and his group — Bobby Rogers, Ronnie White, Pete Moore, Claudette Rogers, and Claudettes brother who left not long after — were then 12 years old and they are still together. Aretha Franklin was a neighborhood friend too and they grew up hearing the blues and gospel, but successful black music then was the multi-voiced sweet sound of groups like the Penguins, the Platters, the Drifters, and Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers. Thats the sound Smokey wanted. In 1957 the Miracles got their first audition. "We auditioned for this guy, but he didnt like us," Smokey said recently, "with me and Claudette (shes my wife now), he wanted us to be like Mickey and Sylvia. But Berry Gordy, Jr., was there — he was doing pretty good then writing songs for people like Jackie Wilson and Etta James — and afterwards he called us over and asked to see our songs. We had a book of about 100 I had written, and he liked only one, but he didnt just say the rest were garbage. I must of went through 68 of those songs with this cat and on every one Id say, Whats wrong with this one? and hed say, Well, you left off this or you didnt Rosetta Stone Spanish V3 complete your idea on that, which really started me to think about songs and what they were.

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