Smokey Robinson

Smokey Robinson (b. February 19th, 1940)
a.k.a. William Robinson

SMOKEY’S STANDARDS
With Timeless Love Smokey Robinson Takes On the Great American Songbook
Smokey Robinson’s contribution to the Motown sound is incalculable. As a company songwriter and producer, as well as lead singer and frontman for the immortal Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Detroit native brought the world one classic performance after another during Motown’s golden age. And the hits just kept on coming after Robinson went out as a solo act. Now he’s expanding his artistic range with an album devoted to the standard songs he grew up with. Ted Panken spoke with the master music maker about how Timeless Love fits into his incredible five-decade career.

Barnes & Noble.com: Have you begun in recent years begun to incorporate the Great American Songbook into your normal act, or is this a very special project for you?

Smokey Robinson: No-no, no-no, no-no, Ted. I’ve been singing these songs, at least one or two of them, every night in my life at shows for about the past 14 or 15 years.

B&N.com: But this is your first record completely comprising the Songbook.

SR: Exactly.

B&N.com: Is this music part of your very early background, your formative years?

SR: It’s my roots, what I grew up hearing. I have two older sisters, and my mom and my two sisters played this music in our house all day long, every day, when I was a kid growing up, when I was two and three. It’s part of the music that I grew up on. I’m a song fan and I’m a songwriter fan, and these are some of my favorite songs of all times and some of my favorite writers.

B&N.com: Who are the artists that your mother and sisters were playing when you were a kid?

SR: The first voice I ever remember hearing in my life, man, was Sarah Vaughan. Sarah, Billy Eckstine, Sammy Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw. I grew up hearing the music of people like this.

B&N.com: Now, when you were starting to sing, were you using any of them as templates for your style, for your phrasing, your approach?

SR: You know what? I don’t really know. I’m sure that every singer is influenced by somebody. I’m sure that those singers had an influence on me as a kid growing up, because like I said, I’ve been hearing their music since I could hear. But then when I grew up and started buying my own records, my favorite artists were Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke and Clyde McPhatter and Frankie Lyman and people like that. Those were the guys that I sort of loved as singers. They were my singing idols as a kid growing up. But prior to that time, like I said, I listened to all the people who were singing jazz. My mom played gospel and the blues. So everything was being played in our house, man, from jazz to gospel, to blues to classical.

B&N.com: That’s the way things were back then, wasn’t it. There weren’t so many differentiations in the ‘40s and ‘50s.

SR: Yeah. We just heard music.

B&N.com: After World War Two, Detroit was one of the most vibrant musical communities in America. [Jazz pianist] Barry Harris told me that he went to high school with Motown founder Berry Gordy, and they were the two boogie-woogie piano players.

SR: Yes, exactly. They were. Berry talks about that all the time!

B&N.com: Were you ever involved then in singing jazz? Or was it always about writing your own songs and doing your own creative individual music?

SR: Yes! I was involved in both of those. As a little boy, of course I sang those songs that I was hearing in my house. Then I tried to write songs since I was six years old.

B&N.com: I take it that the songs here served you as a songwriter, then.

SR: Yes, because I love songwriters. I always looked on records to see who wrote the songs. That’s how I met Berry Gordy.

B&N.com: Most of these songs were composed before 1960, a golden age of songwriting.

SR: Let me tell you something. These songs were written when the song was king. Okay? These songs were written when everybody recorded a hit song. I’ll just choose “Our Love Is Here to Stay.” You would hear that by Sarah Vaughan, you would hear that by Ella Fitzgerald, you would hear it by Frank Sinatra, you would hear it by Nat King Cole, you would hear it by everybody, because that was a hit song. The thing changed in the late ‘50s, when I was a kid growing up. That’s when the artist became the focal point. Not the song. The artist became the focal point back when Elvis Presley first started, and Jackie Wilson and Little Richard and people like that. But prior to that time, in the ‘20s and ‘30s and ‘40s, the song was king.

B&N.com: Now, your songs are such a part of the American fabric at this point. Can you talk about the ways in which your songs are similar and the ways in which they’re different to from the earlier standard songs?

SR: I have always tried to write a song. I have never been a writer who wanted to write a record. I’ve always tried to write a song, because I want my songs to be like these songs that are on that Timeless Love. I want them to live on and on forever. If you write a song, it has that chance. I’ve always tried to write a song that if I had written it 50 years before I wrote it, it would have meant something; if I wrote it 50 years from now, it would mean something to people. That’s my criteria for writing a song. Perhaps the first time I record it, it may not be a hit, or the masses of people may not accept it because I gave it the wrong treatment. But if it’s a song, it has a chance for someone to pick it up 10-20-30 years from now and say, “Hey, this is a great song; let me sing it; let me do this way.” And maybe it will have that acceptance.

B&N.com: Why is this the time to issue an album like this?

SR: I think the time is right for me. Because I love these songs, and I hope that my interpretation of them shows people that I love them. So the time is right for me, because I just want to do something different musically right now for the public. At the same time, I’m still working on a CD of original material.

B&N.com: You’re in such fine voice on this record. What do you to keep in shape like that, to keep that purity?

SR: The first and foremost thing is to take care of yourself. Especially after you get to be a certain age, man. When you get to be 35-40, taking care of yourself is a job. It’s not something that just automatically happens like it did in your 20s. It’s a job! So I do my job. I take care of myself, man. I work out. I walk. I run.Your voice is your instrument, and if you don’t take care of yourself, what you use the most is going to be the first thing to break down.

B&N.com: Have you kept track of how many songs you’ve written?

SR: About eight years or so, I got a thing from ASCAP talking about the songs I’d written, and there were about 4,000 of them then.

B&N.com: I hope there are a couple of thousand more in the pipeline.

SR: Thank you.

June, 2006