William Robinson, the lead singer of the Miracles, was born into a poor family in the North End area of Detroit in 1940. His uncle Claude gave him the nickname “Smokey Joe”, drawn from the cowboy films that his uncle used to take him to see. At school his main interest was music, and this interest soon grew into a fantastic career. He became one of the major songwriters and producers for Motown Records during the sixties. He was also leader and original member of the legendary vocal group the Miracles, known as Smokey Robinson and the Miracles from 1965 to 1972. The group was the first really successful recording act for Motown. They went on to become one of the most important and influential groups in Pop, Rock and Roll and R&B music history.
Formed in 1955 by Smokey Robinson, Warren “Pete” Moore and Ronnie White, the schoolboy group started out as The Five Chimes, changing their name to The Matadors two years later. The group then settled on a new name, The Miracles, after the inclusion of Robinson’s future wife Claudette Rogers in 1958, when she replaced her brother Emerson “Sonny” Rogers.
The most notable Miracles line-up included the Robinsons, Moore, White, Bobby Rogers and Marv Tarplin. After a failed audition with Brunswick Records, the group began working with songwriter Berry Gordy, who helped to produce their first records, which were leased to End Records or to Chess, before he established Tamla Records in 1959 and signed the Miracles as the new label’s first vocal harmony group.
Claudette Robinson 2013
Photo: Angela George (Wikimedia Commons)
Smokey Robinson was already developing his talents as a songwriter whilst still in his mid-teens. When he first met Berry Gordy in 1957, he took with him a notebook containing 100 songs that he had written before leaving high school.
Their first single on the Tamla label, “The Feeling Is So Fine” written by Robinson and Gordy, was released in 1959. It made no impression on the music market. Their second just made it into the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart; “Way Over There” reached number ninety-four in 1960. Towards the end of that year, Tamla released their third single, another Robinson/Gordy composition, entitled “Shop Around”, produced by Berry Gordy. The song went to the top of the Billboard R&B Singles Chart listing, week-ending 16th January 1961 (8 weeks), and was also number one on the Cash Box Top 100 Singles Chart and number two on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart. It became the first million-selling single for the label. The song features Marv Tarplin on guitar. It was clearly a major breakthrough for both the young group and the recently-formed record company.
The Miracles 1962
Photo: Tamla Publicity Photo (Wikimedia Commons)
By the end of 1962, Berry Gordy had helped The Miracles to further success. They had released three non-charting albums and eight singles, six of which achieved good chart entries. The best of them was “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me”, written and produced by Robinson, and originally released as the B-side of “Happy Landing”. The B-side outshone the A-side by some distance, reaching number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart and number one on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart. It sold over a million copies and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. It was also covered by the Beatles on their second album.
The Miracles had a busy year in 1963, recording four singles and four albums. “A Love She Can Count On”, released in March as a follow-up to “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me”, has a similar structure and feel to the previous year’s hit. The single has a different mix, however, to the album version on “The Fabulous Miracles”, with the Bluesy piano of the album version no longer to the fore.
“Mickey’s Monkey” followed in July. Unusually, it is not a Miracles’ composition but a Holland, Dozier, Holland song that the trio also produced. Robinson heard Dozier playing the song in the studio and was attracted to the party feel of the tune. His instinct was good – the single went to number three on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart and number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart, later earning the Miracles their third gold certification for sales of over one million copies. To make sure the recording captured the right party spirit, members of the Supremes, the Marvelettes, the Temptations and Martha & the Vandellas all turned up to sing in the background.
The third single release came in October, with Holland, Dozier, Holland again responsible for songwriting and production. It is an obvious attempt to repeat the success of the previous July. The first and third songs in this sequence did indeed make the charts but not the top ten. The fourth single was a Christmas song that was never released, but the album that accompanied it was issued in October! It contains nine traditional Christmas songs, plus one Robinson composition “Christmas Everyday”.
The other album releases were two studio albums and a live album, which all entered the Billboard Hot 200 Albums Chart’s lower half. “The Miracles Recorded Live On Stage” contains seven tracks, three recorded at the Regal Theatre in Chicago and four recorded at the Apollo Theatre in New York.
The first of the studio albums, “The Fabulous Miracles”, features on the front cover Marv Tarplin, the group’s guitarist, but not bass singer Pete Moore, who was in Germany on army service. The album contains “I’ve Been Good To You”, which John Lennon picked as the Beatles favourite song by the Miracles.
