Miracle Man

Friday, April 6, 2001 | 7:47 a.m.

"In my neighborhood we idolized the entertainers, the preachers and the pimps," Smokey Robinson wrote in his 1988 autobiography. "They were the ones with the sharp clothes, the Cadillac cars, the fine women.

"They had the glory."

The 61-year-old legend from Detroit performs at the Rio's Samba Theatre tonight and Saturday, where he will show fans he still is the consummate singer and songwriter who created 36 hit records in a career that began shortly after his high school graduation and is still going strong more than 40 years later.

It is a miracle that the R&B tenor with the smooth voice and passionate delivery is still around to discuss the highs and lows of a life he describes simply as "blessed."

Two years before penning "Smokey: Inside My Life" (McGraw-Hill) Robinson found himself in a two-year, life-and-death battle with drugs, which he blames for the breakup of his marriage to his high school sweetheart, Claudette. The couple have a son and a daughter.

By the time he became an addict in the mid-'80s, a number of his closest friends had suffered untimely deaths.

Jackie Wilson ("Lonely Tear Drops") had a massive heart attack in 1975 and was in a coma until he died in 1984. Sam Cooke ("You Send Me") was shot to death by a girlfriend in 1964. Marvin Gaye was murdered by his father in 1984.

Speaking by phone from an Atlantic City hotel room, Robinson recalled the three singers who were legends in their own right.

"Jackie Wilson was my No. 1 singing idol when I was growing up," he said. "Sam Cooke was my No. 2 singing idol when I was a kid growing up.

"Then, I got a chance to meet those guys and to hang out with them from time to time on shows and then they became my friends. The tragedies that happened to them impacted me very heavily."

Perhaps none of the deaths hurt him more than that of Gaye, whom he called his "brother brother."

"We hung all the time on a daily basis," he said. "We did everything together -- played golf, went to the movies, traveled. Our lives intermingled."

Robinson believes he would also be dead today if, in 1986, a friend had not taken him to the Ablaze Ministry in Detroit. It wasn't a church, he said, just a small building in a working-class neighborhood where people in distress went for help.

"I was prayed for, and since that night I haven't had anything (drugs) in my system whatsoever," he said. "I was healed."

Robinson said he believes God's purpose in allowing him to go through drug addiction was "so that I could see that I should have done it his way rather than my way -- and then he rescued me.

"But I think my experience with getting involved with drugs and all that was a thing of my choice. It was not God's choice."

He said it was fortunate that he was older, in his mid-40s, when he became an addict rather than when he was a young man. If it had happened when he was 20, he said, he could have used his youth as an excuse.

"I could have said I was just a kid, experimenting," Robinson said. "But I was a full-fledged adult. My career was going. My life was blessed. I couldn't have written it any better ... I was living my life exactly as I wanted to.

"But then I got hoodwinked into the drug thing, because I do believe that there is an enemy -- by that I mean a spiritual enemy."

Know thy enemy

If the "enemy" had claimed Robinson as one of its victims, he would have landed one of the most prolific, respected men in the music and entertainment industry.

Not only was Robinson born with an innate talent to write music and sing, but he had the good fortune to grow up among talented people. Among his childhood neighbors were Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross -- both of whom remain close friends.

Following high school graduation in 1957, he stepped onto a road that was a direct route to success, eventually taking him to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. The year before, he won his first Grammy Award for the single "Just to See Her."

Robinson in 1955 formed a high school band that eventually became the Matadors, later to be called the Miracles.

The Miracles auditioned for a representative of Wilson in 1957 and were rejected. But a fledgling songwriter named Berry Gordy (who wrote Wilson's successful "Reet Petite") heard them at the session and asked if he could represent them.

In 1958 Gordy created Motown Records. It's premier group was the Miracles, which released its first single, "Got a Job," on Feb. 19, 1958 -- Robinson's 18th birthday.

The Miracles' first hit, "Shop Around," was released in 1961 and established Motown's Tamla label as a national presence. The record sold more than a million copies while rising to No. 2 on the pop chart and No. 1 on the R&B chart.

Throughout the 1960s and '70s Robinson was a writing machine. He also sang, performed, wrote and produced for other artists.

He has written more than 4,000 songs during his career.

Aside from producing 27 Top-40 hits with the Miracles, Robinson wrote and produced for numerous other Motown artists, including Gaye ("Ain't That Peculiar," "I'll Be Doggone"), the Temptations ("Get Ready," "The Way You Do the Things You Do," "My Girl"), Mary Wells ("My Guy," "You Beat Me to the Punch") and the Marvelettes ("Don't Mess With Bill," "The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game").

In July 1972 Robinson left the Miracles. He said the years after that were among the lowest in his career.

"I probably had two real, real, real low points as far as my career goes -- the drugs, and the time right after I left the Miracles," he said. "I had been a vice president of (Motown) for seven or eight years before I left the group. I had a job whether I was working with them or not.

"When I left them, I intended to do the vice-president thing. I was not going to sing or perform or record or do any of those things like that ever again.

"But after about three years of that I was climbing the walls. It was a real low point in my life. I was very sad. I became very unlike myself, because I'm basically an outgoing, extrovert-kind of person and there was a sadness about me.

"Claudette, who was still my wife at the time, and Berry Gordy, who is my best friend, came to me and said, 'Hey, man. We want you to get a band and do some music and get your ass out of here.' "

As a result he created the album "A Quiet Storm" in 1975. Two of the songs on the album ("The Agony and the Ecstasy" and "Baby that's Backatcha") cracked the Top 40.

Two years ago Robinson released a CD called "Intimate." Later this year the disc's title song is to be released as a single.

'High point'

Robinson marvels at his success.

"As a kid, any musical thing that came on television I would watch," he said. "I remember seeing Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra on a show and Frank said, 'You know, Sammy, we've been doing this for 25 years now.'

" 'Wow, 25 years,' I thought. Well, now I've been doing this for 41 years," Robinson said.

While there have been a few low points during those years, he said, there have been many highs.

"Every day is a high point in my life," he said. "Every day when I get up it's a high point."

Performing continues to be fun. "I go down there (to the showroom) and have a ball," he said. "A lot of enthusiastic people are there, and we have fun."

He said he doesn't believe dividing his time and talents among writing, performing and producing was damaging to his musical career.

"It's a gift of God. I really mean that," Robinson said. "Of course I've had difficult times with all those aspects at different times, but it was never, as a whole, a difficult thing to do."

Robinson spends most of his time these days touring and writing songs.

"Songwriting is something that I do almost every day of my life," he said. "I come up with a melody or some words or a phrase or something like that almost every day of my life. I try to save as many as I can, so I can look back on those little scraps of paper and maybe come up with a song sometimes. It's a gift, a blessing. I don't know where it comes from if it doesn't come from God."

Robinson said he doubts he would have done anything differently in his career.

"I wonder if I would have done the drug thing any different," he said. "It was a life lesson I will never forget, and one I use to help a lot of people."

Robinson also travels the country speaking to groups at churches, rehabilitation centers, gangs, juvenile centers, jails and hospitals about drugs.

"By going through addiction I have been able to help a lot of people, which is why I think probably the Lord let me go through it and then healed me, so that I would have first-hand experience," he said.

Robinson is indeed a miracle.

Jerry Fink

is an Accent feature writer. Reach him at 259-4058 or jerry@lasvegassun.com.

archive