Smokey: The Definitive Collection

[Emerald City]

:justlisten:

Soul legend Smokey Robinson has recorded the new songs "My World" and "Fallin'" for the retrospective "My World: The Definitive Collection." Due May 3 via Motown, the project will be released as a 21-track CD as well as a separate DVD loaded with music videos and live performances.

Beyond such Smokey and the Miracles classics as "The Tears of a Clown," "The Tracks of My Tears," "Ooo Baby Baby," "I Second That Emotion" and "Shop Around," the album includes solo hits such as "Cruisin'," "Being With You," "Just To See Her" and "One Heartbeat," all of which reached the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.

The DVD rounds up a number of vintage clips of the Miracles performing on "The Ed Sullivan Show," "Hollywood a Go-Go" and "Teen Town," live Robinson performances of "Baby That Backatcha," "The Tracks of My Tears" and "Being With You," plus videos for "Just To See Her," "One Heartbeat," "Everything You Touch" and "Ebony Eyes," which features late funk legend Rick James.

As previously reported, updates of "Quiet Storm" and "The Tears of a Clown" are both featured on the upcoming album "Motown Remixed," which the label will release on May 24.

In the spring of 2004, Robinson unveiled his first gospel album, "Food for the Spirit," which he released on his own Robso label. At the time, the artist told Billboard he was working on a new studio album and a DVD project for which he would sing standards, as well as another gospel collection.

Robinson has scattered tour dates on tap through late August, beginning April 15 in Torrington, Conn.

[Motown Honey]

Sounds like one for the collection :myjam: :enjoytheshow:

[Diamond Girl]

Smokey spins his magic

Songwriter's new best-of CD adds 2 new songs to remarkable catalog

By Susan Whitall / The Detroit News

In addition to releasing a greatest-hits CD, singer-songwriter Smokey Robinson has put his name on a line of frozen entrees.

Smokey and his first wife, Claudette, married as teenagers and had two children, Berry and Tamla. They remain on good terms after divorcing in 1986, he says.


Anyone who suggests that you have to be unhappy to create great art would do well to study the life and art of William "Smokey" Robinson Jr.

The Detroiter was an overachiever at Motown, writing songs for and fronting the Miracles while he also penned hits for Mary Wells and the Temptations, and holding down a business job as a Motown vice president.

Except for a brief bump 15 years ago, Robinson's personal life has been largely serene. His major addiction has been golf, and he's always been a businessman, most recently teaming up with friend Mickey Stevenson to produce plays, and investing in a food company that bears his name.

Proof of his ability to tap into the feelings of others and write about universal themes is on the new best-of CD released May 3, "My World: The Definitive Collection" (Universal/Motown).

The disc showcases 21 of Robinson's biggest hits, both solo and with the Miracles, and illustrates 21 different ways of writing about the joys and pain of love.

While Motown labelmates such as Marvin Gaye turned personal troubles into heart-rending music, Robinson's creativity wasn't linked to personal strife.

While happily married to his teenage sweetheart Claudette Rogers, the Detroit native was writing about lost love in "Ooo Baby Baby," and the pain of unrequited love in "Tracks of My Tears." Consider the deft turn of phrase this happy husband used describing the anger of a misused lover in "You've Really Got a Hold On Me": "I don't like you, but I love you/seems that I'm always thinking of you/Oh, oh, oh, you treat me badly/I love you madly, you've really got a hold on me ..."

That ability to describe complex emotions with beautifully simple language has been with Robinson since the late 1940s when he wrote poems his teachers put up on the bulletin board at Dwyer Elementary on Detroit's north end.

"Songwriting is my gift from God," Robinson, now 65, says in a phone interview from his San Fernando Valley home. He writes songs, not even thinking of them for himself necessarily.

"I always try to write a song, I never just want to write a record," he adds. "When you write a song, a song has longevity. Even if I don't release it myself, somebody else might hear it and want to record it. When you write a song, it gives it that potential."

Married since 2002 to a friend of 25 years, interior designer Frances Glandney, Robinson seems to be happily ensconced in another long, peaceful stretch of life lately. He started a food company last year, Smokey Robinson Foods: The Soul is in the Bowl, and so far has two frozen entrees -- a seafood gumbo and red beans and rice -- available at local Kroger's and the Holiday Market in Royal Oak.

The singer tours frequently, his high tenor (and falsetto) intact, and he'll probably have a date soon for Metro Detroit this summer.

He's on good terms with his ex-wife, Claudette (Rogers) Robinson, and with her, co-grandparents of three grandchildren, the offspring of their children, Berry and Tamla.

He's still a passionate golfer, playing the celebrity pro-am circuit alongside Alice Cooper and others.

"Palmer Park golf course -- that was where we all learned how to start playing golf," says Robinson, referring to Gaye and other Motown stars. "I played golf all over Detroit. There are very few courses around Detroit I haven't played."

But in the mid-'80s, Robinson's sunny life suddenly foundered. In his mid-40s, an age when most people are settling down and leaving their wild habits behind, by his own account the singer had an affair that resulted in the birth of a son, Trey. Between that and a late-in-life cocaine habit, his marriage to Claudette foundered. The troubles seemed to begin with the death of Robinson's father in the mid-'80s (his mother died when he was 10).

Even the intervention of his old boss and longtime friend Berry Gordy Jr. didn't help. Only after a spiritual awakening at an inner city Los Angeles church did Robinson begin to put his life back in order.

While the pace of hits has slowed down, Robinson hasn't stopped writing new music or releasing CDs. In 2004, he recorded what he hastened to describe as not a gospel album, but a "spiritual" album, "Food for the Spirit" (RSO Records), with songs such as "I Praise and Worship You Father," and "Jesus Told Me To Love You."

The new compilation "My World: The Definitive Collection" includes two new songs, "My World" and "Fallin'," collaborations with his old friend Mickey Stevenson, the former Motown executive.

The tracks showcase Robinson's silken tenor against more modern-sounding backing tracks than he's used in a while.

"Mickey Stevenson and I are very, very close," Robinson says. "He knew I was working on a new CD, and he brought me the tracks for these songs. He said 'Hey man, if you like these charts, write some songs ... you can use them.' 'Fallin' ' and 'My World' are two of the tracks he brought me from his new producers."

Hip-hop artists have always made use of Robinson's songs, dating back to the group A Lighter Shade of Brown using "Tracks of My Tears" on "Homies" in the early '90s.

And, of course, D'Angelo cut a notable remake of Robinson's "Cruisin' " in 1995

Robinson welcomes the re-use of his catalog. "When someone picks up one of my songs and records it, I'm a flattered man, it's a blessing to me. And I can say this, most of the people who have recorded my songs are songwriters themselves.

"To the rappers who've sampled me, I want to say -- no, sample all of mine! Because that says two things, OK? First of all, you being a young person are making your own music and you love my music enough to include it in your own. That's wonderful to me. It's a wonderful thing that they would love my music enough to say 'Oh I love this Smokey song, I'm going to include it.'

"And second," Robinson laughs, "I'm making a lot of money."

[Emerald City]

Great article. Can't wait to get my hands on that DVD :hype:

[Motown Honey]

Very informative piece on the poet :writer: