Acclaimed singer-songwriter Smokey Robinson’s career spans more than four decades of hits. He has received numerous awards including the Grammy Living Legend Award, NARAS Lifetime Achievement Award, Kennedy Center Honors, and the National Medal of Arts Award from the President of the United States. He has also been inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame.
At this stage of his life, you could forgive Smokey Robinson if he coasted on his past glories; during his time at Motown, the now 83-year-old icon wrote some of the most enduring songs in American history. But Robinson still feels the need to create. His latest album Gasms — his first recording of all new material in 14 years — was released this spring.
Robinson joined us in the Gumbo Kitchen to talk about the new album and more.
The name Gasms is brilliant marketing. If people said Smokey Robinson’s got a new album called Love, I’d be like oh, cool, can’t wait. But if they say you’ve got a new album called Gasms, I’m reaching for my calendar and writing it down.
That was the plan, baby. That was the plan.
I know you’re always writing. With this album, did you intentionally sit down and say, “I’m going to write some songs,” or did you just reach into your catalogue?
Two of the songs, I did do that, but the others I came up with for this album. But for two of them, I had them and they were songs I wanted to record for a long time.
One of your biggest songs “Tracks of My Tears,” you came up with the inspiration for that while you were shaving one day, is that right?
Yeah, man. But originally, I have to attribute that to my guitar player Marv Tarplin. He’s passed on now, but he was the origin of so many songs for me, man. He would put his guitar riffs on tape, and it would take me months to come up with a nice story for his music. Finally, I came up with [some] lines of the chorus: “Take a good look at my face / You’ll see my smile looks out of place / If you look closer, it’s easy to trace / That you’re gone and I’m not.” Then one morning, I was shaving and I looked at my face and I said, “God, what if a person had cried so much that their tears left tracks in their face.” And that was it, man.
Where did you get your voice and your phrasing from? A lot of R&B singers came out of the church, but I never heard a lot of that when I listened to you. I might be crazy, but I hear maybe some Sarah Vaughan.
It’s amazing that you say that, because Sarah Vaughan is still, to this day, one of my singing idols. Sarah Vaughan is the first words I ever remember hearing as a baby. I had two older sisters, and they played that kind of music. They played bebop, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine… My mom was playing the blues, you know, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, people like that. She also played gospel, the Five Blind Boys, all of that. Sarah Vaughan was, like I said, the person.
I can never tell where the falsetto begins and where your chest voice ends.
Occasionally I will go there, but I’ve always had a high voice. I sang in the choir in high school as a soprano.
So you’ve always naturally had this beautiful voice in the high register.
Yeah, and also, all the guys that I idolized at the time I was becoming a singer — Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke, Frankie Lymon — they all had high voices.
One of the songs on Gasms is a cover of The Flamingos’ “Beside You.” How did you decide to do that one?
When I was 11 or 12 years old, there was a corner where all the kids used to hang out that had a jukebox. One year, this young lady whose aunt lived right down the street from me came from Chicago for summer vacation. The Flamingos are from Chicago, and their record was on the jukebox. She said, “Let me let y’all hear something.” I have one regret about it: Aretha [Franklin] was there that day, and she loved that song, too, and I didn’t get a chance to let her hear my version of it before she passed.
One of my favourite tracks is “How You Make Me Feel.” How did that one come about?
I wanted to write a song about feeling good. I wanted to get a different sound, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I heard about Cory Rooney, who’s a great producer. He’s also the founder of TLR Records, who I’m with now. I took it to him and he put a different sound on it, and it’s one of my favourite songs, too.
This interview has been edited and condensed.