SXSWORLD

Smokey Robinson Has Sunshine on a Cloudy Day By Dave Marsh Great American Smokeout] and I talk about rehab, jail, drugs. I speak in churches, jails, all over the place, about my life and my craft." By the time he delivers the SXSW 2010 keynote address, Smokey "I am always willing to talk to young people," Smokey Robinson says enthusiastically. "I speak everywhere, all the time. I speak about music and music careers all the time— more than I sing. I'm also a spokesman for cancer [The Robinson will be 70. He made his first big hit, the Miracles' "Shop Around," 50 years ago. Since then, the story of his life has become immense enough to qualify as legend; Bob Dylan even called him "America's greatest living poet" in 1965. Time was when everybody interested in rock and soul music knew his name; soul fans because he was the leader of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, with a nonpareil high tenor sound, and rockers because the Beatles had recorded the Miracles' "You Really Got a Hold On Me," and, like Dylan, often name-checked him in interviews. Need more convincing? Additional evidence abounds: "The Tracks of My Tears," "Ooo Baby Baby," "Going to A Go Go," "I Second That Emotion," "The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage," and "Tears of a Clown," all written for the Miracles, with whom he sang lead (although he didn't receive fea- ture credit until 1967). "My Girl," "My Guy," "When I'm Gone," "First I Look at the Purse," "Don't Mess with Bill," "Ain't That Peculiar," "I'll Be Doggone," "The Way You Do the Things You Do," "Since I Lost My Baby" and "Get Ready," for Marvin Gaye, Mary Wells, Brenda Holloway, the Marvelettes, the Contours and the Temptations. He also produced most of those records. Then there were the solo hits: "Baby That's Backatcha," the epic "Cruisin'," "Being With You" and a duet with Rick James, "Ebony Eyes." His most recent album, Time Flies When You're Having Fun, has the same streamlined romantic passion as his earlier ones. Robinson, the only artist to also be a Motown executive, also wears a new hat this time, having released the album on his own label, Robso Records. ("It takes all of my concentration, all of my effort," he says of being an indie label owner.) Robinson is certainly the only SXSW keynote speaker who had an entire radio format, Quiet Storm, named for one of his songs. He is one of very few who has had songs written about him ("When Smokey Sings" and George Harrison's "Pure Smokey"). He received the Kennedy Center's lifetime achievement award, as well as honorary doctorates from both Howard University and the Berklee School of Music. All this has happened because his passion is no more feigned now than it was in the beginning. He was both singing and writing even before he met Berry Gordy—"my best friend to this day"—and what he has learned is more than just better ways to do those things. "There are no new artists," he explains. "If you see someone who's 15, ferent kind of desperation to lyrics like "I leave tearstains on the ground," complemented by his very measured mid-tempo reading, set against a stark bass line and abetted by call-and-response with a female chorus, a vast contrast with Michael Jackson's gasping agitation on the original. Robinson worked on the album for three-and-a-half years, and "I Want Having Fun while also producing and mixing. The music has an emo- tional flow familiar from his best solo albums of the '80s, the kind of thing that made "Quiet Storm" a byword. Its gloss of romance harkens to the early years of the Miracles, when Robinson was the poet of a certain delicate teenage passion, but now comes from adult perspective. Nowhere is this clearer than in the album's hidden track, a reinvention of "I Want You Back," the Jackson 5's debut hit. Smokey transforms the song by slowing the tempo, which brings a dif- years to come up with "Cruisin'," after he was given the musical theme by Marvin Tarplin, his guitarist and constant collaborator (until Tarplin's recent retirement). "Nothing I came up with seemed intimate enough. Then one day I was driving on Sunset Boulevard, singing along with the Rascals' 'Groovin,' which I always loved, and the first three lines came to me." The result was arguably the last great Number One car song and an enduring erotic classic. Robinson wrote nine of the 11 named tracks on Time Flies When You're He says it took him 30 minutes to write "Shop Around," and five You Back" was conceived as part of it from the beginning. "I'd always wanted to do an adult version of that song," he explains. "My dream was for Michael to hear it this way. Then Mike died, and we already had several thousand records pressed. But I didn't list it on the album cover, because I didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea about why we did it." Time Flies is made that much more contemporary by the inclusion of two duet tracks, "You're the One for Me" with Joss Stone, of whom Smokey is such a huge fan that he calls her "Aretha Joplin," and "You're Just My Life" with India Arie, who Robinson describes as "a sweet singer and a great songwriter." He is equally proud that the fine backing vocals on the album are by the singers from his stage band. Robinson is not currently only producing himself, but he has formed an alliance with the Australian group Human Nature, a soul revival vocal quartet; their last three albums are all Motown songs, including several of Smokey's. He boasts of the ability of these "white Temptations" to flawlessly execute a key change in the midst of "Ooo Baby" (his personal "national anthem") and is presenting them in Las Vegas at the Imperial Palace. In the end, whatever his other gifts, Smokey Robinson considers him- they've been doing it since they were eight or nine; if they're 20, they've been doing it since they were 10. It takes a long time, even though it looks so easy. It's one of the hardest things you can embark on." In Robinson's case, he spent months writing the songs that Berry Gordy threw back at him, giving instructions—make it more direct, make it more personal, tell a story, focus on the details. He still writes "all the time. It's what I do. It's a blessing—God's gift. Almost every day of my life a song idea will come to me." He laughs and adds, "I used to lose a lot of stuff but now if I get excited, I call my voice mail and sing it." self a live performer first and foremost. "That's my favorite part," he says. "I do a concert with people, not for people. For that two or three hours, I'm having a ball. When the music starts, if I'm sick, I forget it, even if I collapse when I come off. I've had a ball. I've sung some of these songs—like 'Tracks of My Tears,' 'Ooh Baby Baby,' 'Cruisin'—thousands of times, but they're new to me every single, solitary night." Thinking back to his little-noticed but brilliant performance at November's Hall of Fame Concert at Madison Square Garden, where he sang just "Tracks of My Tears," it is easy to believe him. He sang pre- cisely, as if he had lived with the emotional memory so long it had been inscribed in his heart. And ours. n Smokey Robinson will deliver the Keynote Address at the SXSW Music Confer- ence and Festival on Thursday, March 18 at 10:30am. He will perform on Friday night, March 19 at the Austin Music Hall. SXSW ORLD / F EBRUAR Y 2010 45 NICK SPANOS

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