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Smokey Robinson.
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Robinson, Smokey (1940—)
William "Smokey" Robinson did more to define the Motown sound than anyone except founder Berry Gordy. Involved in all facets of the operation—songw...
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Motown star Smokey Robinson (born 1940), cofounder of the Tamla record label, has been a composer and performer for more than 30 years.Smokey Robinson, the "poet laureate of soul music," has been comp...
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Critical Essay by Paul Gambaccini
On first listen ["The Tears of a Clown" is] a certain smash….
A circus atmosphere is established by the opening phrase that works as effectively ...
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Critical Essay by Fred Dellar
There are certain rare occasions when I hear records that make my toes turn up and my body feel that it's in total levitation—everything becomes wonderfully...
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Critical Essay by Simon Frith
The Temptations had been around Motown in one form or another for a couple of years, but it wasn't until 1963 that they settle on the line-up of Eddie Kendricks an...
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Critical Essay by Ian Hoare
The influence of sixties' rock on its black counterpart is more often overestimated than underestimated. With events occurring on the scale of the Watts riots, the m...
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Critical Essay by John Rockwell
Smokey's Family Robinson is hardly a concept album in the more labored sense of the term. But it makes sense as a whole, the songs linked by musical style and th...
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Critical Essay by Vince Aletti
Smokey Robinson's last album, What Love Has Joined Together, was a masterpiece of polished, high-gloss soul. In a departure from established album formula, Smokey...
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Critical Essay by David Dalton and Lenny Kaye
The early years of Tamla-Motown belonged to Smokey Robinson, whose Miracles not only established the company as a major force (with "Shop Around...
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Critical Essay by Phyl Garland
Perhaps I was spoiled by "Smokin'"…, Smokey Robinson's last live album. It was a treasure trove of all the aged-in-soul songs that mad...
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Critical Essay by Richard Williams
["Let Me Be Your Clock" is] closely tied to Smokey's Sixties idiom. Cast in the beseeching slow-drag mould of "The Tracks Of My Tears...
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Critical Essay by Phyl Garland
Though he has been one of the anchormen of vocal soul music for over twenty years, William "Smokey" Robinson manages to sing with the warmth, sincerity, an...
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Critical Essay by Robert Palmer
Smokey Robinson is one of those perennials whose creativity and staying power contradicts the notion that pop music, and especially the pop music of the rock-and-roll e...
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Critical Essay by Russell Gersten
Like all Miracles albums of the past 12 years, [One Dozen Roses is] almost all sad love songs, some fast, some slow, with a dance song or two thrown in. Smokey hits t...
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Critical Essay by Joe Mcewen and Jim Miller
Most of Motown's roster consisted of Detroit acts unearthed at local talent shows; here as elsewhere, Smokey Robinson's Miracles set the patte...
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Critical Essay by Geoff Brown
Smokey certainly isn't the consistently stunning writer he was in the Sixties. His bitter-sweet love songs have lost their sharpness but he's matured as a c...
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Critical Essay by Stephen Holden
Smokey Robinson is that rare pop singer whose rhapsodic lyricism hasn't diminished with approaching middle age. Indeed, time has added a metaphysical depth to h...
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Critical Essay by John Piccarella
A more rhythmic vocalist can bump in sexy syncopation off a complement of polyrhythms, but Smokey is all melodic caress; his cool, aching lyricism must float free and...
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Critical Essay by Mitchell Cohen
Being With You is marked with the rapturous possibilities and elegance of expression that characterized the finest 60's work of the Miracles. Three of the four ...
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Critical Essay by Richard Williams
[Smokey] is still virtually a ghetto singer. For some reason, we can't seem to accept and come to terms with his greatness.
That's all the more extraor...
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Critical Essay by David Morse
Robinson's songs are immediately identifiable by their unusual structure, their unexpected rhythmic emphases, their slowly moving, terraced chords,… and the...
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Critical Essay by Bob Eisner
[Smokey Robinson is] possibly the most individualistic and recognizable R&B writer and performer in history. The songs this man has written are incredible…. (p....
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Critical Essay by Mark Vining
A friend urged [Smokey Robinson and the Miracles: 1957/1972] on me with the recommendation that, though he was not a Miracles fan, it gave him chills….
[The] music...
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