Smokey Robinson is playing the Stagecoach Festival, which makes perfect sense if you know how he got the nickname “Smokey.” “When I was three or four years old, I loved cowboys and wanted to be one, so my uncle gave me the nickname ‘Smokey Joe,’” he explains. “That was my ‘cowboy’ name, and I’ve kept it ever since.” Smokey Robinson went on to write more than 4000 songs in his storied career. This alone would give anyone pause. Then there’s the fact that among these thousands of songs are classics like My Girl, The Way You Do the Things You Do, Tears of A Clown and so many others. “I knew My Girl was a good song right away, each step of the way,” explains Robinson. “But I never dreamt about what the song became, that it became such an international anthem. Wherever we are in the world, when the song starts, the audience immediately knows what it is and joins in.”
It all started when Smokey was six years old. “I’ve been trying to write all my life,” he explains. “I was in a play in the first grade and my teacher let me write a song for the play. So, by the time I was a teenager, I had written more than 100 songs.” That’s about the time he met Motown Records founder Berry Gordy in Detroit. It’s quite remarkable to think that Robinson, Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross all came from the same neighborhood in the Motor City and knew each other. But why did Detroit become the epicenter of Soul music in America? Robinson is quick to point out the importance of his best friend and label boss. “We had Berry Gordy,” he explains. “We had a man who had a dream. His dream included making some other dreams come true. We had a music man at the helm. He was a music man when I met him, before he even started Motown. He was writing songs and producing records before he even started Motown. Eventually, after we met, he started Motown and the rest is History.” Did the city’s industrial roots influence the music coming out of it? Robinson thinks so. “Detroit was a Motor City, it was owned by the auto industry - that’s why he named it Motown, for Motor Town. Berry Gordy was actually working in an auto-plant when he started Motown.”
In 1972, Robinson retired from the music industry to raise his kids and help with running Motown, but after a few years, he got bored and wanted to come back to music. It is a testament to the depth of Smokey Robinson’s talent that his comeback record, A Quiet Storm, made after three years of retirement, single-handedly created a new genre of music. “I thought of myself as a quiet singer,” explains Robinson. “But I wanted to take the music industry by storm!” For many years, LA radio station KKBT 92.3 The Beat adhered to the “quiet storm” format. “Many radio stations all over the country still follow it,” points out Robinson. Fast forward several decades, and in 2022, Smokey Robinson is still a man on a mission. After a couple of years not playing shows, he’s anxious to perform at as many venues as possible. “I’ll be doing gigs wherever I’m allowed,” he says. That includes the country-dominated Stagecoach Festival on April 29 in Indio. But don’t expect any changes in his set list. “I’m gonna come and I’m going to sing all my songs,” he explains with a laugh.
