(Motown)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
This two-disc set plays more as a history of Motown than an anthology of a single group. In a sense, the Miracles were Motown; Smokey Robinson was the driving creative personality of the label in its early years, in his supervisory position of both his group and the other talents there at the time. And like Berry Gordy, he knew how to spot talent; just as Gordy pulled incredible performers seemingly from thin air, Robinson dredged up an army of able songwriters who came to completely define R&B and (later) rock & roll radio in the early to mid-’60s. To my knowledge, the Miracles are the only group that brought music of virtually every major Motown composer to the charts. They’re all here — Holland/Dozier/Holland, Ashford & Simpson, Gordy himself, even Stevie Wonder. You can buy a Supremes compilation and get a rundown on H/D/H, a Marvin Gaye and Tami Terrell set for the full story on Ashford & Simpson, the Marvelettes to hear Smokey interpreted by others, etc. But the Miracles album serves as a primer on everything that made Motown great in its brief peak period.
But of course, what matters — and what sticks — is the work of Smokey himself. Smokey Robinson didn’t get called “the greatest living American poet” by someone who ought to know (Bob Dylan) for nothing. His songs are passionate, frail, sophisticated rock & roll; you do frequently get a sense hearing these songs now that you’re witnessing the peak of a form. Every Motown artist had great writers; the words may have been banal, but the music was always superbly distinctive despite its factory-line origins, and a great singer like Diana Ross could easily interpret the worst clichés in a manner that made them earth-shattering. But Smokey’s work never needs even that much qualification. Most of his melodies, at least those written for his own group, are clearly built around his voice; there’s no one else on the planet who can sing “Tracks of My Tears” correctly, and there never will be. Lyrically, too, he is dazzling; “Whatever Makes You Happy” includes some of the most intricate commentary toward relationship politics I’ve ever heard in a pop song, with Lennonesque wordplay to boot. It is not simply a love song, it is an almost surreal blend of self-sacrifice and half-insanity, and it is incredibly sophisticated, and one imagines, difficult to sing:
If my sadness brought you gladness,
I’d be glad to be sad
If my feeling bad made you feel good,
I would always feel bad
And I wouldn’t think twice about the sacrifice
Anything that I’d have to do
‘Cause whatever makes you happy
Makes me happy too
If my tears could make you smile,
I could smile through my tears
Your sweet and laughing voice is
Music to my ears
And I wouldn’t think twice about the sacrifice…
Even if you wanted someone else to take my place
Although I love you so much
I’d still give you up
Just to keep a smile on your face
If my woe seemed to please you, I’d be pleased with my woe
And if my sorrow brought you joy, I’d enjoy my sorrow
But he pulls it off as if it’s another day at work, which it essentially was.
As performers, the Miracles are far more in the shadow of their leader than, for instance, the Supremes, which is why I generally insist on referring to the latter without the “Diana Ross And” addition from the late ’60s but have no beef with Smokey’s name in front of the Miracles. They are backing vocalists for the most part of less importance than the Funk Brothers, as great as ever on some of their definitive recordings. (“You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me” is one of the few songs later covered by the Beatles that is just as hard and convicted as the version with John Lennon at the helm.) With that said, the vocal blend is aided immensely by the presence of a female, Claudette Rogers, whose addition is very beneficial to most of the Miracles’ major hits. For instance, on “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me,” the sensuality becomes the full image rather than the song being simply an ode to it. “Going to a Go-Go” is more colorful and sprightly with her leading the chorus than it would be otherwise. And on and on.
This anthology set takes a chronological approach, which I suppose is best. Some Motown buffs, especially those who swear by the Funk Bros., have been upset by the new stereo mixes included here; I liked them. You'll want a different package to get the punchier mono single versions anyway. The backing tracks are great, but the point of Motown was always in the vocals and the writing amply more than the performing, or else we’d be happy buying a grab-bag of random songs from the label rather than having them separated by group. (This is not reflective of the music fan, either; no one complains about the lack of a Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans compilation because we have a Phil Spector box. Everything is different with Motown.) The Miracles set builds up as it goes along, bravely opening with the truly lame answer song (to the Silhouettes) “Got a Job.” It doesn’t really pick up until the classic “Shop Around,” then continues to take its time before really diving into the good stuff. That said, some fans prefer the earlier, rawer Motown to the mid-’60s material; I am not one of them, but if you are, you may actually find the first half of the first disc to be the best part.
And even I prefer the first disc to the second; although it has lots of great music, the scope is lessened and the group, still conforming with the Motown image in general, becomes less and less distinctive until it just seems to be tackling each trend of the era, like a wealthier Archie Bell & the Drells with blander songs and better vocals. In fact, the first half of the disc is full of stunning tracks, and they never descend into dreck the way the Supremes did, nor did they constantly improve and refine their work like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and the Temptations. Of the last ten tracks, only three really stand with their best and formerly routine work, and only one — the still-stunning “Tears of a Clown,” cowritten by Wonder — is a true classic, and it was recorded several years before the rest as an album track no one noticed!
But the group at their peak, like Motown itself as its peak, is a spectacle; as with fellow vocal giants the Beach Boys, their songs are more often about alienation than about the joy of love, and therein lies their curious power. “Tracks of My Tears” is the greatest, most beautiful of all Motown singles and one of the finrst songs ever recorded, perfect, sincere, and playful in every respect. “My Girl Has Gone,” a song I had never even heard before purchasing this, might just be the second-greatest of all Motown tracks; it’s impossible to even discern what makes it so special, so invasive and so valid, but it’s a chestnut one will not soon forget. “Going to a Go-Go” is cataclysmic, bouncing, propulsive, unshakeable, a lost British Invasion song from a factory in Detroit. I never understood “I Second That Emotion” until I heard it in this context; now it makes sense. (You see, Motown performers could have been album artists, so long as they waited forty years to release their debut LPs and then just stacked all the singles on top of one another, where they work together to create this haze of joy that’s impossible to duplicate on the radio or anywhere.) And the pair of songs about the secret sobs of funnymen are as effortlessly profound as pop music gets. I’m hesitant generally to label anything I appreciate as “art” because I can’t claim to fully understand the word, I find its application to something I am expected to appreciate more a debit than anything, and I just don’t particularly like it; it’s divisive, it’s lazy, and it’s meaningless. But if any branch of rock & roll is true high art, it’s Motown, and if any one of those pop geniuses who churned out this material for those unbelievable ten years was an artist, it is Smokey Robinson. Hats off to him.
[Originally posted elsewhere in 2007.]
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