Just His Soul Responding
SMOKEY COMES TO ‘TOWN’ – AND SO DOES AN AUDIENCE
Have you cast your votes?
For the top Motown albums of all time, that is. You know: it’s the poll currently being conducted by Smokey’s Soul Town, the popular music channel on America’s SiriusXM satellite and online broadcasting network.
Listeners can vote for up to ten candidates from a list of 100 albums, including six by Stevie Wonder, nine by the Temptations and eleven by Marvin Gaye, his duet titles among them. Martha & the Vandellas’ Come And Get These Memories (1963) is the earliest album in the list, while Boyz II Men’s II (1994) is the latest. The results will be announced soon on an upcoming episode of Smokey’s Place, according to the Smokey’s Soul Town website.
This poll, the range of music programmed on Smokey Robinson’s channel and the various shows associated with it are accessible to those of you in the U.S. and Canada. Elsewhere in the world, unfortunately, the service isn’t available – although it appears that those outside North America can vote for their ten Motown favourites, right here.
Stopping by Soul Town: Fred Bronson, Martha Reeves and Mickey Stevenson, with the host himself
It was in November 2023 that Smokey’s Soul Town made its SiriusXM debut, featuring soul, R&B and Motown, mostly from the 1960s and ’70s. “We had a classic R&B channel called Soul Town for years before that,” SiriusXM’s vice president of music programming, Lou Simon, told me recently. The network had also offered a variety of other music formats, but then it began branding them with personalities – so, for instance, what had been known as Roadhouse, featuring era-spanning country music, evolved into Willie’s Roadhouse with the involvement of Willie Nelson as host.
“The music didn’t change on that channel,” says Simon, but Nelson’s participation introduced his stories, anecdotes and memories to accompany and illuminate what was being played. “And it happened with our channel Praise, which became Kirk Franklin’s Praise, Bluesville became B.B. King’s Bluesville and so on.”
Another senior SiriusXM executive had the idea to bring Smokey Robinson into the picture, and the star was “open to the idea,” Simon recalls. “Look, Smokey was at Motown when they were setting up the water cooler, so to speak. He didn’t jump on the train after it was already moving. He was there at the inception. So he has a definite presence on our channel as a voice throughout the day, welcoming listeners, and as a host for the Smokey’s Place show.”
The latter is curated by Robinson with Fred Bronson, a music and chart authority who has written for (and published books with) Billboard for many years. “I pitched the idea of a regular series that would focus on Smokey’s memories,” Bronson says. “I would pick a theme each week and choose the music. I was given the green light, and we produced ten episodes of Smokey’s Place in 2024, ten in 2025 and are doing 20 this year.
SINGING BACHARACH, BERRY AND THE BEATLES
“The show is unscripted,” he continues. “I give Smokey a framework and list some facts like chart positions, and he completes each episode with his personal memories. He doesn’t need me to script how he wrote ‘My Girl.’ ”
Smokey’s Place themes have included “Motown: The B Sides,” “Motown Sings Bacharach,” “The Berry Gordy Song Book,” “Motown Meets The Beatles” and “Motown Sings 1650 Broadway,” featuring Hitsville acts’ recordings of the songs of Gerry Goffin & Carole King, Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil, and Jeff Barry & Ellie Greenwich.
“And then,” says Lou Simon, “we evolved to having a guest in the studio with Smokey. It was his idea. He said, ‘I’d love to have someone come in and sit with me, and talk a little bit about their music.’ It was a conversation within the realm of his show. So then I asked him, ‘Would you like to do this with an audience?’
Not forgetting Smokey’s Lounge and Smokey’s Place…
“He said, ‘Man, would I!’ So we put it into a larger studio and invited subscribers to be in the audience. The conversation was in front of people who could ask questions and participate. Then it grew into, ‘Wait a minute, Valerie Simpson is coming in and she can sing and play the piano.’
“So we bring a piano in, now you get a musical performance. And because Smokey just loves talking to these compatriots and reminiscing with them – and because he’s very good at it – everything grew kind of organically.” Thus was born Smokey’s Lounge, another component of the overall channel, with guests so far including Simpson, Thelma Houston, Eddie Holland and Martha Reeves.
A fair number of the stories may be familiar, but when they’re told once again by the people who were there, they still resonate. In one episode, Berry Gordy reminds Robinson about the first time he saw the Miracles, when they were auditioning for Jackie Wilson’s manager. “To be honest, my very first impression was you had a really cute girl in the group. She unfortunately turned out to be your girlfriend, and later your wife. So I was out of luck there.”
In another conversation, Robinson asks Mickey Stevenson, Motown’s original A&R chief, about “Dancing In The Street,” which Stevenson authored with Marvin Gaye and Ivy Jo Hunter. “We wrote this song for Kim Weston, but Kim was straining, she’s such a harsh, strong singer, so we just wanted to have fun in the voice. Marvin said, ‘Well, what are you going to do? Who’s going to sing it?’
“Martha was my secretary at the time, she was waiting to do a song sometime. I said, ‘Martha, come right here, we need you.’ She came down, she sang the song, and she did one take. We fixed a couple of words, and by the time we got to the third take, Marvin looked at me and said, ‘Do you hear what I hear?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ ”
‘AN INNATE ABILITY’
For the Smokey’s Place shows, Fred Bronson is free to choose the music – and, he says, “I have played some tracks that may never be played again on the channel. The first one that comes to mind is from the ‘Motown At The Movies’ episode: ‘Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine’ by the Supremes.”
The next episode due to air is “Going Solo,” featuring Motown artists who were in groups and then recorded solo. “There are some obvious choices,” says Bronson, “but there are also some surprises and rare tracks. Then we have an episode called ‘Before, During and After.’ We play three songs by an artist, one from before they signed with Motown, one during their time with the label, and one from after they left.”
Smokey with Joyce Vincent, Scherrie Payne and Lynda Laurence
Lou Simon confirms such shows are very popular. “Smokey Robinson has an innate ability to read something and not make it sound like he’s reading – which is a rare skill. But he’ll look it over. I guess it’s the same way he looks at a song lyric, and then makes it feel so off the cuff. What started out as Smokey playing records is now more of Smokey playing records with a point and a purpose and a theme.”
But the SiriusXM executive also emphasises how much of a team is involved. “There's an army of people behind the scenes, who keep the channel vibrant and flowing. Motown is a large library, there are a lot of songs, a lot of shows, a lot of activity.”
Even so, Simon gets to have some fun himself, like the time of Eddie Holland’s guest appearance on a Smokey’s Lounge episode. “I had the opportunity before we went on air, and I said, ‘Eddie, I’m going to ask you a question that I’ve always wanted the answer to.’ He said, ‘OK, go ahead.’
“You wrote the lyrics to ‘Band Of Gold.’ He replied, ‘Yes, I did.’ And there are those lines, ‘That night on our honeymoon/We stayed in separate rooms.’ But you never tell us why! Clearly there’s a major conflict between these two people, but all you tell us is the headline, there’s no story underneath. Why’d they stay in separate rooms?
“Eddie said, ‘I never thought about it.’ Smokey was sitting there, and he said, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. You did that just because you needed a rhyme?’ And Eddie replied, ‘Man, we were just getting it done. I needed a rhyme. I put it in. Freda sang it. The record was a hit.’ “
Lou Simon says he’s never been so disappointed in his entire life. And at the time, Smokey added, “I can see why.”
The revelations of Smokey’s Soul Town…
Museum notes: in addition to the shows noted above, Smokey’s Soul Town has another Hitsville-related component as a regular part of the channel. “Live from the Motown Museum” was launched one year ago, hosted by well-known Detroit radio personality John Mason and Levi Stubbs III, whose late father was the Four Tops’ Levi Stubbs. During the regular, one-hour broadcast, the pair plays a selection of Motown hits while recounting stories and Hitsville history; they also conduct interviews with West Grand alumni, which SiriusXM subscribers can access.
Book notes: everyone’s memory of the past is different, of course, but in his autobiography, Berry Gordy admits that when he first saw the Miracles, Claudette’s attractiveness captured his attention before their music did. Smokey, in his memoir, remembers what she said the next day: “That Berry guy called me…He asked me out.” (She turned him down.) And those wondering how Martha could still be Mickey Stevenson’s secretary after the Vandellas had burned up the charts with “Heat Wave” and more, he recalls in his autobio that he recruited “Dorothy” (no surname cited) to take Reeves’ job *after* “Dancing In The Street” was a hit.