This Day in Pop Music History (Smokey Makes U.S. “Shop Around” for Motown)

Feb. 12, 1961—Motown Records, a toddler of a music company in Detroit, won mass acceptance from a white audience with “Shop Around,” its first million-selling single, penned by company creator Berry Gordy and his friend, the lead singer of the group recording it, Smokey Robinson of the Miracles.

About 10 years ago, with a bit of time between flights, I chatted for a minute with security guards at Dayton Airport. They had “quite a bit of excitement” there earlier that day, one told me. “Smokey Robinson came through. What a great, classy guy!”

The guards were white and late middle-age--hardly the audience for the 20-year-old singer when he first burst upon the nation’s consciousness with that swooping, swooning, acrobatic tenor voice.

But their reaction testifies both to the cross-over impact made by the first record label owned by an African-American, as well as Smokey’s own unbounded personal charisma.

It wasn’t surprising that he took the label to the top. After all, the first song released on Motown Records two years before was the Miracles’ “Bad Girls,” and the first slotted for national release was the group’s “Way Over There.”

Moreover, if Gordy--a former Korean War vet, boxer and Ford Motor Co. worker who wrote tunes in his head to break assembly-line boredom--had the ambition and marketing savvy to make broaden the audience of records traditionally considered "rhythm and blues" to whites, it was Robinson who, with his friendliness and uncanny ear, would work with upcoming acts in the company (e.g., Mary Wells, The Temptations), crafting songs to their talents, as Motown vice-president throughout the rest of the Sixties.

To put “Shop Around” on the map at all, though, Robinson and his bandmates had to follow the hard-driving Gordy's lead. First, Gordy dissuaded Robinson from offering the song (written, the singer recalled, “like water," in less than a half hour) to the label’s Barrett Strong, convincing him that it would be better if the Miracles performed it with Smokey’s wife, Claudette Rogers, singing lead.

Several weeks later, dissatisfied with the results, Gordy called Robinson at 3 in the morning with a brainstorm: He could fix the record with a faster beat. He was able to persuade the reluctant and bleary-eyed Robinson that this time it would work, but it was up to the latter to round up his fellow musicians right then and there to re-record it.

Robinson wasn’t completely successful in this last endeavor--the piano player was missing, requiring that Gordy himself step into the role for the moment--but the new beat, along with the substitution of Robinson for Rogers in the lead, was everything the producer promised.

In time, Gordy was able to present the thrilled band members with their first gold record at the state fair, and to watch with satisfaction as they landed a gig on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand.” It also launched Smokey and the Miracles on a decade of further hits, including “You Really Got a Hold on Me,” “Tracks of My Tears,” “Tears of a Clown,” and my personal favorite, “Ooh Baby Baby.”