Smokey Robinson’s journey in the music industry was one filled with humble beginnings.
The multi-hyphenate artist and producer was the lead singer of The Miracles as early as 15 years old, Vulture reports.
The group was instrumental to Berry Gordy, who helped bring their talent to his record label, Motown Records, making them one of its first artists when it was founded in 1959.
“Berry sat us down. He said, ‘Imma start my own record company. Ain’t nobody paying. Imma start my own record company, and we gonna be the crew, and we’re not just going to make Black music,'” Robinson said on the “R&B Money” podcast. “‘We’re going to make music for the world. We’re going to always have some great beats and some great stories, and that’s going to be our quality control to have that when we put our records out, but we going to make music for the world.'”
Robinson’s early days at the label were filled with sacrifices. He recalls earning just $5 a week when the label first started.
“Berry had just started Motown, and I was making $5 a week ’cause there were only five people that worked there then. Him and four others of us you know so it was considered our car fair to get there,” he recalled on the “R&B Money” podcast.
The group, which started as Pete Moore, Bobby Rogers, Claudette (Rogers) Robinson, Ronnie White, and Robinson, ‘s first professional performance was held at the Apollo Theatre in New York for the “Ray Charles” show. Their single “Bad Girl” gained enough traction for a few gigs. The compensation was $700 split between the five members.
“We didn’t even make enough money to get out of the f-ckin hotel at the end of the week,” Robinson mentioned.
Their big break came in 1961 with “Shop Around, ” which made history at the label as the first million-selling single.
However, its success did not translate to “real money” for the group at first, which Robinson says was due to the label’s newness and distributors’ lack of payment.
“They were withholding at first, but when the “Shop Around” came out, some of them were still withholding, but we came right back…We kept bombarding them with hit records,” he explained.
He continued, “Legally, who’s going to come and investigate it? Who’s going to come and say, ‘You go there and say, well, no, we know we sold 100,000 records and distribute them, say ‘No, you didn’t, you sold 50.’ Who’s going to know? But like I said, the great thing for us, man, was we bombarded them. We kept coming so they would give us our money.”
Looking ahead, Robinson would remain an important figure at the table. He would go on to write hits for the label for acts including the Temptations (“The Way You Do the Things You Do,” “My Girl,” “Get Ready”) and Marvin Gaye (“Ain’t That Peculiar,” “One More Heartache,” “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game”), note Vulture. He was also responsible for bringing Diana Ross to the table. His efforts even led him to become the label’s vice president in 1962, the Detroit Historical Society reports. Robinson remained the vice president until Gordy sold his stake in 1988 for a reported $61 million.
