Smokey Robinson

Robinson has told this origin story plainly more than once: "I wanted to write something like 'Bring It On Home To Me.' I was in my hotel room with nothing to do, so that's what I did, 'You've Really Got A Hold On Me.'" It was 1962, Robinson was on the road for Motown business, and Sam Cooke's original was still fresh that year. He built the song on the same device Cooke used — a second voice doubling his lead, Miracles co-founder Bobby Rogers standing in for Cooke's uncredited Lou Rawls — then aimed the borrowed structure at a different emotion.

listen: upstream & heresource: Grunge.com — how Sam Cooke inspired "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" (hotel-room quote, double-lead-vocal comparison) ↗share

1962

Bring It On Home to MeSam Cooke

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1962

You've Really Got a Hold on MeSmokey Robinson

listen forOn "Bring It On Home to Me," Cooke sings the title line while an uncredited Lou Rawls doubles him underneath, a second voice inside the same phrase. "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" uses the identical device — Bobby Rogers's voice doubling Robinson's own — but where Cooke and Rawls sound like two friends agreeing, Robinson and Rogers sound like a man arguing with his own better judgment. Same architecture, opposite ache.

Unlike the bigger names on his list, Strong was a singer Robinson could actually go watch. "There was a guy who lived in Detroit and had a group called the Diablos," he recalled of the doo-wop group's lead singer. "His name was Nolan Strong. They were my favorite vocalists at that time." Miracles co-founder Bobby Rogers remembered catching Strong's shows with Robinson at Detroit's Warfield Theater, and the critic Jim Dunn later wrote that Robinson "knew all of the Diablos' songs and was very good at emulating Nolan's style" — a hometown apprenticeship no other name on the list offered.

listen: upstream & heresource: The Immortal Jukebox — Thom Hickey on Nolan Strong & the Diablos, "The Wind" (Robinson's 2008 Goldmine quote on Strong) ↗share

1954

The WindNolan Strong & the Diablos

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1965

Ooo Baby BabySmokey Robinson

listen forStrong's 1954 "The Wind" rides a quavering, close-mic'd falsetto over a hushed group of backing "oohs" that seem to hold their breath behind him, breaking for a half-spoken bridge midsong. "Ooo Baby Baby," cut eleven years later, works from the same blueprint — Robinson's falsetto trembling on the hook, the Miracles' backing vocals kept just as soft, a spoken aside dropped into the same intimate register. The Detroit sound Robinson grew up watching live, translated almost note for note.

Detroit teenagers had opinions about singers, and Robinson's were emphatic: "When I got to be older my number one singing idol was Jackie Wilson," he said — stronger language than he used for anyone else on his list of favorites. He'd already known Wilson's songwriter by reputation: Berry Gordy had written "Reet Petite" and other early Brunswick hits for Wilson, so when the Miracles washed out of their own Brunswick audition in 1957, Robinson already had Gordy's name in mind. Wilson gave him the target he was chasing; Gordy turned out to be the way there.

listen: upstream & heresource: MOJO — Geoff Brown, "Smokey Robinson ↗share

1958

Lonely TeardropsJackie Wilson

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1960

Shop AroundSmokey Robinson

listen forWilson's 1958 "Lonely Teardrops" is control disguised as chaos — his tenor leaps register mid-phrase, breaks into ad-libbed whoops, snaps back on the beat like nothing happened, a vocal built to sound reckless. "Shop Around," cut two years later, chases that same nervous energy at a cooler temperature: Robinson's phrasing keeps darting into quick melodic detours and rushed ad-libs, the same restless showmanship dialed down from a shout to a wink.