Smokey Robinson

William "Smokey" Robinson Jr. (born February 19, 1940) is an American R&B and soul singer, songwriter, and record producer. He was the founder and frontman of the pioneering Motown vocal group the Miracles, for which he was also chief songwriter and producer. He led the group from its 1955 origins, when they were called the Five Chimes, until 1972, when he retired from the group to focus on his role as Motown Records vice president. Robinson returned to the music industry as a solo artist the following year. He left Motown in 1999.

Robinson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and awarded the 2016 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for his lifetime contributions to popular music. He is a double Hollywood Walk of Fame Inductee, as a solo artist (1983) and as a member of the Miracles (2009). In 2022, he was inducted into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame.

William Robinson Jr. was born on February 19, 1940, to an African-American father and a mother of African-American and French descent, in a poor family in the North End area of Detroit. He had two maternal half-sisters, Rose Ella and Geraldine, and his parents divorced when he was three years old.

Robinson's ancestry is also part Nigerian, Scandinavian, Portuguese, and Cherokee. His uncle Claude gave him the nickname "Smokey Joe" when he was a child. In 2012, Robinson explained:

When Robinson was 10, his mother died, and he began living with his older sister, Geraldine, with her husband, who had 10 children together. He attended Northern High School, where he was above average academically and a determined athlete. However, his main interest was music, and he formed a doo-wop group named the Five Chimes. He and Aretha Franklin lived several houses from each other on Belmont; he said he'd known Franklin since she was about five, overhearing her play the piano when he had come to play with her older brother Cecil after her family first moved to Detroit.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.