Smokey Robinson & The Miracles

The swirling, circus-of-pain intro; the lyrics that lay a broken heart bare; the fragile and, yes, smoky falsetto — it can only be "The Tears of a Clown," the crowning composition in the catalog of Motown poet laureate Smokey Robinson and his Miracles. Then there's "The Tracks of My Tears," that oozy, bluesy roadmap to heartbreak and the top of the charts. If it seems like Smokey spent a whole lot of time in tears, don't feel too bad. What with the decades' worth of hits he penned for himself and others, our pop-soul Pagliacci cried all the way to Motown's VP spot and an oh-so-special place in our souls.

Back in the '60s, Bob Dylan called Smokey Robinson "America's greatest living poet." Given the beatnik-style woodblock action of "Here I Go Again," or the swoon-inducing free verse of "Fallin'," that august title isn't a stretch. Even the Miracles' '58 debut single, "Got a Job" (a response song to the Silhouettes "Get a Job"), tricks out a straight doo-wop cut with a frisky melody and tongue-twisting lyrics. Fact is, no one but Smokey could write and sing "it might mean fish and chips, maybe toast and jam" (in "Crazy About the La La La") and have it make so much sense.

When the Miracles asked, "Who's Lovin' You," the answer, of course, was everybody. That steamy morsel of remorse had a long life at Motown, waxed by nearly every one of the label's top acts of the '60s. But, then, the lifespan of Smokey Robinson's hit-making era itself is — let's face it — a miracle. You gotta have some kind of one-in-a-million genius to score all the way from the early dream-boy doo-wop of "(You Can) Depend On Me" to "Why Do Happy Memories Hurt so Bad," a late-'80s quiet storm that may as well have been titled "Take That, Hip-Hop."

There might have been a Motown without Smokey Robinson, but the legendary label sure wouldn't have had the same Sound. Smokey & The Miracles were a cut-above doo-wop crew when Berry Gordy took the young songwriter with the genius for ambrosia melodies and trip-lightly lyrics under his wing. In exchange, Smokey helped rocket the Miracles and Motown — not to mention Mary Wells, the Temptations, the Supremes, and other Hitsville heavy-hitters — to the soul-pop stratosphere. In '72, after a long line of signpost singles — including breakthrough hip-shakers like "Shop Around" and dreamy cover bait like "Ooo Baby, Baby" — Smokey went solo. The Miracles soldiered on with such mirror-ball monsters as "Love Machine, Pt. 1," while Smokey…well, Smokey had an entire R&B radio format named after his '75 smooth-soul cyclone, A Quiet Storm.