About Smokey Robinson
William "Smokey" Robinson Jr. is an American R&B and soul singer, songwriter, record producer, and former record executive. 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 and as a member of The Miracles . In 2022, he was inducted into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame.
William Robinson Jr. was born 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, Michigan. He had two maternal half-sisters, 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:
My Uncle Claude was my favorite uncle. He was also my godfather. He and I were really, really close. He used to take me to see cowboy movies all the time when I was a little boy because I loved cowboy movies. He got a cowboy name for me, which was Smokey Joe. So from the time I was three years old if people asked me what my name was I didn't tell them my name was William, I told them my name was Smokey Joe. That's what everyone called me until I was about 12 and then I dropped the Joe part. I've heard that story about him giving it to me because I'm a light skinned black man but that's not true.
When Robinson was 10, his mother died, and he began living with older sister, Geraldine, with her husband, who had 10 children together.
Map & Directions To Venue
