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Wayne Robins's avatar

Great deep reading of an essential album. The reason it coheres as an album isn’t necessarily because so many hits gave it weight; it’s because the consistency of Robinson’s writing was at a pinnacle, so there was no slack, no bad B-sides or filler emphasizing Berry Gordy’s blind side: his aversion to albums as Motown’s mode of expression. BTW, you should give a listen to the Mickey’s Monkey album. There’s a version of Land of 1000 Dances that is breathtaking. Typical of Robinson’s ability to make the prosaic sublime.

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David Perlmutter's avatar

Unquestionably, Smokey was one of the influential figures in the history of rhythm and blues music. He had hits in three major performing categories- as a singer, a songwriter and a producer- at the time that was very rare. It's not too hard to see that so much of Motown's greatness was the result of his musical genius.

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