Las Vegas Weekly

July 1, 2009 · 11:12 AM

Smokey Robinson’s miracle Strip return, Human Nature and Motown duties

By Robin Leach

Smokey Robinson and Human Nature pictured at the premiere of Smokey Robinson Presents: Human Nature at the Imperial Palace.

Photo: Erik Kabik/Retna/www.erikkabikphoto.com

Talks are underway for superstar Motown singer Smokey Robinson to return to the Strip in a one-night-a-week show. He has just launched the debut shows of the Australian pop group Human Nature at the Imperial Palace Showroom, and as the one open slot is on Friday, Smokey may well take it for himself!

Smokey now lives most of the year here in Las Vegas and hops back and forth to Los Angeles, so it would be an easy commute to work. “If it all works out, I’d just drive myself down to the Strip to work,” he laughed.

Human Nature has exploded onto the Strip scene with its all-action, nonstop, song-and-precision-dance show. Critics have lavished praise on the four clean-cut entertainers since the premiere two weeks ago. Their amazing tribute to the major Motown hits through the years wins nightly standing ovations from theatergoers dancing in the aisles and screaming and stomping for more.

I sat with Smokey and talked to him about the group he brought from Down Under to showcase as headliners in Las Vegas.

“Their admiration for the music of Motown proves Berry Gordy’s dream on the very first day of Motown. He said, ‘We are going to make music for everybody in the world.’ That is what we set out to do. These guys were as big, if not bigger, than The Beatles in Australia and Asia. They are enormous over there. All their records go platinum. For the last three CDs they have produced, they have been recording Motown music. The last one they did, they decided that not only were they going to record Motown music, but also they were going to ask some of the Motown artists to be guest artists on their CD.

“Throughout the years, they recorded a lot of my songs. So on this last one, they recorded four of my songs, two of which the Temptations sang with them and two of which I sang with them. They came to Los Angeles when I was recording my upcoming CD titled Time Flies When You Are Having Fun … and they sang a capella in the studio for me and just blew me away.

“I was aware of them because of their success in Australia. I went to Australia for two weeks to do a promotional tour with them, and I got a chance to see them visually. They had not been exposed properly here in America, so that is why I brought them here to do this.”

I asked Smokey if he thought it strange that four guys from Australia could sing Motown so well. He said: “No, I don’t. Talent is talent. I don’t care where it stems from. I am a firm believer that in every city, town and village ratio-wise, there is that much talent. Our ratio in Detroit was that we had Berry Gordy who had a dream and fulfilled it and made a lot of other dreams come true. There is talent like that all over the world. I naturally have a high-pitched voice. I have had it all my life. It is not a falsetto, even though people think it is. Human Nature has all ranges. When I was in high school, I sang second soprano in the choir. These guys are awesome. They have everything from top tenor to bass. They are great.”

Smokey went to work on Day 1 when Berry launched Motown. He told me: “On that very first day at Motown, there were only five people there, Berry and the four others, including me. His speech to us was ‘we are going to make music for the world, we are not only going to make black music, we are going to make music for everybody with some great beats and great stories, and we are going to have quality music.’

“We set out with that goal in mind. As we got more people, it kept snowballing, and everyone who became a part of Motown kept that particular goal and aim in mind. I was just 16 that very first day. There was no money. I ran errands to the store. I emptied the wastepaper baskets. Everybody did everything. I was very fortunate to do everything there, including the opportunity to write and to sing. For me as a teenager to get my start of a life like that with a record company was amazing, to be on the ground floor of something like that was an impossible dream come true.

“It was six or seven months before I was able to make my first recording. It was a local recording called ‘Bad Girl.’ The Miracles and I did that. In those days when we had a breakout record in the Detroit area, because we were only local, Berry had to take the records to somebody who was set up nationally to distribute the records nationally. So we went to Chess Records in Chicago for the first two records, and when that contract was up, Motown had a pretty good foothold, and from then on, Motown did its own national distribution from Detroit.

“No one at the beginning of Motown had an idea of what it would all lead to. We all believed, though. We believed in Berry. We believed in his dream and goal, but we were flying blind. Now look at this. I’m living in Vegas and loving it. I’m still making records, and, honestly, I have no idea how many there have been because there have been so many hits. I have been so blessed!”

Mary Wilson of the Supremes was at dinner with us, and she told me that Smokey recorded their first single. “I made the trek up from the South to Detroit. I hitchhiked my way there. I had the same dream to sing. I turned up every day for six months and waited on a bench outside Motown hoping for the chance to sing,

“Then one day it happened. Smokey needed a backup singer for a record, and I was there. It was the opportunity I’d dreamed of -- and look where that led!”

Mary, who also lives in Las Vegas now after her long run with Diana Ross and the Supremes, is ecstatic that her mentor may accept the offer to star on the Strip again. “I like to think we could do a couple of numbers together again,” she laughed. “I love what Human Nature has re-created so remarkably. I closed my eyes, and so many wonderful happy memories of each Motown hit came back to me. They are extraordinary and even had me jumping up and down.”

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

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