Serving as Motown’s inaugural ensemble and its first act to reach a million in sales, the Miracles explored an array of approaches spanning doo wop to disco across a twenty-year recording span that chiefly supplied a showcase for the singular high tenor of Smokey Robinson, also a skilled songwriter. Their layered vocal blend surfaced on the 1958 Top Five R&B debut “Got a Job,” produced by Berry Gordy, Jr., prior to the formation of Motown. The group soon established itself as consistent hitmakers on the Motown affiliate Tamla, scoring its initial Top Ten pop and number-one R&B entry in 1960 with “Shop Around.” Comparable successes followed, among them “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me,” “Ooo Baby Baby,” “The Tracks of My Tears,” and “Going to a Go-Go”—the last three appearing on the 1965 chart-topping R&B album Going to a Go-Go—plus the Grammy-nominated blockbuster “I Second That Emotion,” all of which sustained their visibility through much of the decade. At the outset of the 1970s “The Tears of a Clown” placed them at the summit of the pop chart, after which Robinson departed for a notable solo path and Billy Griffin assumed the lead role.
The Miracles persisted, issuing five further Top 40 R&B singles led by the number-one “Love Machine” from the ambitious 1975 concept album City of Angels, itself an R&B chart-topper. Their final studio album appeared in 1978, though assorted lineups continued performing; the original members entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.
Earlier configurations included the Five Chimes and the Matadors. Formed in Detroit in 1955, the Five Chimes comprised Northern High School classmates William “Smokey” Robinson on tenor, Warren “Pete” Moore on bass, Ronnie White on baritone, plus Clarence Dawson and James Grice. Dawson and Grice soon exited, replaced by cousins Emerson “Sonny” Rogers on tenor and Bobby Rogers on tenor and choreography, after which the group performed as the Matadors. Shortly before a 1956 audition for Jackie Wilson’s manager and creative circle, Sonny Rogers enlisted in the Army; Robinson recruited Claudette Rogers, sister of Sonny and a member of the Matador-ettes, to sing high tenor. Although Wilson’s manager Nat Tarnopol deemed the Matadors overly reminiscent of the Platters, one of Wilson’s songwriters at the session, Berry Gordy, Jr., began working with them, and at his urging they became the Miracles in 1957. In 1958 the group reached number five on Billboard’s R&B chart with their first single, “Got a Job”—an answer to the Silhouettes’ “Get a Job”—written by Gordy and Billy Davis and licensed to New York’s End label; another End release, the Robinson-Gordy composition “Money” (also known as “[I Need Some] Money”), appeared soon after.
Modest royalties from those sides led Gordy to launch Tamla/Motown in 1959. That year Ronnie White and Smokey Robinson issued the sci-fi novelty “It” on Tamla under the name Ron & Bill, while the Miracles delivered “Bad Girl,” which reached number 93 R&B and marked the first single to carry the Motown imprint. By year’s end guitarist and songwriter Marv Tarplin had joined. Following another modest entry, “Way Over There,” issued on Tamla—their home for the next fifteen years—the Miracles achieved mainstream success in 1960 when the Robinson-Gordy song “Shop Around” topped the R&B chart, peaked at number two pop, and became Motown’s first million seller. Two years later “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me” became their next number-one R&B and Top Ten pop single. Robinson and Claudette Rogers married in 1963; the following year Claudette ceased live appearances at her own insistence yet continued recording with the group. Additional major hits arrived, including “Mickey’s Monkey,” “Ooo Baby Baby,” “The Tracks of My Tears,” and “Going to a Go-Go,” the last serving as title track for the first album credited to Smokey Robinson & the Miracles. Earlier LPs had not entered the upper half of Billboard’s Top LPs chart, but Going to a Go-Go climbed to number eight and led the R&B listing.
By 1967 the group was regularly billed as Smokey Robinson & the Miracles and continued album success with Make It Happen, Greatest Hits, Vol. 2, Special Occasion—a number-one R&B title—and Live!, all released by decade’s end. Among eleven additional Top 40 singles during this stretch stood another R&B number one, the sole Grammy-nominated “I Second That Emotion,” and the Top Ten R&B and pop hit “Baby, Baby Don’t Cry.” In July 1970 the Make It Happen track “The Tears of a Clown,” co-written by Robinson, Hank Cosby, and Stevie Wonder (whom Ronnie White had discovered), surfaced as a single in the U.K.; two months later, around the time it reached number one there, Tamla issued a revised U.S. version that duplicated the feat domestically. Although Robinson had planned to step away as Motown vice president and focus on family, the hits retained him for several more years, during which four additional studio albums appeared. The strongest were the 1970 releases What Love Has…Joined Together and A Pocket Full of Miracles, while the final Top Ten R&B singles from this era, “I Don’t Blame You at All” and “We’ve Come Too Far to End It Now,” surfaced on 1971’s One Dozen Roses and 1972’s Flying High Together. A six-month 1972 tour concluded that July with Robinson introducing Billy Griffin as his successor; the double album 1957-1972, issued five months later, captured the tour’s final three performances.
Baltimore native Billy Griffin had sung with Last Dynasty, an NBC talent-contest winner whose recording contract collapsed. A songwriter and would-be producer, Griffin had long admired Robinson before auditioning successfully to front the Miracles. In April 1973 the reconfigured group—now without Claudette Robinson—issued Renaissance, which reached number 33 R&B and number 174 pop; the set was written and produced by more than a dozen Motown staffers including Leon Ware, Willie Hutch, Freddie Perren, and Larry and Fonce Mizell, with Robinson credited as executive producer. Two months later Robinson began his solo career. Do It Baby arrived in August 1974 and broadened their audience. With fewer collaborators—Ware, Hutch, and Perren among those retained—it also appeared without Tarplin, who chose to continue working with Robinson. The title track climbed to number 13 pop and number four R&B, lifting the album to number four on the R&B chart. Don’t Cha Love It and its title song returned the Miracles to the R&B Top Ten early the next year; that release, produced by Perren and written almost entirely by Perren with Christine Yarian, involved an even tighter circle.
Later in 1975 the Miracles achieved their third number-one R&B album with the conceptual City of Angels—alternately lush and funky—written solely by Griffin and Moore and produced by Moore and Perren. The narrative followed a heartbroken singer-songwriter pursuing his fame-driven former girlfriend in Los Angeles. Lead single “Love Machine” reached the top of the pop chart and became the group’s biggest seller with or without Robinson. Although never issued as a single, “Ain’t Nobody Straight in L.A.” drew notice for its title, its lyric stating “Homosexuality is a part of society,” and closing dialogue in which two male characters seeking entertainment decide on a gay bar because “some of the finest women” frequent such venues and “gay people are nice people too.” The Miracles’ final Tamla album, The Power of Music, appeared in 1976. Donald Griffin, Billy’s brother, had played guitar on City of Angels and became an official member for this follow-up, expanding his role to vocals and co-production. No singles emerged, yet the album peaked only six positions lower on the R&B chart than its predecessor. Their subsequent Columbia tenure began uncertainly when programmers, wary of FBI scrutiny, hesitated to air “Spy for Brotherhood,” the Martin Luther King, Jr.-inspired lead single from Love Crazy; nevertheless the track became the Miracles’ 45th and final Top 40 R&B single.
After a self-titled second Columbia album in 1978 the group disbanded, allowing Griffin and Moore to focus on writing for others. White and Bobby Rogers performed as the New Miracles in the early 1980s with David Finley and Carl Cotton. Robinson, Claudette Robinson, and Tarplin rejoined Moore and Bobby Rogers for a medley on the 1983 television special Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever. A decade later White and Rogers revived the Miracles, occasionally featuring Claudette, with new lead Sydney Justin, formerly of Shalamar. Justin had auditioned successfully in the late 1970s but elected to pursue professional football until the mid-1980s; Mark Scott later replaced him. Justin and Scott eventually fronted separate performing versions of the Miracles. In 2012 the Miracles—Moore, White, Rogers, Tarplin, and Claudette—entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, introduced by Robinson, who had been inducted twenty-five years earlier. White’s and Tarplin’s inductions were posthumous; White succumbed to leukemia in 1995, Tarplin to undetermined causes in 2011. Rogers, the longest-serving member, died from diabetes complications in 2013. Donald Griffin, who after the late-1970s breakup worked extensively as a session musician, including with Billy Griffin, perished in a 2015 car accident. Moore died from diabetes complications in 2017.
