The Miracles

As Motown's inaugural ensemble and its earliest million-unit vendor, the Miracles traversed idioms stretching from doo-wop to disco across a twenty-year recording span whose clearest achievement was launching the peerless high-tenor singer and skilled songwriter Smokey Robinson. Their layered group harmonies surfaced immediately on the 1958 Top Five R&B debut single "Got a Job," which Berry Gordy, Jr. produced prior to founding Motown. The quintet swiftly established itself as a consistent Tamla hitmaker, notching its first Top Ten pop and number-one R&B entry in 1960 with "Shop Around." Further strong singles such as "You've Really Got a Hold on Me," followed by "Ooo Baby Baby," "The Tracks of My Tears," and "Going to a Go-Go"—three tracks that anchored the 1965 number-one R&B album Going to a Go-Go—plus the Grammy-nominated blockbuster "I Second That Emotion" sustained their visibility through most of the decade. "The Tears of a Clown" reached the summit of the pop chart at the outset of the following decade, after which Robinson departed for a notable solo path and handed the lead to Billy Griffin. The Miracles persisted, earning five more Top 40 R&B singles capped by the chart-topping "Love Machine" from the ambitious 1975 concept album City of Angels, which itself topped the R&B album survey. Their final studio release appeared in 1978, yet assorted lineups continued performing; the original roster entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.

Earlier configurations known as the Five Chimes and the Matadors preceded the Miracles. Detroit high-school classmates William "Smokey" Robinson on tenor, Warren "Pete" Moore on bass, and Ronnie White on baritone formed the Five Chimes in 1955 alongside Clarence Dawson and James Grice; Dawson and Grice exited soon afterward and were succeeded by cousins Emerson "Sonny" Rogers on tenor and Bobby Rogers on tenor and choreography, prompting the group to adopt the name Matadors. Just before a 1956 audition for Jackie Wilson's management and creative circle, Sonny Rogers enlisted in the Army, so Robinson recruited Sonny's sister Claudette Rogers, already a Matador-ettes member, to sing high tenor. Although Wilson's manager Nat Tarnopol deemed the Matadors too reminiscent of the Platters, one of Wilson's songwriters present, Berry Gordy, Jr., soon took over production; at his urging the group became the Miracles in 1957. In 1958 they reached number five on Billboard's R&B chart with their debut single "Got a Job," an answer to the Silhouettes' "Get a Job," co-written by Gordy and Billy Davis and leased to the New York-based End label. A follow-up End release, "Money" (also titled "[I Need Some] Money"), credited to Robinson and Gordy, appeared shortly after.

Modest royalties from those sides spurred Gordy to launch Tamla/Motown in 1959. That same 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," their first single to carry the Motown imprint and a number-93 R&B entry. Guitarist and songwriter Marv Tarplin joined by year's end. After another modest charter, "Way Over There," on Tamla—their home for the ensuing fifteen years—the Miracles broke through nationally in 1960 when the Robinson/Gordy collaboration "Shop Around" topped the R&B chart, reached number two pop, and became Motown's first million seller. Two years later "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" duplicated the number-one R&B and Top Ten pop achievement. Robinson and Claudette Rogers married in 1963; the next year, at odds with her own preference, Claudette ceased live appearances though she remained on recordings. Additional major singles arrived, among them "Mickey's Monkey," "Ooo Baby Baby," "The Tracks of My Tears," and "Going to a Go-Go," the last of which titled the first album credited to Smokey Robinson & the Miracles. Earlier LPs had never cracked the upper half of Billboard's Top LPs chart, yet Going to a Go-Go climbed to number eight and led the R&B album list.

By 1967 the group was routinely billed as Smokey Robinson & the Miracles and sustained album success with titles including Make It Happen, Greatest Hits, Vol. 2, Special Occasion (number-one R&B), and Live!, all issued before the decade closed. Eleven further Top 40 singles arrived in this stretch, among them another R&B number one, "I Second That Emotion"—their sole Grammy-nominated recording—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 Smokey, Hank Cosby, and Stevie Wonder (whom Ronnie White had discovered), was issued as a single in the U.K.; two months later, near the time it reached number one on the British pop chart, Tamla released a revised U.S. version that replicated the feat domestically. Although Smokey had planned to step away for a Motown vice-presidency and family time, these successes kept him aboard several more years, during which four additional studio albums appeared. The strongest were the 1970 sets What Love Has...Joined Together and A Pocket Full of Miracles, while the final Top Ten R&B hits of 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 when Smokey introduced Billy Griffin as his successor; the double album 1957-1972, issued five months later, captured the tour's closing shows.

Baltimore native Billy Griffin had sung with Last Dynasty, an NBC talent-contest winner whose recording contract never materialized. A songwriter and would-be producer, Griffin had long admired Smokey Robinson before winning the audition to front the Miracles. In April 1973 the reconfigured group, now also without Claudette Robinson, released Renaissance (number 33 R&B, number 174 pop), written and produced by more than a dozen Motown associates including Leon Ware, Willie Hutch, Freddie Perren, and Larry and Fonce Mizell, with Smokey credited as executive producer; he launched his solo career only two months afterward. Do It Baby followed in August 1974 and reached a wider audience. Although leaner in personnel—the remaining contributors included Ware, Hutch, and Perren—the album was recorded without Marv Tarplin, who chose to continue working with Smokey. The title track climbed to number 13 pop and number four R&B, lifting the LP to number four on the R&B album chart. Don't Cha Love It and its title song returned the Miracles to the R&B Top Ten early the next year. That set, produced by Perren and written almost entirely by the producer with partner Christine Yarian, featured an even tighter circle of collaborators.

Later in 1975 the Miracles earned their third number-one R&B album with the conceptually driven City of Angels, written solely by Billy Griffin and Pete Moore and produced by Moore and Freddie Perren. Framed around a heartbroken singer-songwriter pursuing his fame-seeking ex-girlfriend in Los Angeles, the record spawned the lead single "Love Machine," which topped the pop chart and became the group's biggest seller with or without Smokey. Though never released commercially as a single, "Ain't Nobody Straight in L.A." drew notice for its title, lyrics ("Homosexuality is a part of society"), and closing dialogue in which 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 Power of Music, the Miracles' final Tamla album, appeared in 1976. Donald Griffin, Billy's brother, had already played guitar on City of Angels and now became an official member, expanding his role to vocals and co-production. No singles emerged, yet the LP peaked only six positions lower on the R&B chart than its predecessor. The Miracles' first Columbia outing, Love Crazy, began uncertainly when programmers wary of FBI scrutiny hesitated to air the Martin Luther King, Jr.-inspired lead single "Spy for Brotherhood," yet the track still became the group's 45th and final Top 40 R&B single.

After a second self-titled Columbia album in 1978 the group disbanded, freeing Billy Griffin and Pete Moore to focus on outside songwriting. Ronnie White and Bobby Rogers performed briefly in the early '80s as the New Miracles with David Finley and Carl Cotton added. Smokey, Claudette Robinson, and Marv 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 with occasional appearances by Claudette and new lead singer Sydney Justin, formerly of Shalamar; Justin had successfully auditioned in the late '70s yet opted for a professional football career that lasted into the mid-'80s. Mark Scott eventually replaced Justin, and the two later headed separate performing iterations. In 2012 the Miracles—Moore, White, Rogers, Tarplin, and Claudette—were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, introduced by Smokey, who had entered twenty-five years earlier. White's and Tarplin's inductions were posthumous; White died of leukemia in 1995 and Tarplin of undetermined causes in 2011. Rogers, the longest-tenured member, succumbed to diabetes complications in 2013. Donald Griffin, who worked extensively as a session musician after the late-'70s split (including projects with Billy Griffin), died in a 2015 car accident. Moore passed away from diabetes complications in 2017.