A Miraculous Return
SMOKEY AT THE APOLLO; TROUBLE IN SAN FRANCISCO
In Smokey Robinson’s heart, the Apollo Theater has a special place.
He called it “the real beginning of my show business life” during a performance at the venue some 13 years ago. In his autobiography, Inside My Life, he candidly but lovingly reminisced about the Miracles’ first appearance there in 1958 (“We were pitiful and I was petrified”) and how Ray Charles helped to prep him with the house band (“Within minutes, he had worked out these beautifully tight charts, punchy as a hard-hitting prizefighter”).
His ‘Soulfully Yours’ show at the Apollo, June 29
When the very first Motor Town Revue concluded its exhausting, two-month touring schedule with ten nights at the Apollo in December 1962, the Miracles topped the bill. Also, Robinson was one of the stars featured in Motown Productions’ TV special in 1985, Motown Returns To The Apollo. And in 2010, he was among the music legends honoured with sidewalk plaques on the theatre’s then-new Walk of Fame.
Little wonder, then, that Robinson is returning for another concert at the Harlem site next month. But there was one Apollo appearance of his which doesn’t garner much attention in retrospect, despite a tragic turn of events.
In the early hours of Sunday, December 7, 1975, Robinson was performing when a gunman shot and slayed a member of the audience, Darrel Sculliark, who was seated in one of the theatre’s boxes on the mezzanine; two others were injured. Eighteen-year-old Sculliark appears to have been the intended victim; the killer was never apprehended.
“We were on stage and we were singing something slow like ‘Ooo Baby Baby’,” Robinson later told journalist Vladislav "DJ Vlad" Lyubovny. “I don’t remember exactly what the song was. We heard ‘pop-pop, pop-pop.’ The next thing I know, they’re running, people [are] tackling me, pulling me offstage, and everybody’s running off the stage…and we come to find out that this guy had done something to somebody and they came to kill him, and they did.”
“Darrel Sculliark probably felt safe in the Apollo,” wrote Ted Fox in his authoritative Showtime At The Apollo, “for it had been a place that was respected and revered; to hurt it would be to hurt oneself, to commit violence there would be to commit violence in one’s own home. The gunman obviously didn’t feel that way.”
‘QUITE ENTERTAINING AND MUSICAL’
There was at least one other unsettling show in Robinson’s live-performance life – or, more accurately, an unsettling post-show experience. In early May 1967, he and the Miracles were booked into Bimbo’s 365 in San Francisco. During that decade, the Columbus Avenue supper club featured a variety of stars, from Barbara McNair to the 5th Dimension, from Glen Campbell to Marvin Gaye. Of the Motown group’s opening night, the San Francisco Examiner wrote that it was “a good, solid dose of pop-soul, and quite entertaining and musical.”
Unfortunately, a crime committed elsewhere in the city soured Robinson’s San Francisco stay. A man by the name of Harold Cunningham, who claimed he was also known as Smokey Robinson, had defrauded a limousine driver the previous year to the tune of $361 (equivalent to more than $3,000 today). When the chauffeur saw that the Motown star was playing at Bimbo’s, he called the police and had him arrested – in his dressing room, no less, on May 14.
The site of Smokey Robinson’s arrest
The singer said he produced his driver’s license and birth certificate for the cops, to no avail. He was taken to a police station for a mug shot and to be fingerprinted. “I felt the black thing,” Robinson later testified. “You’d have to be black to know it. If I had been an Andy Williams or a Tom Jones, they would not have come [to arrest him at the club].” When the mistake became obvious, the charges were dismissed.
Robinson was not prepared to leave it at that, and in November 1968, he sued the city of San Francisco for false arrest, seeking $500,000 in damages ($4.5 million today). During the trial – it took almost seven years to reach court because of appeal procedures – the Miracles’ Ron White and their road manager, James Johnson, asserted that Robinson had become depressed after the incident. “It hurt him that it could happen, because he’s known,” said White. “After all, this is America.”
City officials contended that the arrest was proper, according to the San Francisco Examiner, because of what later turned out to be mistaken identity.
During the July 1975 trial, Motown Records president Ewart Abner testified on his artist’s behalf. He said that because of the emotional distress caused by the incident, Robinson lost about $2.4 million in earnings between 1968 and 1974. The executive added that the lawsuit sought only $500,000 because it was filed before the entertainer realised that the market for soul music “was going to explode the way it did.”
And yet the outcome was a mistrial. Jurors reportedly voted 7-5 for Robinson, but a 9-3 vote was required for a verdict in his favour. Robinson’s attorney said he would seek a second trial, but that does not appear to have taken place. Presumably, plaintiff and defendant settled out of court.
Perhaps understandably, the San Francisco saga did not merit a mention in Inside My Life (neither did the murder at the Apollo). But back in the day, Robinson’s Bay Area fans were happy for the chance to hear their hero testify. “He’s still tops,” said one, a college student. “I had to cut a class today. I just had to come.” Another, who worked at City Hall, secured Smokey’s signature on her arm. “I’ve been taking all my coffee breaks here,” she added.
Even in court, Robinson really got a hold on them, just as he will again when on that historic Apollo stage in a few weeks’ time. Let’s hope he won’t need a bulletproof vest.
Music notes: Smokey Robinson & the Miracles made multiple appearances at the Apollo Theater, but few were released on disc. Their first such album was Recorded Live On Stage, issued on this very day (May 31) in 1963, containing four tracks taped at the Harlem venue five months earlier, including “Way Over There” and “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me.” The balance of the seven-track LP was material taped at Chicago’s Regal Theater. The long-player was reissued on compact disc in 2005 as part of The Motortown Revue Collection, and in 2009 on the Miracles’ Depend On Me: The Early Albums. Both of those are currently available on streaming services. There were later live albums by the group and Robinson solo at various venues; not one was recorded at Bimbo’s 365.