Mickey Comes to 'Town'
MOTOWN’S MUSICAL, SPIRITUAL BROTHERS REMINISCE
Their combined age is 173, but these two Detroit dudes never stop working. Or, it seems, never stop having fun.
Last October, Smokey Robinson invited Mickey Stevenson onto his Smokey’s Soul Town channel on America’s SiriusXM audio network. The half-hour interview was full of memories and music, laughter and reminiscences, all illuminated by the evident, lifelong friendship.
Stevenson chuckled when Robinson introduced him as “our very first A&R director” at Motown. “He doled out the studio time for anyone who wants to go in and record a record. So everybody was nice to Mickey…”
Mickey and Smokey: brothers then and now (photo: Alamy)
That particular episode was about entertaining the audience, not necessarily enlightening them. Prompted by Robinson, Stevenson retold the familiar tales of helping Marvin Gaye to find his feet at Motown in the early days, and about the creation of Martha & the Vandellas’ “Dancing In The Street.”
Less familiar was Robinson’s evocative claim of first seeing Stevenson during the mid-1950s, when the latter was one of the Hamptones, the vocal group which accompanied popular bandleader Lionel Hampton. And the venue? “Every generation has the club,” said Robinson, “and our club [in Detroit] was a place called the Madison Ballroom. The Hamptones are singing there one night, and they come out and they had all these great suits, the white buck shoes and all that. And Mickey was one of the Hamptones – he and another guy who came to Motown eventually, William Weatherspoon. Both of them were in that group, and I wanted to be in that group so bad. They had real suits and shoes!”
(Sartorial assets aside, Weatherspoon was best known for being in the Tornadoes during the 1950s, and recording for Detroit’s Correc-Tone label when Stevenson was there. At Motown, William served as a songwriter and producer, particularly for Jimmy Ruffin.)
On his SiriusXM programme last autumn, Robinson was curious about Stevenson’s current activities, including what – in retrospect – proved to be a futile effort to support Kamala Harris’ bid for the U.S. presidency. “I had a song in a play called ‘Put A Woman In The White House Today,’ and it’s happening. We got the song and redid some of the lines, and I said, ‘Put Kamala In The White House.’ ” He recorded it with his wife Michelle, and employed social media to spread the message as widely as possible. “You guys get out and vote,” added Robinson.
“Put A Woman In The White House Today” appears to have originated from the 1993 stage musical which Stevenson produced with Robinson, Sang Sista’ Sang, and which ran in Los Angeles then and in 1997. The storyline? Six late, great female singers – Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Josephine Baker, Mahalia Jackson, Dorothy Dandridge – are together in a way station after death, in limbo between heaven and hell. They form a sisterhood to help them face their fates and talk about their lives.
The original cast album (the show was not on Broadway)
“The score has its high points,” wrote Los Angeles Times reviewer Don Shirley at the time, “but it’s often closer to the Smokey Robinson sound than it is to the music associated with these divas.” Some years later, there was a Sang Sista’ Sang cast album released on Stevenson’s Mikim Music, including a closing number, “Sing It From The Heart.”
Last year, Stevenson re-engineered Sang Sista’ Sang into another musical, Sing It From The Heart. The script still features female legends, but is expanded beyond the original six to include Lena Horne and Eartha Kitt. The new version focuses on a young student striving for a theatre career, who is auditioning for a part as a famous black singer. When she follows her boyfriend’s suggestion of researching the part online, the legends appear before her, reminiscing about their lives – and singing.
Stevenson’s ongoing enthusiasm for such productions likely derives from the success of The Gospel Truth in the late ’80s. He co-wrote and scored the show about a minister’s clash with his son, which played at the Beverly Theatre in Los Angeles in 1987. “Stevenson shows that he can set individual voices bidding against one another so as to raise the emotional stakes of a situation,” judged Los Angeles Times reviewer Dan Sullivan, “which is the difference between a theatre composer and a mere tunesmith.” Among the performers were Pat Hodges, formerly of Hodges, James & Smith, and Jennifer Holliday.
A SPIRITUAL MOVEMENT
Not only has Stevenson updated Sang Sista’ Sang into Sing It From The Heart, he’s also working on a new production called The Azusa Revival Musical: Pentecost Has Come. “The Azusa revival was a great spiritual movement that happened in the United States in 1906,” Stevenson explained to Robinson. “It became so widespread and was so effective [that] they’re still talking about it today.”
He was originally approached to do the show a couple of years ago. After exploring the idea with wife Michelle, Stevenson said he told the investors, “OK, I’m going to do this thing and I’m going to turn it into a musical. They said, ‘A musical?’ I said yeah, because with music, I can draw you into the theatre and then I can give you the story.’ ”
Mickey and Michelle (photo: Prince Purposed)
On Smokey’s Soul Town, the two Motown legends also talked about their time at Hitsville U.S.A. “You and I wrote a song together years ago,” laughed Robinson, “called ‘If Your Mother Only Knew.’ I sounded like I was 12 years old, singing that.”
“Yeah, right,” replied Stevenson, “12 years old, riding around in an Eldorado.” Which prompted Robinson to reminisce about Detroit’s other industry. “If you came to Motown in the early days, if you walked out front, you saw about 50 Cadillacs, parked out front. All models: Eldorado, Fleetwood, Coup Deville. Whatever it was, they were all out there. Cadillac was the car back in those days, and so when we all started making a little money, the car dealership was right down the street from Motown.”
“We had a lot of fun,” agreed Stevenson. “We didn’t just write and produce, we lived in that whole sphere. That was our lives.”
“The Miracles and I used to travel,” Robinson responded, “but the first thing we thought about when we got back into town was, ‘Let’s go to Hitsville ’cause everybody’s gonna be there.’ We weren’t just people who passed each other like ships in the night. We hung out. We went to each other’s homes, we did picnics, all kinds of stuff together. We were the Motown family.”
And the family’s work ethic apparently lives on, typified by Robinson’s timeless touring. Next week, he takes his “Legacy” show to Las Vegas for four nights, then he’s off to play venues in California, Mississippi and New York. In July, he returns to the U.K. for the first time since 2013, with dates lined up in Glasgow, Birmingham, Cardiff and London.
Plus, there’s his latest album, What The World Needs Now, produced by Warryn Campbell, known for working with Mary Mary, Yolanda Adams, Stevie Wonder and the afore-mentioned Jennifer Holliday. It’s out on April 25 through a new label for Robinson called Gaither, part of a Nashville-based Christian music group of the same name.
“We all have gifts, two or three gifts,” said Mickey Stevenson, concluding his appearance on Smokey’s Soul Town. “We found the anchor of our gifts through the Holy Spirit, our praying, and we worked those gifts. And it only kept growing because beyond our control, it was being had for a purpose. Motown was built for a purpose. And so with that in the picture, there was no way to stop.”
Clearly, neither Smokey Robinson nor Mickey Stevenson have any intention of stopping soon.
Geography notes: at present, Smokey Robinson’s SiriusXM channel remains unavailable outside North America. If that changes, listeners worldwide will be able to hear a recent addition to its programme line-up – a regular live music show presented from the Motown Museum. The hosts of that are Detroit radio personality John Mason and Levi Stubbs III, son of the Four Tops’ late lead singer, the transcendent Levi Stubbs.
Music notes: with luck, this West Grand playlist complements the interview above, including Mickey Stevenson’s first hit at Motown (he wrote “I Don’t Want To Take A Chance” with Berry Gordy for Mary Wells); the Miracles’ “If Your Mother Only Knew,” composed by Stevenson and Smokey Robinson; a post-Motown vocal outing (“Here I Am”); and Robinson’s original version of a song (“Be Kind To The Growing Mind”) which he has remade on his forthcoming album. Also, another track from that upcoming release, where Smokey revives William DeVaughn’s 1974 classic, “Be Thankful For What You Got.”