Motown’s first group and first million-selling act, the Miracles mastered styles ranging from doo wop to disco during a two-decade recording career that, most obviously, provided a platform for incomparable high tenor vocalist and proficient songwriter Smokey Robinson. The richness of the Miracles’ group harmonies was evident on their 1958 Top Five R&B debut single, “Got a Job,” which Berry Gordy, Jr., produced before he launched Motown. The group soon became reliable hitmakers for Motown subsidiary Tamla, achieving their first Top Ten pop and number one R&B hit in 1960 with “Shop Around.” Similarly winning A-sides 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” — a trio featured on the 1965 number one R&B album Going to a Go-Go — and the Grammy-nominated smash “I Second That Emotion,” ensured their prominence through most of the ’60s. “The Tears of a Clown” put them on top of the pop chart at the start of the next decade, but Robinson left for a distinguished solo career and ceded his role to Billy Griffin. The Miracles moved on with five additional Top 40 R&B singles highlighted by the chart-topping “Love Machine,” taken from the bold 1975 concept album City of Angels, another LP that crowned the R&B chart. The Miracles released their final album in 1978 and continued to perform in assorted incarnations. The early lineup was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.
The Five Chimes and the Matadors preceded the Miracles. The Five Chimes, formed in Detroit in 1955, consisted of Northern High School classmates William “Smokey” Robinson (tenor), Warren “Pete” Moore (bass), and Ronnie White (baritone), along with Clarence Dawson and James Grice. The latter two singers left shortly after formation and were replaced by cousins Emerson “Sonny” Rogers (tenor) and Bobby Rogers (tenor and choreographer). The quintet then performed as the Matadors. Just before an audition for Jackie Wilson’s manager and creative team in 1956, Sonny Rogers left to join the Army, and Robinson replaced him with Sonny’s sister, Matador-ettes member Claudette Rogers (high tenor). Although Wilson’s manager Nat Tarnopol found the Matadors too similar to the Platters, one of Wilson’s songwriters present at the audition, Berry Gordy, Jr., soon began producing the group, who in 1957 became the Miracles after Gordy requested a name change. In 1958, the Miracles hit number five on Billboard’s R&B chart with their Gordy- and Billy Davis-written debut single, “Got a Job” (an answer to the Silhouettes’ “Get a Job”), leased to the New York-based End label. Another End single, “Money” (alternately “[I Need Some] Money”), composed by Robinson and Gordy, followed shortly thereafter.
The small royalty pay-out from those recordings prompted Gordy to establish Tamla/Motown in 1959. That year, under the name Ron & Bill, Ronnie White and Smokey Robinson released the sci-fi novelty “It” on Tamla, and then the Miracles offered “Bad Girl” (number 93 R&B), the first single to bear the Motown imprint. By the end of the year, guitarist and songwriter Marv Tarplin had joined the group. In 1960, after another minor charting single with “Way Over There” — on Tamla, their outlet for the next 15 years — the Miracles made their mainstream breakthrough. “Shop Around,” another Robinson/Gordy collaboration, reached number one on the R&B chart and number two pop, and became Motown’s first million seller. The next song by the Miracles to hit the number one R&B spot and reach the pop Top Ten came two years later with “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me.” Robinson and Claudette Rogers were married in 1963; the next year, against her wishes, Claudette Robinson stopped performing with the group, though she continued to record with them. Among other singles, the Miracles scored additional major hits over the next few years such as “Mickey’s Monkey,” “Ooo Baby Baby,” “The Tracks of My Tears,” and “Going to a Go-Go.” The last of that run was the title song of the group’s first album credited to Smokey Robinson & the Miracles. None of the Miracles’ previous full-length releases had touched the upper half of Billboard’s Top LPs chart, but Going to a Go-Go climbed to number eight and topped the R&B chart.