Everybody called me Smokey Joe until I got to be about 12, then they dropped the Joe. I loved cowboys, especially the ones who sang - Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. Then my Uncle Claude started taking me to see cowboy movies. But she was just a kid.Īnybody in your life call you by your given name, William?īefore I was about 4 years old, everybody in my family called me Junior. Back in those days, Black people ate high blood pressure - hog maws and pig noses and all kinds of s. When my mom got pregnant with me, they told her to abort me because she had high blood pressure. When he was 83 or 84, I asked him, “Dad, when you would go up there and stay all summer, did you and Miss Dorothy do it?” He looked at me and said, “Every night.” And this was before Viagra and all that. And later on, after my mom passed, he had a girlfriend who worked there, name was Miss Dorothy. My dad would sometimes stay up there all summer fishing. From the time I can remember, we would go to Canada, to this Black resort up there in a place called Rondeau Bay. He drove a truck, laid asphalt for the city. My dad was in his late 80s, but he was always 50. I could be onstage singing a song and thinking about, “Hey, who is that over there?” But the words are still coming out. I think the brain is the greatest computer that’s ever been. Well, I know Billy, and I feel bad for him if that’s where he’s at. He said he’s hooked on it, that now he feels unsafe without it. I’m out there singing “Tracks of My Tears,” and all of a sudden I’m singing “Going to a Go-Go”? I’m done at that point.īilly Joel once told me that he uses one even though he knows all the words to his songs. I told my wife, “If you ever let me get like that, I’ll kill you.” Nice man.” But they let him get to the point where Frank could be onstage and he’s singing one song, forgets the words and goes into another song. I said, “Yeah, I met him when I was a kid. Yesterday, I took my wife to her dentist - very popular dentist, has a wall of all the celebrity people he’s done, one of them being Frank Sinatra. So you have to consciously take care of yourself, which I do because I don’t ever want to be decrepit. When you’re 40, you can go to bed and your arm is fine when you wake up, your arm is hurting. I tell people: When you’re 20, you can hurt your arm and go to bed when you wake up, your arm is fine. But I feel as good as I felt when I was 40. ![]() ![]() I don’t think about sex.” What’s the matter with you? Are you kidding me? I understand that I’m 83, and normally that’s an old person in people’s minds. The subject of sex comes up and she turns to this guy in the audience. I was watching TV recently, one of those talk shows, maybe Wendy Williams. There’s an ageism at work in pop music - in the wider culture, really - regarding who’s allowed to enjoy sex and to talk about it. Young and Stills performed classic hits from Buffalo Springfield, CSN and CSNY, joined by both Crosby’s and Stills’ sons. Music Neil Young and Stephen Stills pay tribute to David Crosby at benefit concert Whatever he’s doing, it’s working: Dressed in high-end athleisure wear, his blue-green eyes so clear that they look like they could chill a drink, this master of the American love song is the picture of health as he discusses “Gasms” and recounts detailed episodes from throughout the career he launched nearly seven decades ago as frontman of the Miracles. “Ain’t s- else you could call me for at 5 o’clock in the morning and say, ‘Let’s go.’”įor Robinson, golf is the most enjoyable part of an overall wellness regime that also includes yoga - he’s been practicing for 37 years - and a diet he says has been free of red meat since 1972. “There’s really nothing like it,” he says of the game, nodding toward his clubs in a corner of the room. The 83-year-old Motown legend is here in the desert to play a sold-out gig several weeks ahead of Friday’s release of his provocatively titled new album, “ Gasms.” (You know what that’s short for.) But Robinson, who calls golf “the heroin of sports,” drove out early from his home in Los Angeles to squeeze in a round before showtime. Smokey Robinson rises from an overstuffed armchair and lowers the volume of the Masters golf tournament on the TV in his 11th-floor suite at the Agua Caliente casino.
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