Fact #61432
When:
Short story:
Smokey Robinson And The Miracles release a new single, The Tracks Of My Tears, in the USA. Curiously, the song will inspire Rod Argent of The Zombies to write their hit Time Of The Season, after he mis-hears the line 'if you look closer it's easy to trace' as 'it's the time of the season to trace'.
Full article:
The calypso origins of Tracks Of My Tears may not be obvious, but they're there. "Harry Belafonte had this song out," explained Miracles' guitarist Marv Tarplin, "The Banana Boat Song. That's where I got the idea. Belafonte had calypso-type tunes, and it's basically the same chord changes - three chords, turned around a little bit."
Having constructed the musical bed for what would become Tracks Of My Tears at his home, Tarplin took it to Miracles' bassist Warren 'Pete' Moore and Smokey Robinson, leaving them to deliver the rest. It took months. Much as he loved the melody, Smokey couldn't find words to fit. He had the basic idea of a broken man, destroyed by love, but he lacked a strong chorus.
"Finally," recalls Smokey, "one day, the lines 'Take a good look at my face/You see my smile looks out of place' came. And in a couple of more days, 'If you look closer/it's easy to trace my tears'. So I said, 'Golly - My Tears', you know? What could be different about that? What has no-one said about tears?"
Then, one Friday afternoon, while he and Moore were working together, the central idea fell into place. "No-one had ever said 'tracks of my tears'," he told writer Nelson George, "The whole thought of tears was you wipe them away so no-one could tell you'd been crying.To say that I can't even wipe them away because they've left these tracks, you know? I thought it was a good idea."
Moore and Robinson continued through that weekend, polishing the song and working up a demo. "I wrote all the words," explained Smokey later, "with the exception of about the first three lines of the chorus thing, the bit which says 'Outside, I'm masquerading; inside, my hope is fading'. Pete Moore wrote that."
When Smokey played his demo at Motown's Monday morning planning meeting, MD Berry Gordy - a songwriter himself - spotted a fatal flaw. "You buried your hook!" he told Robinson, going on to order him to repeat "that 'it's easy to trace the tracks of my tears' refrain' until you wear it out.'
Taking Gordy's advice to heart, Smokey headed for Motown's legendary studio A. "It had been a lot of work getting that one in the pocket but when we did have it down, we took it into the studio and did it, doing three other tunes that session too."
The completed track begins with eight bars of Tarplin's delicately chiming, finger-picked Les Paul Custom, which is then echoed by the bass and accented by percussion before Smokey's lighter than helium voice takes up the wistful melody with the captivating opening lines, 'People say I'm the life of the party, 'cos I tell a joke or two…', making it clear in those few words that what follows will be a tale of a man forced to live a lie.
As if to prove that the magic in the grooves of certain records can never be repeated, Smokey cloned a follow-up single, My Girl Has Gone, just a few weeks later. Although the ingredients were virtually identical, like his Girl, the magic had gone and the song is now all but forgotten. He had better luck in 1970 when he collaborated with Stevie Wonder to revive the lyric idea of the broken-hearted jester in Tears Of A Clown, but this time round he wisely didn't seek to re-create the music.
Released on 23 June 1965, Tracks Of My Tears entered the US charts on 7 August 1965, but this timeless Miracles weepie never reached higher than No16. Two years later, though, it delivered a No10 smash for Johnny Rivers. Happily, when The Miracles version was re-released in the UK in 1969, it did finally achieve Top 10 status, and the song didn't stop there, going on to provide Linda Ronstadt with a US Top 30 entry in early 1976 and a UK Top 20 hit in 1993 for Go West.
Aside from the hit versions, the song has withstood a number of insensitive treatments, including Gladys Knight's 1968 attempt in which she inexplicably changed the line "you're the permanent one" to "you're the only one" thus destroying it's impeccably crafted shape. Bryan Ferry's typically camp art-rock version from 1973 is even more badly judged, serving only to confirm that a song as truly great as Tracks Of My Tears will survive no matter how cruelly it is treated.
For Smokey, though, the most significant use of the song that Berry Gordy regards as Smokey's finest, came in Oliver Stone's 1986 movie Platoon. "It gave me special joy to know that, in some small way, our tune comforted guys risking their lives for a cause most of us still don't understand."
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Having constructed the musical bed for what would become Tracks Of My Tears at his home, Tarplin took it to Miracles' bassist Warren 'Pete' Moore and Smokey Robinson, leaving them to deliver the rest. It took months. Much as he loved the melody, Smokey couldn't find words to fit. He had the basic idea of a broken man, destroyed by love, but he lacked a strong chorus.
"Finally," recalls Smokey, "one day, the lines 'Take a good look at my face/You see my smile looks out of place' came. And in a couple of more days, 'If you look closer/it's easy to trace my tears'. So I said, 'Golly - My Tears', you know? What could be different about that? What has no-one said about tears?"
Then, one Friday afternoon, while he and Moore were working together, the central idea fell into place. "No-one had ever said 'tracks of my tears'," he told writer Nelson George, "The whole thought of tears was you wipe them away so no-one could tell you'd been crying.To say that I can't even wipe them away because they've left these tracks, you know? I thought it was a good idea."
Moore and Robinson continued through that weekend, polishing the song and working up a demo. "I wrote all the words," explained Smokey later, "with the exception of about the first three lines of the chorus thing, the bit which says 'Outside, I'm masquerading; inside, my hope is fading'. Pete Moore wrote that."
When Smokey played his demo at Motown's Monday morning planning meeting, MD Berry Gordy - a songwriter himself - spotted a fatal flaw. "You buried your hook!" he told Robinson, going on to order him to repeat "that 'it's easy to trace the tracks of my tears' refrain' until you wear it out.'
Taking Gordy's advice to heart, Smokey headed for Motown's legendary studio A. "It had been a lot of work getting that one in the pocket but when we did have it down, we took it into the studio and did it, doing three other tunes that session too."
The completed track begins with eight bars of Tarplin's delicately chiming, finger-picked Les Paul Custom, which is then echoed by the bass and accented by percussion before Smokey's lighter than helium voice takes up the wistful melody with the captivating opening lines, 'People say I'm the life of the party, 'cos I tell a joke or two…', making it clear in those few words that what follows will be a tale of a man forced to live a lie.
As if to prove that the magic in the grooves of certain records can never be repeated, Smokey cloned a follow-up single, My Girl Has Gone, just a few weeks later. Although the ingredients were virtually identical, like his Girl, the magic had gone and the song is now all but forgotten. He had better luck in 1970 when he collaborated with Stevie Wonder to revive the lyric idea of the broken-hearted jester in Tears Of A Clown, but this time round he wisely didn't seek to re-create the music.
Released on 23 June 1965, Tracks Of My Tears entered the US charts on 7 August 1965, but this timeless Miracles weepie never reached higher than No16. Two years later, though, it delivered a No10 smash for Johnny Rivers. Happily, when The Miracles version was re-released in the UK in 1969, it did finally achieve Top 10 status, and the song didn't stop there, going on to provide Linda Ronstadt with a US Top 30 entry in early 1976 and a UK Top 20 hit in 1993 for Go West.
Aside from the hit versions, the song has withstood a number of insensitive treatments, including Gladys Knight's 1968 attempt in which she inexplicably changed the line "you're the permanent one" to "you're the only one" thus destroying it's impeccably crafted shape. Bryan Ferry's typically camp art-rock version from 1973 is even more badly judged, serving only to confirm that a song as truly great as Tracks Of My Tears will survive no matter how cruelly it is treated.
For Smokey, though, the most significant use of the song that Berry Gordy regards as Smokey's finest, came in Oliver Stone's 1986 movie Platoon. "It gave me special joy to know that, in some small way, our tune comforted guys risking their lives for a cause most of us still don't understand."