Songoftheday 6/9/15 - If I could feel her warm embrace see her smiling face, can't find anyone to take her place...

"Just To See Her" - Smokey Robinson
from the album One Heartbeat (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #8 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 12

Today's SOTD comes from Smokey Robinson, the Motown singer/songwriter/producer/label exec/icon  who helped define the sound of the nation in the 60s with his group the Miracles, who had six top ten pop hits including the #1 "Tears Of A Clown" in 1970.  Robinson left the Miracles in 1972, and released his first solo album the following year. Surprisingly, his first solo single "Sweet Harmony" was a "robbed hit" which just missed the pop top-40, though the follow-up from the album "Baby Come Close" did the trick at #27, and climbed to #7 on the R&B chart. In 1975, he scored his first solo #1 R&B with "Baby That's Backatcha", his second top-40 pop hit at #26. His career was pretty low-key until the early 1980s, when the backlash against disco ushered in a yearning for adult R&B music, nicknamed "Quiet Storm" probably calling up Robinson's 1975 album of the same name. At the close of the 70s Robinson's single "Cruisin'" was a big comeback, climbing to #4 on the pop and R&B chart. Two years later, "Being With You" did two notches better, peaking at #2 pop and becoming his second solo R&B #1 (it also was his first to reach the top of the British pop chart as well). After another single, "Tell Me Tomorrow", and 'quiet storm' was overrun by neo-funk and new wave, Smokey again spent a few years low on the radar.

Fast forward to 1987, when more 'adult pop' with a fresher edge (as opposed to 'soft rock') came back, with veteran artists like Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner reigniting their careers. By this time, Smokey was vice president at Motown, and again became one of its bankable assets with his album One Heartbeat. The first single, "Just To See Her", written by Jimmy George and Louis Pardini, put him back on pop radio with a breezy production that was more easy listening than soul...

"Just To See Her" became Smokey's third top-10 pop hit in July of 1987, while climbing to #2 on Billboard's R&B chart. But the song did best at Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio, where it topped the chart (his first) for a week in May. He also won a Grammy for Best Male R&B Performance for "Just To See Her" in 1988. Across the "pond", the single stopped short at about the halfway mark at #52 in England.

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Here's Smokey performing the single live....

and duetting with Aretha Franklin in 1993...

up tomorrow: an avian instrumental from a saxy guy.