Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,029

This is the grave of Bobby Rogers.

Born in 1940 in Detroit, Rogers was born in the very same hospital and on the very same day as a baby named Smokey Robinson. But they didn’t know that til later. In 1956, Rogers started singing with what became the Miracles, one of the great vocal bands of Detroit. Robinson would of course be the leader of that group, though that was less clear at the beginning. Rogers wasn’t one of the original members. Robinson, Pete Moore, and Ronnie White had all been singing together since they were 11 and they founded the group. After a couple of guys left, they invited in Bobby, his cousin Sonny Rogers, and Sonny’s sister Claudette, who would later marry Robinson. They became the Miracles in 1958.

This was at the very moment when a young ambitious man named Berry Gordy was trying to make his Motown Records go big. This was a perfect match. Gordy produced the Miracles. In 1960, Motown had its first million-selling album with the Miracles “Shop Around.” Again, Robinson wouldn’t become the dominant member of the group for some time and it would not be known as Smoky Robinson and the Miracles until 1965. I mean, like Diana Ross with the Supremes, Robinson was the charismatic star from the beginning, sure. Anyway, they had a ton of early hits for Motown. Maybe the most important was “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me.” There are so many though.

Now, it’s hard to write even a little piece on this group without it being a Robinson post and that’s for a good reason. Moreover, Robinson is still alive, so we will save all of this for a later date. But Rogers did play an important role in the group. While Robinson did write many of the songs, Rogers was a pretty good songwriter too and contributed quite a few. They often wrote together. One of the biggest songs they wrote together was not even one they recorded. It was “The Way You Do The Things You Do,” which was the first big hit for The Temptations in 1964. He wrote or co-wrote quite a few other reasonable hits in the R&B world, nothing quite as big as that song, but some serious tunes, such as “What Love Has Joined Together,” which Mary Wells had a big hit with after Smokey sang it first, and “One More Heartache,” which Marvin Gaye had a minor hit with. And while Robinson obviously did the vast majority of lead singing in the group, Rogers occasionally took a lead himself, including on “You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me,” which was a split lead with Smokey. He also did quite a bit of the group’s choreography. The Miracles finally disbanded for good in 1978, though Robinson had left in 1972 after years of wanting to leave but the money being too good.

After that, Rogers didn’t do a whole lot. He’d sing, he’d join up for reunion tours and such. And when Smokey wouldn’t do those tours, Rogers would do them anyway, so it’d be like The Miracles with one original member and it was Bobby Rogers. Well, OK. Originally, only Robinson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, back in 1987. Finally, in 2012, the rest of the Miracles were inducted. It’s nice that Rogers lived to get that honor. He died in 2013, at the age of 73. It was diabetes that got him.

Bobby Rogers is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Detroit, Michigan.

If you would like this series to visit other R&B legends, you can donate to cover the required expenses here, Mary Wells is in Glendale, California and Jackie Wilson is in Wayne, Michigan. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.