William Robinson Jr. was born into a poor family in Detroit’s North End to an African-American father and a mother of African-American and French descent.
Robinson has Nigerian, Scandinavian, Portuguese, and Cherokee ancestors. His uncle Claude gave him the nickname “Smokey Joe” as a child. Robinson explained in 2012:
My favorite uncle, Uncle Claude, was also my godfather. He and I were extremely close. He used to take me to see cowboy movies all the time when I was a kid because I liked them. He gave me the cowboy moniker Smokey Joe. So, starting when I was three years old when people asked me what my name was, I told them it was Smokey Joe, not William. Everyone called me that until I was about 12 years old when I dropped the Joe part. That story about him giving it to me because I’m a light-skinned black man isn’t true.
He went to Northern High School, where he was above average academically and an avid athlete, but his main interest was music, and he formed the Five Chimes, a doo-wop group. He and Aretha Franklin once shared a house on Belmont; he once claimed to have known Franklin since she was about five, overhearing her play the piano when he came to play with her older brother Clarence after her family first moved to Memphis.
Why is Smokey Robinson called Smokey?
Robinson spent his adolescent years singing in local music groups while growing up in a rough Detroit neighborhood. Robinson’s “uncle” Claude, who was actually a friend of his father’s, nicknamed him Smokey Joe, which Robinson initially mistook for a cowboy name.
