Today in history 12-12

[remrogers]

1970
“Tears Of A Clown” gives Smokey Robinson & The Miracles their first #1 pop hit, finally

While Motown Records founder Berry Gordy surely deserves credit for establishing the creative philosophy and business strategy that turned his Detroit-based company into a hit-making machine in the 1960s, the inner workings of that machine during the company’s early years depended almost as much on the talents of a young man named William Robinson, Jr., better known to the world as “Smokey.”  Even if he’d never sung on a single Motown record, Smokey Robinson would still be regarded as one of the label’s most important figures purely on the basis of his production and songwriting work for acts like Mary Wells, Marvin Gaye and The Temptations. But Smokey Robinson did sing, of course, in his trademark falsetto, on some of Motown’s most beloved records: “Shop Around” (1960); “You Really Got A Hold On Me” (1962); “I Second That Emotion” (1967), to name only a few. After more than a decade of hits like these that never quite made it to the top of the charts, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles finally earned their first #1 hit when “Tears Of A Clown” topped the Billboard Hot 100 on this day in 1970.

Like many of his other songs, “Tears Of A Clown” told a story to which any current or former lovelorn teenager could relate. Mining much the same emotional territory as he did in the song many consider to be his masterpiece, “The Tracks Of My Tears” (1965), Robinson showcased his ability in “Tears Of A Clown” to tell such a story using a catchy melody and clever wordplayâ€"”Don’t let my glad expression/Give you the wrong impression“â€"without ever lapsing into corniness. It was that ability that led Bob Dylan to refer to Smokey Robinson as America’s “greatest living poet.”

Smokey Robinson’s association with Berry Gordy began even before Motown Records was founded, and it continued long after he stopped scoring hits of his own. Robinson’s “Shop Around” was the company’s first big hit (it was a Billboard #2 hit for The Miracles in 1960), and his “My Guy” (1964) and “My Girl” (1965) were #1 hits for Mary Wells and The Temptations, respectively. In 1967, Smokey Robinson became the vice president of Motown Records Corporation, a position he held for the next two decades until the company was sold to MCA in 1988.

[coyote101]

Also this:

Less than two weeks before Christmas, on December 12, 1985, a chartered Arrow Air DC-8 took off from Gander Airport, NL, after a planned service stop to refuel and augment catering supplies. The plane was en route back from Egypt with 248 members of the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army, returning to Fort Campbell, Kentucky after a peacekeeping mission to enforce the Camp David Accords of 1978. The plane had left Cologne, Germany in the wee hours of the morning of Dec 12 and arrived at Gander just after 9am that morning without incident. A new flight crew of 8 had boarded the plane in Germany. The flight crew was experienced and had worked together since Dec 1. The flight engineer was observed to make a visual inspection of the exterior of the plane before taking off again.

At about 10:15, the plane took off from Gander, headed for Fort Campbell. But the plane crashed about 900 feet beyond the runway. The plane experienced increased drag and a reduction in lift, causing it to stall at a low altitude and creating a situation from which recovery was not possible. All 256 on board were killed due to the force of the impact and/or the extreme fuel-fed fire that engulfed the plane afterwards. The official report could not determine without doubt the cause of the crash, but argues that the evidence points to a build-up of ice on the wings. According to the report, however, it is also possible that there was loss of thrust from the number 4 engine and inappropriate take-off speed, which may have compounded the ice problem. There are also conspiracy theories that suggest that an incendiary device was detonated onboard, although both the US and Canadian governments firmly stand by the report’s finding of ice to be the culprit of the accident.

My good friend and flight school classmate Benny Hardin was killed in the crash. I was stationed in Germany at the time and remember like yesterday learning that he had been killed.

Pat