Song of the Day 9/14: Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, “The Tears of a Clown”
Colin Bonini always reminded me of a clown. Not figuratively, literally. He’s a large man — his everyday shoes are clown-sized — but his smile isn’t painted on, it’s real. All he lacks is a squirting flower in his lapel.
Bonini is an old-fashioned conservative who believes that taxes are too high because government spends too much. Unlike most conservatives, he doesn’t seem perpetually pissed off about it. Every year he voted against the state budget which, like most of his efforts in the General Assembly, had no effect. His most lasting accomplishment was probably the support he gave his alma mater, Wesley College, keeping it afloat until it could be absorbed by Delaware State University.
Even after finishing third in a three-way primary for the Senate seat he’s held for the past 28 years, Bonini is probably smiling today. I always attributed his sunny disposition to his California upbringing, but I wonder if, to reverse the lines of Smokey’s lyric, he tries to keep his sadness hid, just like Pagliacci did.
The Italian opera must have made a big impression on Robinson — he liked that line so much he used it twice. The first time was in “My Smile is Just a Frown (Turned Upside Down),” a minor hit for Caroline Crawford in 1964 that reads like a rough draft for “Tears of a Clown.” A couple of years later Stevie Wonder gave him a tape of a still-wordless tune at a Motown Christmas party. The opening riff sounded like the circus to Smokey (maybe it was the bassoon). This time he worked the sad-clown theme into a record that reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 — but not until three years after it appeared on the the Miracles’ 1967 LP “Make It Happen.”
It was released as a single in 1970, when Robinson was preparing to depart for a role as a Motown exec. Motown’s British subsidiary, frustrated by the group’s lack of success there, asked the young woman who led the nation’s Motown fan club to pick an album track to release as a single. Her choice promptly hit No. 1 there and soon duplicated that feat in the US, forcing Robinson to delay his departure for two years.
This clip is from the Andy Williams show which, unlike most TV programs of the era, didn’t have performers lip-synch their hits. The backing track is pre-recorded, but Smokey is singing into a live microphone — you can tell by the vocal flourishes he adds in various places.
The tune re-entered the British charts in 1979, when the Beat (known in the US as the English Beat) made it their first single, a double A-side with “Ranking Full Stop.” They took it to No. 6 in the UK in 1979, when they appeared on “Top of the Pops” to lip-synch it.
