Friday, March 29, 2013

Bob Teague, Trailblazing WNBC Reporter


Bob Teague, WNBC Reporter Who Helped Integrate TV News, Is Dead at 84

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Published: March 28, 2013
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Bob Teague, who joined WNBC-TV in New York in 1963 as one of the city’s first black television journalists and went on to work as a reporter, anchorman and producer for more than three decades, died on Thursday in New Brunswick, N.J. He was 84.
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Bob Teague in 1982.
The cause was T-cell lymphoma, his wife, Jan, said.
Mr. Teague established a reputation for finding smart, topical stories and delivering them with sophistication. Though he later criticized TV news as superficial and too focused on the appearance of reporters and anchors, his own good looks and modulated voice were believed to have helped his longevity in the business.
Mr. Teague followed in the footsteps of Mal Goode, who became the first black network TV reporter in 1962. Mr. Goode was assigned to the ABC News United Nations bureau because network executives feared his presence in the main studio would be too disruptive, TV Guide reported. WNBC, the NBC-owned station in New York, hired Mr. Teague, a seasoned newspaper reporter, the next year. As racial tensions mounted in the 1960s, he was often sent into minority neighborhoods. In July 1963, he was a principal correspondent for “Harlem: Test for the North,” an hourlong network program prepared after riots broke out in the neighborhood.
“They felt black reporters would be invulnerable in a riot,” Mr. Teague said in an interview with The Associated Press in 1981. They were not, but he and others proved themselves to be good reporters. He won praise in September 1963 for his first-person report about protesting racial injustice on a picket line.
Just two years after being hired, Mr. Teague was given his own weekly program, “Sunday Afternoon Report.” He also became a frequent replacement on NBC network news and sports programs.
But even as he carved a niche at NBC, including occasional service as anchor, he grew disillusioned with many aspects of the TV news business. In his 1982 book, “Live and Off-Color: News Biz,” he complained that executives’ lust for ratings led them to prefer spectacle over serious news.
“A newscast is not supposed to be just another vehicle for peddling underarm deodorants,” he wrote. “The public needs to know.”
He criticized the major stations’ practice of scheduling their news programs at the same time of day, saying that by doing so they were all essentially providing the same information. He suggested that each channel present the news in a separate time slot. The slots could then by rotated so that all would get access to the most popular times.
Robert Lewis Teague was born in Milwaukee on Jan. 2, 1929, to a mechanic and a maid. He was a star football player at the University of Wisconsin, winning all-Big 10 honors. A journalism major, he passed up offers from four professional football teams to become a reporter for The Milwaukee Journal. He joined the Army in 1952.
In 1956, he moved to New York and found work as a radio news writer for CBS. He soon joined The New York Times as a sports copy editor and went on to cover major sporting events as a reporter.
He left The Times for the NBC job.
In 1968, he published “Letters to a Black Boy,” written in the form of letters to his 1-year-old son, Adam, many about race. The letters were meant to be read when Adam was 13.
At the time he wrote the book, Mr. Teague’s views were growing more conservative. “Government handouts constitute the most damaging assault on black pride and dignity since the founding of the Ku Klux Klan,” he wrote. He generally supported conservative candidates, including Herman Cain for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. He retired from NBC in 1991.
Mr. Teague lived in Monmouth Junction, N.J. His first marriage, to the dancer Matt Turney, ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, the former Jan Grisingher, he is survived by his son and three grandchildren.
The changing public response to Mr. Teague and others in the first wave of black television journalists was suggested in a letter he received that he described in an article in The New York Times Magazine.
“When you first began broadcasting the news on television, I watched you every night, but I realize now, years later, that I was so conscious of the fact that you were black that I didn’t hear a word you said about the news,” it read.
“Now, I am happy to say, I still watch you every night, but only because you are a damn good newscaster.”

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Monday, March 25, 2013

Ray Williams, New York Knick and Net


Ray Williams Dies at 58; Itinerant in Pros and Life

Jim Cummins/The New York TImes
Ray Williams, who was a Knick (twice) and a Net (twice), in 1981.
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Published: March 24, 2013
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Ray Williams could seemingly do it all on a basketball court. He had an outstanding shooting touch, he possessed superb body control, and he could make a timely pass. He teamed with Micheal Ray Richardson in the Knicks’ backcourt to dazzle the crowds at Madison Square Garden in the late 1970s and early ’80s.
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“He was a joy to play with,” said Len Elmore, a center-forward who was his teammate on the Knicks and the New Jersey Nets.
Elmore remembered Williams, a sturdy 6 feet 3 inches, as “a consummate scorer,” even if “at times he would take shots you wouldn’t necessarily agree with.”
But “if you were open, he would find you,” Elmore said from Philadelphia, where he was covering the National Collegiate Athletic Association men’s basketball tournament for CBS.
By the time Williams closed out his National Basketball Association career after 10 well-traveled seasons, he had accumulated impressive statistics. But he had also garnered a reputation as a playground-style player prone to turnovers and ill-advised shots.
And then everything fell apart. Williams had earned more than $2 million in his N.B.A. career, but he was generous with family members and friends, and his money eventually ran out. He declared bankruptcy in the mid-1990s, his marriage broke up, and he moved to Florida in hopes of changing his luck. But by the summer of 2010, he was homeless, living in a rusted Buick in Pompano Beach.
A few months later, after his plight became publicly known, Williams returned to his native Mount Vernon, N.Y., in Westchester County, where he had been a high school basketball star, to take an offer from the mayor, Clinton I. Young Jr., to work with youngsters at a recreational center.
But with his life seemingly turned around from the depths he had reached, Williams learned he had colon cancer. He died on Friday at 58.
Jim Dutcher, who coached Williams at the University of Minnesota, told The St. Paul Pioneer Press that Williams died at a family member’s home in the New York area after being treated at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.
Thomas Ray Williams was born on Oct. 14, 1954, one of six children, and led Mount Vernon High School to two New York State basketball championships.
After a year at San Jacinto Junior College in Texas, he starred at Minnesota, where he played alongside the future Boston Celtics star Kevin McHale.
Williams was a first-round draft choice of the Knicks in 1977, and in his first four N.B.A. seasons helped them make the playoffs twice.
He joined the Nets before the 1981-82 season, scored 52 points in an April 1982 game against the Detroit Pistons and helped the Nets reach the playoffs. But he was traded to the Kansas City Kings at the season’s end.
Williams later remembered a conversation he had with his teammate Kenny Dennard when they were on the Kings’ bench during a game.
“Dennard asked me, ‘Ray, do you know why you are down here?’
‘“No,’ I said. ‘Why?’
“ ‘Kansas City is where they send all guys to repent for their sins.’ ”
Presumably convinced that Williams had repented for his sometimes undisciplined play, the Knicks got him back for the 1983-84 season. But his second stint at the Garden lasted only one season. He later played for the Celtics, the Atlanta Hawks, the San Antonio Spurs and, finally, the Nets once more.
He retired in 1987, having averaged 15.5 points and 5.8 assists a game. His older brother Gus was a two-time N.B.A. All-Star guard, but they were never teammates.
Ray Williams did not graduate from Minnesota, and he had few skills beyond basketball. He held a series of odd jobs after moving to Florida, but they did not last long. He declared bankruptcy for a second time and received a diagnosis of diabetes. He was destitute despite having received grants from N.B.A.-affiliated organizations and taking cash out of his pension plan.
After he talked about his problems in an interview with The Boston Globe in July 2010, he received the job in Mount Vernon.
He married his second wife, Linda, in 2011 and was back in touch with his two daughters from his first marriage. A full list of his survivors was not immediately available.
Elmore, his former teammate, noted Sunday that Williams “flourished on the court” but, like many athletes, “was not properly prepared for life after the game.”
But in a February 2011 interview with The Journal News of Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties, Williams was brimming with optimism. He told of his hopes to obtain more financing for recreational facilities in Mount Vernon and of raising awareness about problems some retired athletes faced.
“These people are counting on me,” he said. “I’m on a mission now. I’m home.”

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Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Robert "Bobby" Smith, Lead Singer of the Spinners

Over the weekend came news of the death of Bobby Smith, the long-time lead singer of the Spinners. For the youngsters out there, the Wikipedia listing reads as follows:
Robert "Bobby" Smith (sometimes spelled Bobbie; April 10, 1936 – March 16, 2013[2]) was born in Detroit, Michigan and was an American R&B singer, the principal lead singer of the classic Motown group, The Spinners, also known as the Detroit Spinners or the Motown Spinners, throughout its history. The group was formed circa 1960 at Ferndale High School in Ferndale, Michigan, just north of the Detroit border.
Smith had been the group's main lead singer since its inception, having sung lead vocals on The Spinners first hit record in 1961, "That's What Girls Are Made For" (which has been inaccurately credited to the group's mentor and former Moonglows lead singer, the late Harvey Fuqua). Smith also sang lead on most of their Motown material during the 1960s, such as the charting singles like "Truly Yours" (1966) and "I'll Always Love You" (1965); almost all of the group's pre-Motown material on Fuqua's Tri-Phi Records label, and also on The Spinners' biggest Atlantic Records hits, such as "I'll Be Around", "Could It Be I'm Falling in Love", "They Just Can't Stop It the (Games People Play)". In 1974 they scored their only #1 Pop hit with "Then Came You" (a collaboration with superstar Dionne Warwick). Despite the fact that Smith led on many of the group's biggest hits, many have erroneously credited much of the group's success to its other lead singer, the late Philippé Wynne.
Wynne was many times inaccurately credited for songs that Smith actually sang lead on, such as by the group's label, Atlantic Records, on their Anthology double album collection (an error corrected in the group's later triple CD set, The Chrome Collection). Throughout a succession of lead singers (Wynne, Jonathan Edwards, G. C. Cameron etc.), Smith's lead voice had always been The Spinners' mainstay.
With the 2013 death of Smith, as well as fellow Spinners members Billy Henderson in 2007, and bass singer Pervis Jackson in 2008, Henry Fambrough and G C Cameron are now the last remaining original members of the group. Fambrough is still performing with a current day line-up of Spinners.

*****

For those of us from the "Old School", Spinners music is still alive. Here's a taste of one of Bobby Smith's best.



And here is the song that I would listen to while driving (for the first time) over the San Rafael bridge during my commute from a temporary home in Novato to UC Berkeley Law.




Ah, the memories. Thank you, Bobby Smith. May you truly rest in

Peace,


The man who gave the R&B band its name died Saturday in Orlando of complications from pneumonia and the flu. He was 76.


DETROIT — Bobby Smith, longtime lead singer of The Spinners, died Saturday in Orlando of complications from pneumonia and the flu, his family said. He was 76.
Smith had been diagnosed with lung cancer in November.
Funeral details are not set, but services are expected to take place Monday in Detroit, said the group's Jessie Peck.
Smith's final performance came in mid-February during the Soul Train Cruise, said Peck. Smith, who had missed several gigs since his cancer diagnosis, was present on the cruise but not expected to perform during The Spinners' set. Then the group began to perform its 1974 hit Then Came You.
"Like something out of a movie, Bobby shoots right out onstage and, showman that he is, grabs a mike and sings right on cue," Peck recounted. "The audience went bananas."
Smith joined the group in 1956 when it was known as the Domingoes. Frustrated with frequent misspellings, group members soon sought a new name, and it was the suggestion of Smith, a lifelong car buff, that won the day: "Spinners" was a nickname for high-end hubcaps.
Smith, whose first name was periodically spelled Bobbie, was lead voice on the group's first hit, 1961's That's What Girls Are Made For, produced with Harvey Fuqua, a link that led the group to Motown Records two years later.
Smith and the Spinners enjoyed only minimal success during their Motown tenure, but broke big after signing with Atlantic Records in 1971 at the suggestion of Aretha Franklin. A stream of hits followed with Smith's prominent vocals: I'll Be Around, Could It Be I'm Falling in Love, One of a Kind (Love Affair), Then Came You, Games People Play.
As the group maintained a busy touring and recording schedule, Smith left Detroit for New Jersey in the 1980s, later settling in Florida.
Henry Fambrough, the group's lone surviving original member, warmly remembered his friend and groupmate of more than half a century.
"Bobby was a regular, down-to-earth, good-natured person, the kind of guy who'd give you his shirt," Fambrough said. "And ever since I've known him, he was just a natural showman."
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Friday, March 15, 2013

Merton Simpson, Collector of African Art

Merton D. Simpson, Painter, Collector and Dealer in African Art, Dies at 84

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Published: March 14, 2013
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Merton D. Simpson, an artist who became a trailblazing collector and gallery owner specializing in African art, died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 84.


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Merton D. Simpson in 2002.
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Courtesy of Merton D. Simpson Gallery
A painting from Mr. Simpson's “Confrontations” series, begun in the mid-1960s.
Mr. Simpson had had several strokes and suffered from a number of prolonged illnesses, including diabetes and dementia, said his son Merton Jr. and Alaina Simone, director of the Merton D. Simpson Gallery, in confirming his death.
Mr. Simpson’s work as a painter was largely in the Abstract Expressionist mode. It grew more political after he joined the Spiral group, a collective of black artists founded in 1963 by Romare Bearden, Hale Woodruff and others, who met to discuss the role of black artists in the art world and, given the growing civil rights movement, the larger world as well.
Influenced by Bearden’s collages and the Spiral discussions, Mr. Simpson, after witnessing a standoff between Harlem residents and the police in 1964, produced a series he called “Confrontations,” abstract renderings of masklike faces, white and black, seemingly in hostile opposition.
Mr. Simpson began collecting African and tribal art in the late 1940s. His interest grew through the next decade, spurred by the influence of African sculpture on the paintings of Picasso, Miró and others.
“I was so taken with them, with the forms, you know,” he said in a 1968 oral history interview for the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art about the figures he had seen in the collections of Mr. Woodruff (who had been his teacher), Paul Robeson and others. “People talked about Picasso, Miró, and I used to say, ‘What about African sculpture?,’ which these people sort of got this idea from.”
He began dealing in art in the early 1950s to support his painting and to help his family, at first working out of a studio apartment and later from a gallery in Manhattan. (The Merton D. Simpson Gallery is now at 38 West 28th Street.) Over decades of traveling in Africa and Europe, Mr. Simpson established a reputation for taste and expertise that many aficionados in the field consider unmatched.
“Over the course of the ’60s and ’70s Simpson became the most important dealer in the U.S. in this field,” Heinrich C. Schweizer, head of the African and Oceanic art department at Sotheby’s auction house, said on Tuesday. “Worldwide, you could say he was one of the two or three leading dealers, and certainly a powerhouse in the U.S., and this was especially remarkable for an African-American, who began doing this in the time of segregation.”
Merton Daniel Simpson was born in Charleston, S.C., on Sept. 20, 1928. His father, Marion, was a water-meter reader; his mother, Jennie, was a homemaker. As a young boy he had diphtheria and rheumatic fever, illnesses that kept him out of school until fifth grade.
His youthful interests ran to both drawing and music; in high school he was a reed player, and he continued to play jazz saxophone as an adult, which he said influenced some of his later paintings, abstract works with looping lines, indefinite shapes and energetic brush strokes suggestive of the improvisatory nature of jazz.“Painting is like playing music,” he said. “You can hear a song, you can hear a melody, you don’t have to know the words, but you hear the music and get an impression of what’s going on.”
He came to New York in 1948 and studied at Cooper Union and New York University, where he met Mr. Woodruff. In 1951 he entered the Air Force; he spent most of his time playing in the Air Force band and painting portraits of military officers, including Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. He also worked on paintings of his own.
When he left the service he returned to Manhattan, where he supported himself working in a frame shop frequented by well-known artists like Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell, who would critique his paintings.
Mr. Simpson’s marriage to Beatrice Houston ended in divorce. In addition to his son Merton Jr. he is survived by another son, Kenneth; a brother, Carl; a sister, Patsy Johnson; two grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
“He was a real pioneer, involved in African art at a high level at a time when there weren’t even many African-Americans who were collecting African art,” said Lowery Stokes Sims, curator of the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan, who worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from the ’70s to the ’90s. “When I worked at the Met I would go to the gallery and see some of the most incredible African art I’d ever seen in my life. It was really showstopping. And occasionally he’d show his own work,” she said. “For an African-American who came up in the art world in the 1970s, he was truly one of those unsung pioneers, crucial in establishing our place in the art world.”
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Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Oscar DePriest, First "Northern" Congressman

Oscar Stanton De Priest

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Oscar Stanton De Priest
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Illinois's 1st district
In office
March 4, 1929 – January 3, 1935
Preceded byMartin B. Madden
Succeeded byArthur W. Mitchell
Personal details
Born(1871-03-09)March 9, 1871
Florence, Alabama
DiedMay 12, 1951(1951-05-12) (aged 80)
Chicago, Illinois
Political partyRepublican
Spouse(s)Jessie De Priest
Oscar Stanton De Priest (March 9, 1871 – May 12, 1951) was an American lawmaker and civil rights advocate who served as a U.S. Representative from Illinois from 1929 to 1935. He was the first African American to be elected to Congress from outside the southern states and the first in the 20th century.

Contents

[hide]

[edit] Early life

De Priest was born in Florence, Alabama to former slaves. His mother worked part-time as a laundress, and his father, Alexander, was a teamster associated with the "Exodus" movement, which arose after the American Civil War to help blacks escape continued oppression in the South by moving to other states that offered greater freedom. In 1878, the De Priests left for Dayton, Ohio, after the elder De Priest had to save a friend who was a former Congressman from a lynch mob and another black man was killed on their doorstep.[citation needed]He had a brother named Robert De Priest.

[edit] Career

[edit] Business

In Salina, Kansas, De Priest studied bookkeeping at the Salina Normal School.[1] In 1889 he moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he worked as an apprentice plasterer, house painter, and decorator, and eventually became a successful contractor and real estate broker. He went on to build a fortune in the stock market and in real estate by helping black families move into formerly all-white neighborhoods. From 1904 to 1908, he was a member of the board of commissioners of Cook County, Illinois, and he then served on the Chicago City Council from 1915 to 1917 as alderman of the 2nd Ward, Chicago’s first black alderman.[1]
He stepped down as alderman in 1917 after being indicted for alleged involvement with Chicago's South Side black mob, but was acquitted after hiring Clarence Darrow to defend him.[1]

[edit] Politics

In 1919, De Priest ran unsuccessfully for alderman as a member of the People's Movement Club, a political organization he founded. In a few years, De Priest's became the most powerful of Chicago's many black political organizations, and he became the top black politician under Chicago Republican mayor William Hale Thompson.
In 1928, when Republican congressman Martin B. Madden died, Mayor Thompson selected De Priest to replace him on the ballot and he became the first African American elected to Congress in the 20th century, representing the 1st Congressional District of Illinois (the Loop and part of the South Side of Chicago) as a Republican.[1] During his three consecutive terms (1929–1935) as the only black representative in Congress, De Priest introduced several anti-discrimination bills. His 1933 amendment barring discrimination in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A second anti-lynching bill failed, even though it would not have made lynching a federal crime. A third proposal, a bill to permit a transfer of jurisdiction if a defendant believed he or she could not get a fair trial because of race or religion, was passed by a later Congress.
Civil rights activists criticized De Priest for opposing federal aid to the poor, but they applauded him for speaking in the South despite death threats. They also praised De Priest for telling an Alabama senator he was not big enough to prevent him from dining in the Senate restaurant, and for defending the right of Howard University students to eat in the House restaurant. De Priest took the House restaurant issue to a special bipartisan House committee. In a three month-long heated debate, the Republican minority argued that the restaurant's discriminatory practice violated 14th Amendment rights to equal access. The Democratic majority skirted the issue by claiming that the restaurant was not open to the public, and the House restaurant remained segregated.
In 1929, De Priest made national news when first lady Lou Hoover, at De Priest's urging, invited his wife, Jessie Williams De Priest, to a tea for congressional wives at the White House. He also appointed Benjamin O. Davis Jr. to the U. S. Military Academy at a time when the army had only one African-American line officer (Davis's father).
By the early 1930s, De Priest's popularity waned because he continued to oppose higher taxes on the rich and fought Depression-era federal relief programs. De Priest was defeated in 1934 by Democrat Arthur W. Mitchell, who was also an African American. He was again elected to the Chicago City Council in 1943 as alderman of the 3rd Ward, and served until 1947. He died in Chicago at age 80 and is buried in Graceland Cemetery.

[edit] Personal life

Oscar married the former Jessie L. Williams (1873?-March 31, 1961)[2] . This union had two sons:
  • Laurence W. (1900? - July 28, 1916) [3]
  • Oscar Stanton De Priest, Jr. (May 24, 1906-November 8, 1983)[4][5]
His house in Chicago, on 45th and King Drive is a National Historic Landmark.
After his election to Congress, he was constantly in demand as a speaker. He did realize that he was not only a representative of voters from Illinois 1st Congressional District, but also a symbol for black people. He urged his many audiences to study political organization to learn their rights under the Federal Constitution, and to see campaign activity as a public duty. Oscar DePriest was a native of Florence, Alabama but spent his youth in Saline, Kansas. He went to Chicago in 1889. DePriest's early interest in politics can be traced back to his father, Alexander DePriest, who knew and admired James T. Rapier, who represented Alabama in Congress in the days of Reconstruction. The elder DePriest learned to study people and politics while a dray man; Oscar DePriest learned them through his successful career as a real estate entrepreneur. Through his long life he maintained a keen interest in politics and in the progress of blacks. His success in business and politics did not change him, he insisted to his dying day in 1951 that "I am of the common herd".
Oscar De Priest had a brother named Robert De Priest who had two daughters (Lloyse and Esther DePriest), and three sons (Bourget, Robert, Jr, and Dwight DePriest).
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Bobby Rogers, One of the "Miracles"

Bobby Rogers, Sang in the Miracles, Dies at 73

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Published: March 4, 2013
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Bobby Rogers, who was born on the same day in the same Detroit hospital as the Motown crooner Smokey Robinson, with whom he harmonized in high school and eventually in the Hall of Fame singing group the Miracles, died Sunday in Southfield, Mich. He was 73.
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The Miracles, clockwise from top left: Bobby Rogers, Marv Tarplin, Ronnie White and Claudette and Smokey Robinson.
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The cause was complications of diabetes, said Patricia Cosby, his friend for half a century. Mr. Rogers also suffered from dementia, she said.
Mr. Rogers, tall, bespectacled and jovial, brought a smooth tenor to the Miracles, who were founded in the mid-1950s and became one of Motown’s longest-lived and most important ensembles. Known for their silky harmonies, snazzy threads and coolly coordinated dance steps onstage (early on, Mr. Rogers was the group’s choreographer), they recorded for Berry Gordy Jr.’s Tamla label and became a stanchion of the Motown sound and Mr. Gordy’s recording empire.
Their hit songs included “Shop Around,” “You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me,” “Mickey’s Monkey,” “Going to a Go-Go” and, after a name change — to capitalize on Mr. Robinson’s stardom they became Smokey Robinson and the Miracles in 1967 — “I Second That Emotion” and “Tears of a Clown.”
The Miracles endured even after Mr. Robinson left the group in 1972, and their hit “Love Machine,” released in 1975, with Billy Griffin as the lead vocalist, featured a sexy growl by Mr. Rogers — “Ooooooyeahhh” — during the chorus.
Robert Edward Rogers was born on Feb. 19, 1940. His mother, Lois, was a seamstress, and his father, Robert, worked in an auto factory.
He sang as a young teenager with Mr. Robinson and another future Miracle, Pete Moore. In 1955, Mr. Robinson, Mr. Moore and others formed a group called the Five Chimes, whose membership eventually included Mr. Robinson’s classmate at Northern High School, Mr. Rogers, as well as his cousin Emerson Rogers, known as Sonny.
The group changed its name to the Matadors, but when Sonny Rogers joined the Army, Mr. Robinson, who was the group’s chief songwriter as well as its lead singer, asked another Rogers, Sonny’s sister Claudette, to replace him (they would later marry), at which point the name Matadors was deemed too masculine, and the group became the Miracles.
They met Mr. Gordy, then merely a budding music entrepreneur, at an audition with the manager of the singer Jackie Wilson in 1957, and, as the story goes, it was Mr. Robinson who encouraged Mr. Gordy to start his own company. The following year, with Mr. Gordy as their producer, the Miracles recorded “Got a Job” (a response to the Silhouettes’ novelty doo-wop number “Get a Job”), released on Mr. Rogers’s (and Mr. Robinson’s) 18th birthday. In 1959 they recorded their first single for Mr. Gordy’s new company, “Bad Girl,” and in 1960 the Miracles had their first hit, “Shop Around,” which sold a million records.
Mr. Rogers, who was known as the Miracles’ best dancer, shared writing credit with Mr. Robinson on several well-known songs, including “Going to a Go-Go”; “The Way You Do the Things You Do,” recorded by the Temptations; and “First I Look at the Purse,” a hit for the Contours in the 1960s and the J. Geils Band in 1970. When Mr. Robinson was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, many fans objected that he went in without the Miracles. That oversight was remedied in 2012, when Mr. Rogers, Mr. Moore, Claudette Robinson, Ronnie White and the guitarist Marv Tarplin were inducted together.
Mr. Rogers’s first marriage, to Wanda Young, a singer with the Marvelettes, ended in divorce. His survivors include his wife, the former Joan Daniel; a brother, Walter; two sisters, Louise and Azzie Lee; two children and two stepchildren.
Ms. Cosby, who was married to the Motown songwriter and producer Hank Cosby, said Mr. Rogers was a friendly, voluble presence, almost impossibly sociable.
“The property was almost like a campus,” she recalled, speaking of the Motown offices in Detroit, “and if you were standing around talking with two or three other people, he’d always join in, and we always loved having him. Wherever he was, he belonged. Back in the 1960s, I used to say he was a gossip. He wasn’t really a gossip. But he talked as much as any woman.”
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