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Tavis: I'm honored to welcome William "Smokey" Robinson back to this program. The legendary singer-songwriter is one of the most successful artists in music history. First, of course, with The Miracles, and then as a solo artist. In December, he'll be honored in Washington at the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors. His most recent CD is called "Timeless Love". It's in stores now. William "Smokey" Robinson, nice to see you again, man.

Smokey Robinson: Good to see you, Tavis.

Tavis: You all right?

Robinson: I'm good, man.

Tavis: I don't know how we got you here with all the work you're doing now with the Duet show and new CDs and Smokey Robinson Foods.

Robinson: They said Tavis wants you over there, so here I am (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) I'm glad to have you here. First of all, let me start and tell you congratulations on this Kennedy Center Honors. That is a high honor. As my grandmother, Big Mama, would say, "Smokey, that's high cotton."

Robinson: All right.

Tavis: That's got to make you feel what?

Robinson: Well, you know what, man? I have always felt in my life that it's ironic to me. I live a life that I love. I'm very, very, very blessed, man, because I live a life that I absolutely love. I mean, this is my childhood dream that I'm living. I can't think of anything that I would have rather done with my life.

To get awards and things like that, Grammys and all that stuff, for doing something that you love has always been ironic to me. You know, they give me awards for doing what I love. In the early days, I did for free. I did this for nothing. Just for the love of it, you know. So it's always ironic to me to get awards for this. But this one, the Kennedy Center, is something that secretly I've always wanted. I'm serious about that, man.

Tavis: (Laughter) At least you're honest about it, yeah.

Robinson: Yeah, really. When they called me and said that they were going to give it to me, I couldn't believe it. It still kind of hasn't registered fully, but I'm very honored, and I'm very happy to have it.

Tavis: Is there a particular thing or things beyond the obvious - you got talent - beyond the obvious, is there a particular thing or things that you think that have over the years allowed you to be successful in the way that you have been where you can be nominated and receive a Kennedy Center Honor where there are other folk in Detroit who started out writing songs and didn't quite become the Smokey Robinson that we know you as today? What allowed you, do you think, to strike up on that success aside from the obvious?

Robinson: Well, first thing, I think it's His grace (laughter). You know what I mean?

Tavis: I'll take that. The grace. Yeah, I'll take that.

Robinson: Then the fact that I just look at my life as a blessing. I look at it as I'm blessed and I think that God gives everybody a gift. I have this friend named Tom Dreesen. He's a comedian. He and I are brothers, man. He told me something the other day. A couple of weeks ago, we were together.

We were talking about the gift that God gives to everybody and he said, "God gives everybody a gift and some people never realize their gift or never even find it or never even search for it, but God gives everybody a gift and, when you use your gift for something positive and you do something with it, then that's your gift back to God."

I thought that was so profound because what I do comes natural for me. I always respect show business. See, I don't take Smokey Robinson seriously. I'm not one of those guys that says, "Well, I'm Smokey Robinson," you know. You know me, man. I just think that I'm blessed and I'm getting a chance to live this life that I love and I'm going to respect it and I'm going to always remember the source.

I'm not going to take it for granted. I've always felt like that. I've felt like, hey, you know, you're doing something that you love and you're blessed. You know, show business is not the end all for life. You know, everybody makes the world go around. There's the bus driver, man. If it wasn't for the bus driver, I would not be in business because he's got twenty of my albums. You know what I mean? So what makes me so much better than him because I'm in show business? Everybody makes it happen and I've always looked at it like that.

Tavis: But for those persons watching, we're in Hollywood and there are a lot of folk in this city who want to hear your answer to this question and for the folk around the world watching as well. How did you - again, I ask whether or not it's just something you've been blessed with that the rest of us don't have - how did you become such a prolific songwriter?

In other words, if you were giving advice to somebody about how to write a good song, obviously it's got to be inspired from someplace, but is there a technique? Is there a way to become a better songwriter or is it just something that you have that the rest of us envy you for?

Robinson: (Laughter) Well, I will try to answer the first part of your question first. When I met Berry Gordy, Berry Gordy was a songwriter and this is prior to even starting Motown. He was a songwriter and he had written all the hit songs for Jackie Wilson. Jackie Wilson was my number one singing idol as a kid growing up. He had written some hit songs for Etta James and people like that.

When I bought records, I always looked on them to see who wrote the songs. I've always done that ever since I was five or six years old and I could read. I met him at an audition. The Miracles and I had gone to an audition for Jackie Wilson's manager. Now all my life, Tavis, I have tried to write songs since I was about six years old. I could always rhyme stuff.

Tavis: Jesse Jackson could rhyme, but he ain't got no hit songs. There's a difference.

Robinson: (Laughter) Yeah, he didn't meet Berry.

Tavis: (Laughter) All right.

Robinson: So when I met him at the audition, Berry happened to be at the audition that day. You know, it was fate. We sang about four or five songs that I had written rather than singing some stuff that was currently popular by other people. So they rejected us. They said, well, okay, look. You know, you guys are four guys with a girl in the group. There's already The Platters, so you will never make it. You're singing high and the lead singer for The Platters sings high. You got a girl in your group, so forget it.

But the fact that we had sang songs that Berry had never heard, he was sitting there watching the audition and I just thought he was a young guy waiting to audition himself. So he came out afterwards and said, "Hey, man. Hold on a second. Where'd you get those songs from?" I told them that I'd written them. He introduced himself as Berry Gordy and I couldn't believe it, man. Berry Gordy is kind of liking some of my songs.

He said, "Do you got any more songs?" He never should have said that because I had a loose-leaf notebook, man. Hundred songs in there, man (laughter). So he takes me off to this little room and he said, "I like the sound of your voice. Nobody sounds like you. So let me hear some more of your songs." I must have sung twenty songs for Berry that day. He never said, "Okay, I'm tired" or "That's enough" or "Okay, man, I'll get back at you", none of that. He just listened to every song. He critiqued it for me.

I would have four or five songs, Tavis, in one song. It would be all rhymed up, but the first verse had nothing to do with the second verse and the second verse had nothing to do with the bridge (laughter). Then he said, "I want you to know something. First of all, the first rule is to make your songs have a beginning and a middle and an ending to tie in together. It should be a short book. It should be a short movie. It should be a short story that gives people, even if you don't tell people what their ending is, it gives them enough ammunition or enough thought to make up their own ending, but you have given them one complete idea. I want you to go and listen to the radio and see what writers are writing about." So I did.

Berry Gordy actually taught me how to craft my songs into song songs. Now when I sit down to write a song, and I've done this all my life, I want to write a song. I don't want to go there and, okay, I'm trying to write this hit record. I'm trying to write a song because the first time that I do it or if I record it on somebody else, it might not have the right treatment. You know, people may hear it and say, oh, I didn't like that.

Later on down the line, if it's a song, somebody can pick it up and give it the right treatment where the masses of people will listen to it and say, oh, yeah, this is a song. I always think that now I'm going to write this and I want to write it so that, if I'd written it fifty years prior to this time, it would have meant something.

Tavis: I was just about to say, I asked you once what makes a great song and I've told your answer to a million people. Smokey Robinson told me what makes a great song is that it works for every - I'm paraphrasing - it works for every generation and when they keep covering your songs and covering your songs and covering your songs, first of all, it's good for your pocket (laughter), but it means it's a good song. You told me that and I never forgot that.

Robinson: Yeah.

Tavis: Speaking of good songs, tell me about this new CD.

Robinson: Well, you know, this is the perfect time to talk about that because these songs are those kinds of songs. I called it "Timeless Love" because these songs are timeless and these writers are timeless. A lot of these songs were written before I was born and this is the first music I ever heard in my life.

These songs are among the first songs that I ever heard in my life because, as a baby growing up, I had two older sisters and my mom. They played music all day long. Gospel, jazz, my sisters played some stuff they called be-bop, you know, and classical, blues. All this was going on, but these songs were written when the song was king. What I mean by that is that these songs were written at a time when somebody wrote a good song, all the popular artists of that day sang that song or recorded that song.

These same songs that are on this CD were recorded by Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine and Sammy Davis, all the people that I heard. Count Basie's band played them, Duke Ellington, you know. These are what I heard as a kid growing up. So these songs are from that era and they have lived on and on and on and on. It wasn't like I just picked up a list of these songs and all of a sudden said, "You know what, I think I'll record these songs."

I've been planning on doing this for about maybe eight years or so because I've been singing these songs in our live concerts for about the last fourteen years. Every concert I've ever done, I've included at least one of them, one or two a night, so I'm very familiar with them. I was going to rent out a place, a little intimate place, five or six hundred people, and have a black tie affair and just do a concert singing these songs and record them live, but that never took place. So I did the next best thing.

Tavis: I guess you'd better not have because I didn't get an invitation (laughter).

Robinson: Oh, you would have been there (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) Don't come on the show and tell me that now.

Robinson: But I did the next best thing, man, because I rented out a big studio that I rented out for about a year and eight months or so and I recorded them in the studio with the musicians in there playing while I was singing. That doesn't happen nowadays. You know, people record and sing on the same records. They don't even see each other because everybody's in on a different day and all that. But the people were in there playing while I was singing and we had a ball.

It was like the old days, man. When we first started Motown, if you were going to be on that record, you'd better be in that studio that day. There's no coming back and over-dubbing and all that stuff like that. That was out of the question. We didn't have that, so we recorded them live anyway. Yeah, it's "Timeless Love" and these songs are timeless.

Tavis: Speaking of having fun, you seem to be having fun on Duet and I started that conversation earlier by referencing that. You having fun?

Robinson: I'm having a ball. Yeah, I am having a ball. I mean, just giving me a chance to sing with the people I'm singing with and enjoying them. It's a really good competition. You don't think about people who are actors and people like that singing. But everybody can sing, man. That's what I say about people who sing and take themselves seriously, man.

If you think you can sing, I could take you to my church on Sunday. You'd get blown out of there. You know what I mean? You'd get blown out of there (laughter). Most people can sing, so when you're singing and you start taking yourself serious like, "Well, I can sing", that's a bad mistake. But Duets is fun.

Tavis: Tell me right quick about how the food business is coming along, Smokey Robinson Foods.

Robinson: Yeah, man. Leon Isaac Kennedy, who is one of my closest friends and, you know, he's in the show business. He and I always talked about doing something that had nothing to do with show business. It had nothing to do with entertainment. So we came up with this idea to do a food company. We started off with Seafood Gumbo and we launched in February of 2004. We found out through this that the more items you have, the more shelf space you take up, so the more visible you are, so now we have four. We have Seafood Gumbo, we have Chicken Gumbo, we have Red Beans and Rice and we have Pot Roast.

We're in the frozen food section of all your supermarkets now because we started off being distributed to Albertsons. Now we're with Safeway and Kroger and we service the armed forces. I just got an award about a month ago for being the fastest growing minority food company in the last sixty years.

One of the things that's so wonderful about this to me that we planned in the very beginning at the outset of it is that we're going to have seminars and forums and educational classes for young inner city and minority kids to teach them the art of entrepreneurship because they're bombarded with entertainers and sports figures every day all day long. You know, they're seeing entertainers on television and on the billboards and the sports figures up there. So our kids think, well, man, if I really want to make it, I got to be an entertainer or I got to be a sports figure. That's not true.

Man, there are so many minority food companies on the shelves that's been there for years and you don't think about that, you know? I go and I speak all the time to schools and everywhere, man. I have a list of things that I tell them about Black people and what we've done, what we've invented, what we've come up with and all the things like that because they don't know. That should be known by everybody, not just our kids. Everybody should know that because we have contributed so much to the world that people don't know about. So I put that across to them.

That's what we're using part of the proceeds for, to teach them. Probably some of them have some great ideas already, but they're afraid to pursue that because they don't see that on television. A lot of these businessmen that we meet, and Black senators, these are people that they should see. They should see these people too.

They should be on magazines and on billboards, these businessmen who have these stores and these products and stuff like that to let them know that, hey, man, you can be whoever you really want to be. You have that moxie. You have that thing inside you that you can be whoever you really want to be. You don't have to pursue something because you think, well, if I don't do this, then I can't make it. That's not true. You know, you got it, so flaunt it.

Tavis: That's the story of your life. Be whatever you want to be.

Robinson: Yeah, you can.

Tavis: Look out, Paul Newman (laughter). Here comes William "Smokey" Robinson. Smokey, good to see you, man.

Robinson: Good to see you, Tavis.

Tavis: Congrats on the new CD and all your great success. Glad to have you here.

Robinson: It's good to be here.

Tavis: Come back any time.

Robinson: Thank you.

Tavis: That's our show for tonight. You can catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International. Check your local listings. I'll see you back here next time, though, on PBS. Until then, good night from Los Angeles. Thanks for watching and, as always, keep the faith.