‘The Season For Miracles’: Yuletide With Smokey Robinson And Co
By 1970, it was time for a second seasonal album offering from Smokey and the group.
Two of the hard and fast rules of the music business holiday season are that you know you’ve made it is when you’re asked to record a Christmas album; and that most festive songs are recorded at the height of summer, or certainly not when there’s any snow or tinsel in sight.
Motown was never backward in getting the label’s big stars into the studio to make a Yuletide disc, and the Miracles had that honor bestowed on them for the first time when Christmas With The Miracles was released in 1963. Featuring their versions of such chestnuts (roasting on an open fire) as “Winter Wonderland,” “Let It Snow,” and “White Christmas,” the album made Billboard‘s special Christmas charts several times through the 1960s.
By 1970, it was time for another seasonal offering from Smokey Robinson and the group, and on November 23 that year, The Season For Miracles was new in record stores. This was less two months after the group – who by now were placing Smokey’s name above their title – had released their latest studio LP, A Pocketful Of Miracles. In a relentless schedule of productivity, that, in turn, was just five months after the Miracles’ preceding concept album of love songs, the April long player What Love Has… Joined Together.
Get in the festive mood by listening to the Motown Christmas playlist.
This time, the group set about such favorites as “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “Jingle Bells,” and “The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas To You),” this last with old friends the Temptations. There were also some newer selections, including two holiday offerings written by Stevie Wonder, “I Can Tell When Christmas Is Near” and “It’s Christmas Time.” The album spent the 1970 Christmas season on the dedicated Yuletide chart, reaching No.13.
Buy or stream The Season For Miracles.
