Good Morning POU!
Smokey Robinson says he and Diana Ross have history together.
The legendary singer opened up about his love life, including an affair he says he had with The Supremes superstar.
Robinson, 83, said in an interview with The Guardian published April 27 that he and Ross were involved for “about a year” while he was married to his first wife, Claudette Rogers.
Robinson was 19 years old when he and Rogers got married in 1959. They divorced in 1986. “I was married at the time. We were working together, and it just happened,” Robinson said. “But it was beautiful. She’s a beautiful lady, and I love her right till today. She’s one of my closest people. She was young and trying to get her career together. I was trying to help her. I brought her to Motown, in fact. I wasn’t going after her and she wasn’t going after me. It just happened.”
He added that after they were “seeing each other for a while,” Ross ended their romantic relationship.
“Diana said to me she couldn’t do that because she knew Claudette, and she knew I still loved my wife,” he said. “And I did. I loved my wife very much.”
Ummmm…that ain’t how its told by others at Motown at the time:
Before the superdiva and the top executive became “an item,” she had become “closer than close” with a very famous Motown songwriter/producer/arranger who was very much married.
One night the wife, people who were there verify, confronted the singer at the 20 Grand nightclub and made her displeasure “physically known.” Onlookers were aghast.
Per Bettye Lavette in her autobiography about her days at Hitsville:
LaVette recalled one incident in which the jealous wife of a song-writer who had a crush on the diva attacked her at a nightclub and tried to strip off her dress.
“America’s Supreme sweetheart was left standing in her slip, panties and bra,” LaVette writes, gleefully.
Alrighty then!