Berry Gordy and Smokey Robinson to share MusiCares Person of the Year
As has become an annual tradition, The MusiCares Person of the Year award will once again be presented in 2023 on the Friday before the annual Grammy Awards. The award is meant “to commend musicians for their artistic achievement in the music industry and dedication to philanthropy.” Still, it is basically just a popularity award to give out as a lifetime achievement.
Before 2018, MusiCares was pretty solid about the “Person” part of the award. Only singular artists were awarded, including Bono in 2003 and Sting in 2004. However, the award was presented to a group for the first time in 2018 when Fleetwood Mac took home the prize (which was incidentally the final appearance Lindsay Buckingham made before his firing that year). Aerosmith was awarded the prize in 2020, and now it’s being shared once again between Motown founder Berry Gordy and singer/songwriter/former Motown Vice President Smokey Robinson.
“Wow! How honoured I am to be named the MusiCares Persons of the Year, and together with my best friend of over 65 years, the great Smokey Robinson,” Gordy said in a press release. “How special is that! I am grateful to be included in MusiCares’ remarkable history of music icons. The work they do is so critical to the well-being of our music community, and I look forward to a most exciting evening.”
“I have supported MusiCares for many years and know what great work they do for our creative community who need our help,” Robinson wrote. “Recently, when no one could tour, they were a lifeline to those in the touring industry for monetary help and mental health services. I am honoured that they have chosen me and my best friend and Motown founder Berry Gordy to share this beautiful honour and celebrate with you all together.”
Gordy and Robinson first met in 1957, back when Robinson was a teenage doo-wop singer, and Gordy was a songwriter for Jackie Wilson. The two spearheaded the creation of Motown, which produced some of the most popular and important music of the 1960s. Gordy and Robinson helped propel the careers of Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and Gladys Knight, just to name a few.
“Into the 1960s, I was still not of a frame of mind that we were not only making music, we were making history,” Robinson told Ron Thibodeaux in 2009. “But I did recognize the impact because acts were going all over the world at that time. I recognized the bridges that we crossed, the racial problems and the barriers that we broke down with music. I recognized that because I lived it. I would come to the South in the early days of Motown, and the audiences would be segregated. Then they started to get the Motown music, and we would go back, and the audiences were integrated, and the kids were dancing together and holding hands.”
Gordy and Robinson will be awarded the MusiCares Person of the Year on February 3rd, 2023.
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