Consumer Guide Album

Smokey Robinson: Deep in My Soul [Tamla, 1977]
Smokey has a right to the romanticism that has saturated his solo career--ick with kick has always been his specialty--but I get more from the Big Time soundtrack than from Smokey's Family Robinson. And then there's this, in which various Motown hacks attempt to approximate the bright, direct style of a less mature Smokey and come up with four songs (two of which begin each four-cut side) that actually do so. Whereupon Smokey, pro that he is, sings them as if he wrote them himself. B+