The album has a bit of old and new, with songs like “I Keep Calling You” and “Roll Around” written years ago melded with newer tunes.
When Smokey Robinson started dating his-now wife more than 20 years ago, she didn’t want people to know about it.
Robinson and Frances Glandney, who married in 2002, were part of a group of longtime pals and she knew they’d start gossipping about her and the legendary singer-songwriter.
“When we first started started seeing each other, she wanted to keep it on the down-low. She didn’t want anybody to know because we were friends. And then all our friends were going to be talking about us,” Robinson said.
Naturally, that became fodder for a song — “I Keep Calling.” Robinson has been holding onto it for years — complete with the lyrics “Simple things like touching in public/Private touches goin’ unseen” — until this month when it appears on his “Gasms” album, his first collection in almost a decade.
“Gasms” finds the 83-year-old in a frisky mood, with the Motown icon (who performs Friday night at Hard Rock Casino in Gary, Ind.) writing a collection for the bedroom, with yearning across its nine tracks. Just a few titles alone hint at that: “Beside You,” “I Wanna Know Your Body” and “How You Make Me Feel.”
“My thoughts on it is that you can put it on and be with the person that you want to be with and just kick back and enjoy each other,” he says.
