Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – A Pocket Full Of Miracles (1970/2016) [Qobuz FLAC 24bit/192kHz]

A Pocket Full Of Miracles (TS306) is a 1970 album by Motown Records R&B group The Miracles,(AKA “Smokey Robinson & The Miracles”) issued on its Tamla subsidiary label, one of three albums the group released that year. This album charted at #56 on the Billboard pop albums chart, and reached the top ten of the magazine’s R&B albums chart, peaking at #10. It was released on September 30 of that year. Hit singles on the album included “Point It Out” and the topical Ashford & Simpson written-and-produced song “Who’s Gonna Take The Blame”, a sad, dark song about a girl that is turned out as a prostitute (unusually serious lyric content for The Miracles). Also included is the charting flip side “Darling Dear”, B-side of “Point It Out”, which reached # 100 on the Billboard pop chart, and spawned a cover version by The Jackson Five.

The album’s name takes its title from the 1961 Frank Capra comedy film Pocketful of Miracles. However, that is where the similarities end. Its cover depicts four of The Miracles, Smokey Robinson, Bobby Rogers, Pete Moore,and Ronnie White, sitting inside a huge cartoon “pocket”, (thus the name “Pocket Full Of Miracles”). Other original songs in the collection included “Flower Girl”, the powerful potential hit “Backfire” (that was not released as a single), and the melancholy “The Reel Of Time”. Miracles members Marv Tarplin and Claudette Robinson are featured on the songs “You’ve Got The Love I Need” (a ballad with rock overtones) and “Don’t Take It So Hard”, respectively. However, they are not featured on the album’s cover (apparently because the “pocket” would then have too many Miracles). Covers include versions of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Troubled Water”, Chuck Jackson and Maxine Brown’s “Something You Got”, included in a medley with The Beatles’ “Something”, and Smokey’s composition for The Temptations, “Get Ready”, which features an arrangement borrowed from the Cream hit “Sunshine of Your Love”. Motown staff songwriters contributing to this project included Ashford & Simpson, William “Mickey” Stevenson, H. Gordy, R Gordy, R. Jones, and Miracles members Smokey Robinson, Pete Moore, and Marv Tarplin.

This album, like several of The Miracles’ post-1969 albums, has never been released in the CD format. It was re-released in edited form a few years later, by the defunct independent label Pickwick International, under license from Motown, with a different cover, and the modified name Pocketful.

A few good sides make this a fair to middling LP and not one of their best overall. Two single releases, “Point It Out” and “Who’s Gonna Take the Blame,” did all right but didn’t blow up the charts; the latter, a Valerie Simpson/Nicholas Ashford composition, is a teary tale of a girl who turned into a prostitute — heavy stuff for the Miracles. The original version of “Darling Dear” is one of the better tunes here, though a later recording by the Jackson Five is the more popular rendition. Other tunes are competent but fall short of being winners or A-sides. ~~AllMusic Review by Andrew Hamilton

Tracklist:
1. Flower Girl 03:49
2. Who’s Gonna Take The Blame 03:39
3. Darling Dear 03:17
4. You’ve Got The Love I Need 03:42
5. Get Ready 03:22
6. Bridge Over Troubled Water 04:50
7. Something / Something You Got 04:32
8. Point It Out 02:36
9. Don’t Take It So Hard 04:00
10. Backfire 03:29
11. The Reel Of Time 03:48
12. Wishful Thinking 03:08

The Miracles:
Bill ‘Smokey’ Robinson, vocals
Claudette Rodgers Robinson, vocals
Warren ‘Pete’ Moore, vocals
Robert ‘Bobby’ Rodgers, vocals
Ronald ‘Ronnie’ White, vocals
Marvin ‘Marv’ Tarplin, vocals
The Funk Brothers, instruments

Download:

mqs.link_SmkeyRbinsnTheMiraclesAPcketFullfMiracles19702016Qbuz24192.part1.rar
mqs.link_SmkeyRbinsnTheMiraclesAPcketFullfMiracles19702016Qbuz24192.part2.rar
mqs.link_SmkeyRbinsnTheMiraclesAPcketFullfMiracles19702016Qbuz24192.part3.rar