Shop Around: Growing Up With Motown in a Sinatra Household

by Bruce Jenkins

Overview

Bruce Jenkins was twelve years old, living in Malibu with his parents, when he heard the original “Shop Around” single, by “The Miracles featuring Bill ‘Smokey’ Robinson,” the first Billboard No. 1 R&B single for Motown’s Tamla label. Released nationally in October 1960, the single would ultimately make it into the Grammy Hall of Fame, but for young Bruce, the first times he heard the song were a revelation. Jenkins grew up surrounded by music. His father, Gordon Jenkins, was a composer and arranger who worked with artists from Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday to Louis Armstrong and Johnny Cash, but was best known for his close collaboration with Frank Sinatra. His mother, Beverly, was a singer.

For Bruce, “Shop Around” ushered him into a new world of loving Motown. In Shop Around, he brings to life the first thrill of having the music claim him, provides the back story of the recording (and rerecording) of the hit single, shares sketches from his life with his father and mother, and traces how his love of music has grown and evolved over the years and how he still loves driving around San Francisco with Motown cranked up on his car stereo.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780986189814
Publisher:	Wellstone Books
Publication date:	06/28/2016
Series:	Music That Changed My Life , #2
Pages:	168
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

A San Francisco Chronicle sportswriter since 1973, and a sports columnist since 1989, Bruce Jenkins has covered twenty-seven World Series and nineteen Wimbledons. In 1999 he was named one of the nation’s top ten columnists in the Associated Press Sports Editors awards and has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His previous books include Goodbye: In Search of Gordon Jenkins, about his father, A Good Man: The Pete Newell Story, and North Shore Chronicles: Big-Wave Surfing in Hawaii. He lives in Montara, CA, with his wife and daughter.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Don't Hind Me 1

Chapter 2 Mother Sang the Blues 13

Chapter 3 Pass Out Lightly 33

Chapter 4 Surprise Guests 41

Chapter 5 Smokey's Blow to the Heart 55

Chapter 6 Motown Explored 73

Chapter 7 Las Vegas, and the Search for Steve Cropper 89

Chapter 8 On the Retro Highway 107

A Gathering of Lists 115

About the Series 133

Editorial Reviews

"I loved it. Bruce Jenkins manages to accomplish the always dangerous task of describing music with words as well as anyone I’ve read. His knowledge is formidable and his passion is infectious. He can sure write sports, but Bruce missed his calling. He should have been a music critic. Man, does he get it."
—Huey Lewis

"Bruce Jenkins’ Shop Around is a must read for every child of the '60’s who ever listened to AM radio. The sounds of Motown and Stax that moved Bruce moved me as well. As a veteran Bay Area bandleader, I still get folks on the dance floor with the wicked grooves of Steve, Marvin and Otis. It took Bruce’s book to remind me why I love that music so much to this day."
—Dick Bright, San Francisco bandleader and musician.

"An absolutely essential read. An awesome story about a priceless time in music history."
—Emilio Castillo, bandleader, Tower of Power

"A warm and witty memoir about how music binds us all.
—Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle pop music critic

"I'd read whatever Bruce Jenkins has to write on any subject, but Shop Around is a perfect marriage: Bruce's smooth, rhythmic prose describing his lifelong love of music. The book itself is a song."
—Tim Keown, ESPN the Magazine

"I always knew Bruce Jenkins was a cool dude, but I didn’t know how cool he was until I heard him talking music. You can’t be that cool unless you’ve got some deep roots."
—Dusty Baker, author, Kiss the Sky

"What do you get when you combine art (Bruce Jenkins' smoooth writing) with heart (his passion for '60s soul music)? Shop Around. It flows like a great Smokey Robinson song and when you come to the end, you'll want to cue it up all over again."
—Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle

"I fell madly in love with Motown and the sounds of Memphis when I was a junior in high school, A whole new world opened wide. And I knew Bruce Jenkins then; we were classmates at Santa Monica High. After all these years, he’s still spinning wonderful yarns on whatever topic moves him, still passionate, entertaining and illuminating. Shop Around took me on an emotional ride that brought a few tears along the way."
—Lyle Spencer, former sports columnist, Los Angeles Herald Examiner and Riverside Press-Enterprise

"Jenkins’ memoir riffs knowingly on Louis Armstrong, Smokey Robinson, Otis Redding, Harry Nilsson, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Tower of Power and the masterly studio musicians at Motown and Memphis’ Stax label — among them guitarist Steve Cropper and bassist James Jamerson — who went uncredited for years. The book takes its title from the 1960 Smokey Robinson & the Miracles hit that turned Jenkins’ head around when he was 12. He’d dug the music of Ray Charles, Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson, but there was something about Robinson’s voice and style that was so fresh it floored him."
—Jesse Hamlin, San Francisco Chronicle

From the Publisher