Smokey Robinson sings to Aretha Franklin during her funeral

I didn't know where you gonna go with that some about eight years old and I'm outside and I'm playing with my neighborhood friends second and Phoebe in a lien we shooting marbles cuz it was in a time when kids were able to play outside you know so I don't even know if you know what that is anymore but Richard Ross another one of our friends came around and there's a new guy with him and you've deduced him he said this is Cecil so we all you know like boys do we started playing and after a while we went around to see Cecil's new house cuz they had just moved to Detroit from Buffalo and we go in and we're walking around the house look at it and I'm seeing stuff that I had never seen because what nearly like my house cuz you know somebody broke in my house they better be bringing something so but anyway we walk around the house and and I hear music the piano being played and this voice that sounds like a little girl singing and I go and look in that room and I see you and you're there and you you're singing and that was my first meeting and my first sight of you and from that moment on almost we have been so so close and so tight and I didn't know especially this soon that I was going to be having to say goodbye to you or farewell or whatever we've seen everybody all the people that I mentioned earlier pass on and go and we talked about it many times how we were the two who were who were left out of all our neighborhood friends we were the longest ones we weren't the only two leper we were the longest ones so now my longest friend has gone home and you want to be with our Father like we all have to do one of these days and I know you're up there and you're celebrating with your family and with all of our neighborhood friends who have gone and you're going to be one of the featured voices in the choir of angels because you know you'd have to be I also know you know I've been on the road and I've been watching the celebration of your life from everywhere and I've been doing interviews from everywhere from all over the world that the last one I did was from Brazil and the station that I was talking on covered all of South America so the world is celebrating you then the world is mourning you and the world is gonna miss you and I know that I'm gonna miss you so much because I miss our talks and we would talk for hours sometimes just talking about really anything we want to talk about or nothing and the last conversation we had you were telling me that you give me to your movie and you want to know who I wanted to play me so I told you I was gonna leave that up to you cuz you you you're so special and a while back we did a mini-series on the temptations life and for that movie I did a school I did the school for the movie and I had to write a song for Melvin Franklin another one of our close close people and I'm sure he won't mind if I sing a little bit of it for you because if this you so perfectly in my life really gonna miss you it's really gonna be different without you for the rest of my life gonna be thinking about you ah miss you my buddy ah miss you my friend I know that my love for you will never end will never and I'm gonna love you forever [Applause]

Channel: WXYZ-TV Detroit | Channel 7

Views: 915,660

Keywords: wxyz, detroit, smokey robinson, smokey robinson aretha franklin

Id: 23vLfHvYG5k

Length: 5min 26sec (326 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 31 2018