TUE., SEPTEMBER 29, 2009
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The Child-Prodigy Blues: The Tale of Sugar Chile Robinson
by John Morthland
I don't care that, for many kids, classes now start in August — in my mind, September will always be back-to-school month. In honor of that, let us now praise Sugar Chile Robinson, the boogie woogie piano-playing child star of the late '40s and early '50s. If you know of him at all, it's probably because Dockers used his driving "Go, Boy, Go" in a TV commercial in 2006, but Sugar Chile has quite the story.
Born in Detroit in 1938, the youngest of seven kids of Clarence and Elizabeth Robinson, Frankie Robinson (his nickname came from his love of sugar cubes, which his mom gave him to calm his bad moods) took quickly to the piano. According to his father, the tyke played a recognizable version of Erskine Hawkins' 1940 big band hit "Tuxedo Junction" when he was two or three years old, and soon thereafter could play pretty much anything he heard on the radio. By 1945, he'd won an amateur talent contest run by local orchestra leader Harry Carle at the Michigan Theatre — beating out, according to local legend, a teenage wannabe-songwriter named Berry Gordy (yes, that Berry Gordy) in the process. He often sat in at the theatre with Carle's band, and once jammed onstage with Lionel Hampton, who wanted to take Robinson on the road but was thwarted by child labor laws. But Sugar Chile did appear with Hamp and Harry "the Hipster" Gibson on Armed Forces Radio Service transcriptions.
And word about the piano prodigy spread. Late in 1945, after finishing a series of Michigan Theatre gigs with Carle, he went out to Hollywood to perform Louis Jordan's "Caldonia (What Makes Your Big Head So Hard?)" in the Van Johnson romantic war comedy No Leave, No Love. MGM tried to sign him to a long-term movie contract deal but his father refused to allow it. In 1946, Sugar Chile did four numbers for President Harry Truman at a star-studded show in Washington, following that with a week-long stand at the Regal Theater in Chicago that grossed $36,000, the largest take ever at that venue. He returned to the Regal at the end of that year, with Sammy Davis Jr. and Dorothy Dandridge working for him in his revue; his earnings for '46 were reported as $148,000, not bad for an eight-year-old during wartime.
Robinson continued at that pace until 1949, when he finally signed his first recording contract, with Capitol. Bassist Leonard Bibbs and drummer Zutty Singleton backed him on his swinging, stomping debut "Numbers Boogie," which shot to #4 on the Billboard charts; the followup "Caldonia" peaked at #14 (though to these ears, the flipside "Vooey Vooey Vay" bopped harder). The kid could play, albeit not with enough of the accents and flourishes that often separate one boogie-woogie pianist from another. His singing, on the other hand, is rather painful; when it comes to carrying a tune, he was no Frankie Lymon or Michael Jackson. No matter: for a couple years, Sugar Chile's career continued apace. There were gigs at the Tropicana in Havana, a tour with Count Basie, even a short musical flick with Basie and Billie Holiday; a Christmas single led to a successful two-month tour of the UK, followed by another in the summer of '52.
He continued to respond when given good material. "Say, Little Girl" is a real song, and his piano work a real steamroller even if his vocals still grate. But he's clearly maturing as a singer on "Go, Boy, Go," and his jazzy piano is much more nuanced on "Frustration Boogie." He forges an especially nice groove on "Sticks and Stones," gets real bluesy on "Broken-Down Piano." The trouble was that he was still being saddled most of the time with novelty kiddie songs a la "I'll Eat My Spinach." And as the lyric on "Frustration Boogie" suggests, he was getting too old to be treated like a kid, albeit not yet old enough to be taken seriously as an artist. But what really bugged Robinson was that he'd never had a real childhood, and while he'd always had a tutor on the road, he was missing a real education. So the teenager begged his father to let him quit showbiz and attend school. Clarence finally relented.
Frankie Robinson proved a damn good student. He graduated high school at 15 and went on to college, eventually earning a PhD in psychology from the University of Michigan. Though he apparently was peripherally involved in some way with Detroit's marginally successful, but now long forgotten, R&B Landa Records in the '60s, he's been out of music biz all these years, and never had to endure the mostly embarrassing (if not downright destructive) changes most child stars go through. In 2007 he resurfaced, playing the annual Motor City Blues & Boogie Festival in his hometown and the Rhythm Riots in Camber, England. For the former gig, he insisted on bringing along his church choir. "That was then; this is now," he told festival organizers. Then or now, it was not a bad life, not a bad life at all.
Born in Detroit in 1938, the youngest of seven kids of Clarence and Elizabeth Robinson, Frankie Robinson (his nickname came from his love of sugar cubes, which his mom gave him to calm his bad moods) took quickly to the piano. According to his father, the tyke played a recognizable version of Erskine Hawkins' 1940 big band hit "Tuxedo Junction" when he was two or three years old, and soon thereafter could play pretty much anything he heard on the radio. By 1945, he'd won an amateur talent contest run by local orchestra leader Harry Carle at the Michigan Theatre — beating out, according to local legend, a teenage wannabe-songwriter named Berry Gordy (yes, that Berry Gordy) in the process. He often sat in at the theatre with Carle's band, and once jammed onstage with Lionel Hampton, who wanted to take Robinson on the road but was thwarted by child labor laws. But Sugar Chile did appear with Hamp and Harry "the Hipster" Gibson on Armed Forces Radio Service transcriptions.
And word about the piano prodigy spread. Late in 1945, after finishing a series of Michigan Theatre gigs with Carle, he went out to Hollywood to perform Louis Jordan's "Caldonia (What Makes Your Big Head So Hard?)" in the Van Johnson romantic war comedy No Leave, No Love. MGM tried to sign him to a long-term movie contract deal but his father refused to allow it. In 1946, Sugar Chile did four numbers for President Harry Truman at a star-studded show in Washington, following that with a week-long stand at the Regal Theater in Chicago that grossed $36,000, the largest take ever at that venue. He returned to the Regal at the end of that year, with Sammy Davis Jr. and Dorothy Dandridge working for him in his revue; his earnings for '46 were reported as $148,000, not bad for an eight-year-old during wartime.
Robinson continued at that pace until 1949, when he finally signed his first recording contract, with Capitol. Bassist Leonard Bibbs and drummer Zutty Singleton backed him on his swinging, stomping debut "Numbers Boogie," which shot to #4 on the Billboard charts; the followup "Caldonia" peaked at #14 (though to these ears, the flipside "Vooey Vooey Vay" bopped harder). The kid could play, albeit not with enough of the accents and flourishes that often separate one boogie-woogie pianist from another. His singing, on the other hand, is rather painful; when it comes to carrying a tune, he was no Frankie Lymon or Michael Jackson. No matter: for a couple years, Sugar Chile's career continued apace. There were gigs at the Tropicana in Havana, a tour with Count Basie, even a short musical flick with Basie and Billie Holiday; a Christmas single led to a successful two-month tour of the UK, followed by another in the summer of '52.
He continued to respond when given good material. "Say, Little Girl" is a real song, and his piano work a real steamroller even if his vocals still grate. But he's clearly maturing as a singer on "Go, Boy, Go," and his jazzy piano is much more nuanced on "Frustration Boogie." He forges an especially nice groove on "Sticks and Stones," gets real bluesy on "Broken-Down Piano." The trouble was that he was still being saddled most of the time with novelty kiddie songs a la "I'll Eat My Spinach." And as the lyric on "Frustration Boogie" suggests, he was getting too old to be treated like a kid, albeit not yet old enough to be taken seriously as an artist. But what really bugged Robinson was that he'd never had a real childhood, and while he'd always had a tutor on the road, he was missing a real education. So the teenager begged his father to let him quit showbiz and attend school. Clarence finally relented.
Frankie Robinson proved a damn good student. He graduated high school at 15 and went on to college, eventually earning a PhD in psychology from the University of Michigan. Though he apparently was peripherally involved in some way with Detroit's marginally successful, but now long forgotten, R&B Landa Records in the '60s, he's been out of music biz all these years, and never had to endure the mostly embarrassing (if not downright destructive) changes most child stars go through. In 2007 he resurfaced, playing the annual Motor City Blues & Boogie Festival in his hometown and the Rhythm Riots in Camber, England. For the former gig, he insisted on bringing along his church choir. "That was then; this is now," he told festival organizers. Then or now, it was not a bad life, not a bad life at all.
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