Not QUITE a Miracle: CNN’s Chris Wallace Ropes Smokey Robinson Into Very Brief Duet on ‘Tracks of My Tears’

Motown legend Smokey Robinson and CNN’s Chris Wallace performed a mercifully brief duet on Robinson’s timeless hit “The Tracks of My Tears.”

This week’s episodes of Wallace’s HBO Max/CNN series Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace featured interviews with Robinson and tech entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian.

Since the show began last year, Wallace has sung along to a K-Tel Records compilation worth of pop hits with his guest, a perq of the job that has provided no end of amusement to his colleagues.

During his extensive interview with Robinson, Wallace covered a lot of ground in the icon’s brilliant career, and briefly covered “Tracks of My Tears” — then got the story behind the track:

WALLACE: Pretty quickly. A little group called The Beatles cover that song. What did you think of that? And what did you think of them?

ROBINSON: The Miracles and I were in were in Liverpool, right. And many times when you doing shows or whatever overseas, the promoter will take you to the end spot in that city, or town that night. So he took us to this little club down in the basement, (The cavern club). Yeah. And the Beatles were they weren’t the Beatles then they were just the Beatles group there. So we met them then. And then what seemed like shortly after seemed like almost the next day. They were the Beatles okay. So for them to record one of my songs man was just overwhelming. I was so because see, first of all, they are great songwriters themselves. You know, here’s some guys who write like that. And they chose one of my songs to sing. I couldn’t beat that as a songwriter. You can’t beat them. They’re the most popular group in the world. And they chose one of my songs, the thing being writers themselves. You can’t beat that

WALLACE: Except you did beat that because then in 1964, you write and you and the miracles perform. What I gotta say is, I think my favorite of all the Smokey Robinson songs. The tracks of my tears, okay.

[CLIP]

WALLACE: Alright we got to do that together, (both sing) the tracks of my tears…

ROBINSON: Hey, man, what are you doing this weekend? We got a concert this weekend

WALLACE: You actually want to get people there and not drive them away! The tracks of my tears. How do you come up with that law because it’s a beauty.

ROBINSON: I have about two months or so and I came up with the first three lines and of the chorus – take a good look at my face. He was smiling. I was pleased to close it easy to trace. Easy to trace when I went to 20 Easier to traces. You know, one morning is I was in the mirror shaving. And I thought to myself I don’t know why we thought this but I thought to myself What if a person had cried so much to the head tracks in your face from the tears? And that’s it. That’s it. And that allowed me to finish up the song or to go well when were the verses and stuff

WALLACE: Pretty good. Pretty good. You to shave more often because that was pretty great.

Watch above via Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace. The full interviews are available on HBO Max.