Bobby Rogers, a founding member of Motown group The Miracles and a songwriting collaborator with Smokey Robinson, has died.

Motown Museum board member Allen Rawls said Rogers, 73, who had been ill for several years, died at his home in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan.

Rogers formed the group in 1956 with his cousin Claudette Rogers and Pete Moore, Ronnie White and Robinson. Their hits included Shop Around, You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me, The Tracks of My Tears, Going to a Go-Go, I Second That Emotion and The Tears of a Clown.

“Another soldier in my life has fallen. Bobby Rogers was my brother and a really good friend,” Robinson said.

“He and I were born on the exact same day in the same hospital in Detroit. I am really going to miss him. I loved him very much.”

Claudette Rogers said everyone was drawn to his personality.

“People always commented on the tall one with the glasses,” she told the Detroit Free Press. “He was personable, approachable and he loved talking to the women, loved talking to the guys, loved to dance, loved to sing, loved to perform. That was the joy of his life.”

His voice can be heard on Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On with Rogers saying: “It’s just a groovy party, man, I can dig it.”

Mary Wilson of the Supremes said that song captured his essence. “If people want to remember him, they should put that record on and listen to Bobby,” she told the newspaper. “That’s who he was.”

Rogers and The Miracles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, but Rogers was too ill to attend the ceremony. He shared songwriting credits with Robinson on The Temptations’ The Way You Do the Things You Do, The Contours’ First I Look at the Purse and The Miracles’ Going to a Go-Go.