rock musician lou reed, a lifelong doo-wop fan, was enthusiastic in his praise of leach and the mellows. in a 2011 "rolling stone" article, reed included "smoke from your cigarette" at the top of his list of favorite songs, adding, "lillian leach has a beautiful, sad voice, like a "femme fatale"." he mentioned the song in his speech when he inducted dion into the rock and roll hall of fame in 1989. in a later interview, looking back at his early career, he said, "everyone was going crazy over old blues people, but they forgot about all those groups, like the spaniels, people like that. records like 'smoke from your cigarette,' and 'i need a sunday kind of love,' the 'wind' by the jesters, 'later for you, baby' by the solitaires. all those really ferocious records that no one seemed to listen to anymore were underneath everything we were playing. no one really knew that."