| Stevie
Wonder
is a much-beloved American icon and
an indisputable genius not only of R&B
but popular music in general. Blind
virtually since birth, Wonder's
heightened awareness of sound helped him
create vibrant, colorful music teeming
with life and ambition. Nearly
everything he recorded bore the stamp of
his sunny, joyous positivity; even when
he addressed serious racial, social, and
spiritual issues (which he did quite
often in his prime), or sang about
heartbreak and romantic uncertainty, an
underlying sense of optimism and hope
always seemed to emerge. Much like his
inspiration, Ray Charles, Wonder had a
voracious appetite for many different
kinds of music, and refused to confine
himself to any one sound or style. His
best records were a richly eclectic brew
of soul, funk, rock & roll,
sophisticated Broadway/Tin Pan
Alley-style pop, jazz, reggae, and
African elements -- and they weren't
just stylistic exercises; Wonder took it
all and forged it into his own personal
form of expression. His range helped
account for his broad-based appeal, but
so did his unique, elastic voice, his
peerless melodic facility, his gift for
complex arrangements, and his taste for
lovely, often sentimental ballads.
Additionally, Wonder's pioneering use of
synthesizers during the '70s changed the
face of R&B; he employed a kaleidoscope
of contrasting textures and voices that
made him a virtual one-man band, all the
while evoking a surprisingly organic
warmth. Along with Marvin Gaye and Isaac
Hayes, Wonder brought R&B into the album
age, crafting his LPs as cohesive,
consistent statements with compositions
that often took time to make their
point. All of this made Wonder perhaps
R&B's greatest individual auteur,
rivaled only by Gaye or, in later days,
Prince. Originally, Wonder was a child
prodigy who started out in the general
Motown mold, but he took control of his
vision in the '70s, spinning off a
series of incredible albums that were as
popular as they were acclaimed; most of
his reputation rests on these works,
which most prominently include Talking
Book, Innervisions, and Songs in the Key
of Life. His output since then has been
inconsistent, marred by excesses of
sentimentality and less of the
progressive imagination of his best
work, but it's hardly lessened the
reverence in which he's long been held.
Wonder was born Steveland Hardaway
Judkins in Saginaw, MI, on May 13, 1950
(he later altered his name to Steveland
Morris when his mother married). A
premature infant, he was put on oxygen
treatment in an incubator; likely it was
an excess of oxygen that exacerbated a
visual condition known as retinopathy of
prematurity, causing his blindness. In
1954, his family moved to Detroit, where
the already musically inclined Stevie
began singing in his church's choir;
from there he blossomed into a genuine
prodigy, learning piano, drums, and
harmonica all by the age of nine. While
performing for some of his friends in
1961, Stevie was discovered by Ronnie
White of the Miracles, who helped
arrange an audition with Berry Gordy at
Motown. Gordy signed the youngster
immediately and teamed him with
producer/songwriter Clarence Paul, under
the new name Little Stevie Wonder.
Stevie released his first two albums in
1962: A Tribute to Uncle Ray, which
featured covers of Stevie's hero Ray
Charles, and The Jazz Soul of Little
Stevie, an orchestral jazz album
spotlighting his instrumental skills on
piano, harmonica, and assorted
percussion. Neither sold very well, but
that all changed in 1963 with the live
album The 12 Year Old Genius, which
featured a new extended version of the
harmonica instrumental "Fingertips."
Edited for release as a single,
"Fingertips, Pt. 2" rocketed to the top
of both the pop and R&B charts, thanks
to Wonder's irresistible, youthful
exuberance; meanwhile, The 12 Year Old
Genius became Motown's first
chart-topping LP.
Wonder charted a few more singles
over the next year, but none on the
level of "Fingertips, Pt. 2." As his
voice changed, his recording career was
temporarily put on hold, and he studied
classical piano at the Michigan School
for the Blind in the meantime. He
dropped the "Little" portion of his
stage name in 1964, and re-emerged the
following year with the infectious,
typically Motown-sounding dance tune
"Uptight (Everything's Alright)," a
number one R&B/Top Five pop smash. Not
only did he co-write the song for his
first original hit, but it also
reinvented him as a more mature vocalist
in the public's mind, making the similar
follow-up "Nothing's Too Good for My
Baby" another success. The first signs
of Wonder's social activism appeared in
1966 via his hit cover of Bob Dylan's "Blowin'
in the Wind" and its follow-up, "A Place
in the Sun," but as Motown still had the
final say on Wonder's choice of
material, this new direction would not
yet become a major facet of his work.
By this time, Wonder was, however,
beginning to take more of a hand in his
own career. He co-wrote his next several
hits, all of which made the R&B Top Ten
-- "Hey Love," "I Was Made to Love Her"
(an R&B number one that went to number
two pop in 1967), and "For Once in My
Life" (another smash that reached number
two pop and R&B). Wonder's 1968 album
For Once in My Life signaled his budding
ambition; he co-wrote about half of the
material and, for the first time,
co-produced several tracks. The record
also contained three more singles in the
R&B chart-topper "Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day,"
"You Met Your Match," and "I Don't Know
Why." Wonder scored again in 1969 with
the pop and R&B Top Five hit "My Cherie
Amour" (which he'd actually recorded
three years prior) and the Top Ten
"Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday." In
1970, Wonder received his first-ever
co-production credit for the album
Signed, Sealed & Delivered; he co-wrote
the R&B chart-topper "Signed, Sealed,
Delivered I'm Yours" with singer Syreeta
Wright, whom he married later that year,
and also scored hits with "Heaven Help
Us All" and a rearrangement of the
Beatles' "We Can Work It Out." In
addition, two other Motown artists had
major success with Wonder co-writes: the
Spinners' "It's a Shame" and the
Miracles' only pop number one, "Tears of
a Clown."
1971 brought a turning point in
Wonder's career. On his 21st birthday,
his contract with Motown expired, and
the royalties set aside in his trust
fund became available to him. A month
before his birthday, Wonder released
Where I'm Coming From, his first
entirely self-produced album, which also
marked the first time he wrote or
co-wrote every song on an LP (usually in
tandem with Wright) and the first time
his keyboard and synthesizer work
dominated his arrangements. Gordy was
reportedly not fond of the work, and it
wasn't a major commercial success,
producing only the Top Ten hit "If You
Really Love Me" (plus a classic B-side
in "Never Dreamed You'd Leave in
Summer"). Nonetheless, it was clearly an
ambitious attempt at making a unified
album-length artistic statement, and
served notice that Wonder was no longer
content to release albums composed of
hit singles and assorted filler.
Accordingly, Wonder did not immediately
renew his contract with Motown, as the
label had expected; instead, he used
proceeds from his trust fund to build
his own recording studio and to enroll
in music theory classes at USC. He
negotiated a new deal with Motown that
dramatically increased his royalty rate
and established his own publishing
company, Black Bull Music, which allowed
him to retain the rights to his music;
most importantly, he wrested full
artistic control over his recordings, as
Gaye had just done with the landmark
What's Going On.
Freed from the dictates of Motown's
hit-factory mindset, Wonder had already
begun following a more personal and
idiosyncratic muse. One of his
negotiating chips had been a full album
completed at his new studio; Wonder had
produced, played nearly all the
instruments, and written all the
material (with Wright contributing to
several tracks). Released under Wonder's
new deal in early 1972, Music of My Mind
heralded his arrival as a major,
self-contained talent with an original
vision that pushed the boundaries of
R&B. The album produced a hit single in
the spacy, synth-driven ballad
"Superwoman (Where Were You When I
Needed You)," but like contemporary work
by Hayes and Gaye, Music of My Mind
worked as a smoothly flowing song suite
unto itself. Around the same time it was
released, Wonder's marriage to Wright
broke up; the two remained friends,
however, and Wonder produced and wrote
several songs for her debut album. The
same year, Wonder toured with the
Rolling Stones, bringing his music to a
large white audience as well.
For the follow-up to Music of My
Mind, Wonder refined his approach,
tightening up his songcraft while
addressing his romance with Wright. The
result, Talking Book, was released in
late 1972 and made him a superstar. Song
for song one of the strongest R&B albums
ever released, Talking Book also
perfected Wonder's spacy, futuristic
experiments with electronics, and was
hailed as a magnificently realized
masterpiece. Wonder topped the charts
with the gutsy, driving funk classic
"Superstition" and the mellow, jazzy
ballad "You Are the Sunshine of My
Life," which went on to become a pop
standard; those two songs went on to win
three Grammys between them. Amazingly,
Wonder only upped the ante with his next
album, 1973's Innervisions, a concept
album about the state of contemporary
society that ranks with Gaye's What's
Going On as a pinnacle of socially
conscious R&B. The ghetto chronicle
"Living for the City" and the intense
spiritual self-examination "Higher
Ground" both went to number one on the
R&B charts and the pop Top Ten, and
Innervisions took home a Grammy for
Album of the Year. Wonder was lucky to
be alive to enjoy the success; while
being driven to a concert in North
Carolina, a large timber fell on
Wonder's car. He sustained serious head
injuries and lapsed into a coma, but
fortunately made a full recovery.
Wonder's next record, 1974's
Fulfillingness' First Finale, was
slightly more insular and less
accessible than its immediate
predecessors, and unsurprisingly imbued
with a sense of mortality. The hits,
however, were the upbeat "Boogie On,
Reggae Woman" (a number one R&B and Top
Five pop hit) and the venomous Richard
Nixon critique "You Haven't Done Nothin'"
(number one on both sides). It won him a
second straight Album of the Year
Grammy, by which time he'd been heavily
involved as a producer and writer on
Syreeta's second album, Stevie Wonder
Presents Syreeta. Wonder subsequently
retired to his studio and spent two
years crafting a large-scale project
that would stand as his magnum opus.
Finally released in 1976, Songs in the
Key of Life was a sprawling
two-LP-plus-one-EP set that found Wonder
at his most ambitious and expansive.
Some critics called it brilliant but
prone to excess and indulgence, while
others hailed it as his greatest
masterpiece and the culmination of his
career; in the end, they were probably
both right. "Sir Duke," an ebullient
tribute to music in general and Duke
Ellington in particular, and the funky
"I Wish" both went to number one pop and
R&B; the hit "Isn't She Lovely," a paean
to Wonder's daughter, became something
of a standard, and "Pastime Paradise"
was later sampled for the backbone of
Coolio's rap smash "Gangsta's Paradise."
Not surprisingly, Songs in the Key of
Life won a Grammy for Album of the Year;
in hindsight, though, it marked the end
of a remarkable explosion of creativity
and of Wonder's artistic prime.
Having poured a tremendous amount of
energy into Songs in the Key of Life,
Wonder released nothing for the next
three years. When he finally returned in
1979, it was with the mostly
instrumental Journey Through the Secret
Life of Plants, ostensibly the
soundtrack to a never-released
documentary. Although it contained a few
pop songs, including the hit "Send One
Your Love," its symphonic flirtations
befuddled most listeners and critics. It
still made the Top Ten on the LP chart
on Wonder's momentum alone -- one of the
stranger releases to do so. To
counteract possible speculation that
he'd gone off the deep end, Wonder
rushed out the straightforward pop album
Hotter Than July in 1980. The
reggae-flavored "Master Blaster (Jammin')"
returned him to the top of the R&B
charts and the pop Top Five, and "Happy
Birthday" was part of the ultimately
successful campaign to make Martin
Luther King's birthday a national
holiday (Wonder being one of the cause's
most active champions). Artistically
speaking, Hotter Than July was a cut
below his classic '70s output, but it
was still a solid outing; fans were so
grateful to have the old Wonder back
that they made it his first
platinum-selling LP.
In 1981, Wonder began work on a
follow-up album that was plagued by
delays, suggesting that he might not be
able to return to the visionary heights
of old. He kept busy in the meantime,
though; in 1982, his racial-harmony duet
with Paul McCartney, "Ebony and Ivory,"
hit number one, and he released a
greatest-hits set covering 1972-1982
called Original Musiquarium I. It
featured four new songs, of which "That
Girl" (number one R&B, Top Five pop) and
the lengthy, jazzy "Do I Do" (featuring
Dizzy Gillespie; number two R&B) were
significant hits. In 1984, still not
having completed the official follow-up
to Hotter Than July, he recorded the
soundtrack to the Gene Wilder comedy The
Woman in Red, which wasn't quite a
full-fledged Stevie Wonder album but did
feature a number of new songs, including
"I Just Called to Say I Love You."
Adored by the public (it was his
biggest-selling single ever) and loathed
by critics (who derided it as sappy and
simple-minded), "I Just Called to Say I
Love You" was an across-the-board number
one smash, and won an Oscar for Best
Song.
Wonder finally completed the official
album he'd been working on for nearly
five years, and released In Square
Circle in 1985. Paced by the number one
hit "Part Time Lover" -- his last solo
pop chart-topper -- and several other
strong songs, In Square Circle went
platinum, even if Wonder's synthesizer
arrangements now sounded standard rather
than groundbreaking. He performed on the
number one charity singles "We Are the
World" by USA for Africa and "That's
What Friends Are For" by Dionne Warwick
& Friends, and returned quickly with a
new album, Characters, in 1987. While
Characters found Wonder's commercial
clout on the pop charts slipping away,
it was a hit on the R&B side, topping
the album charts and producing a number
one hit in "Skeletons." It would be his
final release of the '80s; he didn't
return until 1991, with the soundtrack
to the Spike Lee film Jungle Fever. His
next full album of new material, 1995's
Conversation Peace, was a commercial
disappointment, despite winning two
Grammys for the single "For Your Love."
That same year, Coolio revived "Pastime
Paradise" in his own brooding rap smash
"Gangsta's Paradise," which became the
year's biggest hit. Wonder capitalized
on the renewed notoriety by cutting a
hit duet with Babyface, "How Come, How
Long," in 1996. Since then, Motown has
released a number of remasters and
compilations attempting to define and
repackage Wonder's vast legacy. His
far-reaching influence was felt in the
neo-soul movement that came to
prominence in the late '90s, and he also
remained a composer of choice for jazz
artists looking to incorporate
harmonically sophisticated pop/R&B tunes
into their repertoires. That only
scratches the surface of Wonder's impact
on contemporary popular music, which is
why he was inducted into the Rock 'n'
Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, and remains a
living legend regardless of whatever
else he does. |
