Stevie Wonder
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Stevie Wonder Biography
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. After a decade
hiatus, Wonder returnted to the spotlight in autumn of 2005 with A Time
2 Love, a comeback album on par with his classic releases featuring a
tour de force of guest appearances including So What the Fuss , which
featured Prince on guitar.~ Steve Huey, All Music Guide
Written by Steve Huey