Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris, known professionally as Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, and is credited as a pioneer and influence by musicians across a range of genres that include R&B, pop, soul, gospel, funk, and jazz. A virtual one-man band during much of his peak years, Wonder's use of synthesizers and other electronic musical instruments in the 1970s reshaped the conventions of contemporary R&B. He also helped drive such genres into the album era, crafting his LPs as cohesive and consistent, in addition to socially conscious statements with complex compositions.
Blind since shortly after his birth, Wonder was a child prodigy who signed with Motown's Tamla label at the age of 11, where he was given the professional name Little Stevie Wonder. As a teenager he established himself as one of Motown's most successful acts, becoming known for his high-pitched singing and excited harmonica playing. His single "Fingertips" was a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1963, when he was 13, making him the youngest solo artist ever to top the chart. His other 1960s hits include "Uptight ", "I Was Made to Love Her", "For Once in My Life", and "My Cherie Amour". Wonder's critical and commercial peak—termed his "classic period"—came in the 1970s with five albums released in the span of four-and-a-half years, beginning in 1972 with the albums Music of My Mind and Talking Book, which abandoned the Motown sound in favor of a synthesizer- and keyboard-driven one. He was the first Black musician to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year and the only artist to have won the award with three consecutive album releases, with Innervisions, Fulfillingness' First Finale, and Songs in the Key of Life. During that decade, he scored the US number-one singles "Superstition", "You Are the Sunshine of My Life", "You Haven't Done Nothin'", "I Wish" and "Sir Duke".
In the 1980s Wonder achieved international cultural presence, with high-profile collaborations, television appearances, charity work, and political influence, including his 1980 campaign to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a federal holiday in the United States. Hotter Than July, the soundtrack album The Woman in Red, and In Square Circle all peaked within the top five of the Billboard 200. "Ebony and Ivory", "I Just Called to Say I Love You", "Part-Time Lover" and "That's What Friends Are For" all reached number-one, making him the first act to top the Billboard Hot 100 in three consecutive decades. Wonder returned to the top five with his latest album, A Time to Love, and he has continued to remain active in music and political causes.
Wonder is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with sales of more than 100 million records worldwide. He has won 25 Grammy Awards and an Academy Award. He has been inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He ranked in the top 10 on Rolling Stone lists of the greatest singers and greatest songwriters of all time. In 2009, Wonder was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace, and in 2014, he was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Believing himself to be of Ghanaian ancestry, he was conferred Ghanaian citizenship in 2024.
Early life
Wonder was born Stevland Hardaway Judkins on May 13, 1950, in Saginaw, Michigan, the third of five children born to Lula Mae Hardaway, and the second of Hardaway's two children with Calvin Judkins. Wonder was born six weeks premature, a condition that, along with the oxygen-rich atmosphere in the hospital incubator, resulted in retinopathy of prematurity, a disease that aborts eye growth and often causes the retinas to detach, which left him blind.When Wonder was four, his mother divorced his father and moved with her three children to Detroit. Wonder attended Whitestone Baptist Church, where he sang in the choir and became a soloist at age eight. His mother later rekindled her relationship with her first child's father, changed her name back to Lula Hardaway, and had two more children.
Wonder began playing instruments at an early age, including piano, harmonica, and drums. He formed a singing partnership with a friend; calling themselves Stevie and John, they played on street corners and occasionally at parties and dances. When Stevie was signed by Motown in 1961, his surname was legally changed to Morris, which was an old family name. Berry Gordy was responsible for creating the stage name of "Little Stevie Wonder".
Wonder attended Fitzgerald Elementary School in Detroit. After his first album was released, The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie, he enrolled in Michigan School for the Blind in Lansing, Michigan.
Career
1960s: Singles as a youth
In 1961, at the age of 11, Wonder sang his own composition, "Lonely Boy", to Ronnie White of the Miracles; White then took Wonder and his mother to an audition at Motown, where CEO Berry Gordy signed Wonder to Motown's Tamla label. Before signing, producer Clarence Paul gave him the name Little Stevie Wonder. Because of Wonder's age, the label drew up a rolling five-year contract in which royalties would be held in trust until Wonder was 21. He and his mother would be paid a weekly stipend to cover their expenses: Wonder received $2.50 per week, and a private tutor was provided when Wonder was on tour.Wonder was put in the care of producer and songwriter Clarence Paul, and for a year they worked together on two albums. Tribute to Uncle Ray was recorded first, when Wonder was still 11 years old. Mainly covers of Ray Charles's songs, the album included a Wonder and Paul composition, "Sunset". The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie was recorded next, an instrumental album consisting mainly of Paul's compositions, two of which, "Wondering" and "Session Number 112", were co-written with Wonder. Feeling Wonder was now ready, a song, "Mother Thank You", was recorded for release as a single, but then pulled and replaced by the Berry Gordy song "I Call It Pretty Music, But the Old People Call It the Blues" as his début single; released summer 1962, it almost broke into the Billboard 100, spending one week of August at 101. Two follow-up singles, "Little Water Boy" and "Contract on Love", both had no success, and the two albums, released in reverse order of recording—The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie in September 1962 and Tribute to Uncle Ray in October 1962—also met with little success.
At the end of 1962, when Wonder was 12 years old, he joined the Motortown Revue, touring the "Chitlin' Circuit" of theaters across America that accepted black artists. At the Regal Theater, Chicago, his 20-minute performance was recorded and released in May 1963 as the album Recorded Live: The 12 Year Old Genius. A single, "Fingertips", from the album was also released in May, and became a major hit. The song, featuring a confident and enthusiastic Wonder returning for a spontaneous encore that catches out the replacement bass player, who is heard to call out "What key? What key?", was a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 when Wonder was aged 13, making him the youngest artist ever to top the chart. The single was simultaneously No. 1 on the R&B chart, the first time that had occurred. His next few recordings were not successful; his voice was changing as he got older, and some Motown executives were considering canceling his recording contract. During 1964, Wonder appeared in two films as himself, Muscle Beach Party and Bikini Beach, but these were not successful either. Motown producer/songwriter Sylvia Moy persuaded label owner Berry Gordy to give Wonder another chance.
Dropping the "Little" from his name, Moy and Wonder worked together to create the hit "Uptight ", and Wonder went on to have a number of other hits during the mid-1960s, including "With a Child's Heart", and "Blowin' in the Wind", a Bob Dylan song, co-sung by his mentor, producer Clarence Paul. He also began to work in the Motown songwriting department, composing songs both for himself and his label mates, including "The Tears of a Clown", a No. 1 hit for Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.
In 1968, Wonder recorded an album of instrumental soul/jazz tracks, mostly harmonica solos, under the title Eivets Rednow, which is "Stevie Wonder" spelled backward. The album failed to get much attention, and its only single, a cover of Burt Bacharach's and Hal David's "Alfie", only reached number 66 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 11 on the Adult Contemporary chart. Nonetheless, he managed to score several hits between 1967 and 1970 such as "I Was Made to Love Her", "For Once in My Life" and "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours". A number of Wonder's early hits, including "My Cherie Amour", "I Was Made to Love Her", and "Uptight ", were co-written with Henry Cosby. The hit single "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" was Wonder's first-ever self-produced song.
In 1969, Wonder participated in the Sanremo Music Festival in Italy with the song "Se tu ragazzo mio", in conjunction with Gabriella Ferri. Between 1967 and 1970, he recorded four 45 rpm singles and an Italian LP.
Wonder's appearance at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival opens the 2021 music documentary, Summer of Soul. Wonder plays a drum solo during his set.
1970s: Classic period
In September 1970, at the age of 20, Wonder married Syreeta Wright, a songwriter and former Motown secretary. Wright and Wonder worked together on the next album, Where I'm Coming From, Wonder writing the music, and Wright helping with the lyrics. Wonder and Wright wanted to "touch on the social problems of the world", and for the lyrics "to mean something". The album was released at around the same time as Marvin Gaye's What's Going On. As both albums had similar ambitions and themes, they have been compared; in a contemporaneous review by Vince Aletti in Rolling Stone, Gaye's was seen as successful, while Wonder's was seen as failing due to "self-indulgent and cluttered" production, "undistinguished" and "pretentious" lyrics, and an overall lack of unity and flow. Also in 1970, Wonder co-wrote the hit "It's a Shame" for fellow Motown act the Spinners. His contribution was meant to be a showcase of his talent and thus a weapon in his ongoing negotiations with Gordy about creative autonomy. Reaching his 21st birthday on May 13, 1971, Wonder allowed his Motown contract to expire.Around the release of Where I'm Coming From, Wonder became interested in synthesizers after hearing the album Zero Time by the electronic group Tonto's Expanding Head Band, which consisted of Robert Margouleff and Malcolm Cecil. He hired them as associate producers after meeting them in New York in May 1971. The trio quickly recorded a large amount of material, featuring a predominantly electronic sound due to the extensive use of Margouleff and Cecil's custom-built modular synthesizer, the TONTO synthesizer. The instrument combined several synthesizers, including the ARP 2600, Oberheim SEM, and the Moog. Wonder later reflected that "the synthesizer has allowed me to do a lot of things I've wanted to do for a long time but were not possible till it came along". He used the recordings as leverage in contract negotiations with Motown. The new contract, signed in July 1971, was unusually liberal by Motown standards and granted Wonder a higher royalty rate of 14%.
The first new material resulting from the collaboration was released in March 1972 on Music of My Mind. The album's lyrics addressed social and political issues alongside romantic themes. Critics praised the album, viewing it as a further step towards artistic maturity and self-expression. It peaked at No. 21 on the Billboard 200 and number six on the R&B chart. Two singles were released: "Superwoman " in April and "Keep On Running" in August, which peaked at No. 33 and 90 on the Billboard Hot 100, respectively. Music of My Mind marked the beginning of a highly successful collaboration with Margouleff and Cecil as Wonder's associate producers, engineers, and synthesizer programmers: between 1972 and 1974, the trio recorded four albums together. Co-writer Yvonne Wright would also return on later projects. Wonder played as support act on The Rolling Stones's June–July American Tour 1972, helping his music cross over to white audiences.
The electronic sound continued on Talking Book, released in October 1972. Although much of the material was recorded during the same sessions as Music of My Mind, it is generally considered to showcase a more mature and introspective Stevie Wonder, and it was acclaimed by critics. The album featured the single "Superstition", which became Wonder's first number-one hit on the Hot 100 in a decade and is regarded as one of the most distinctive and famous examples of the sound of the Hohner Clavinet. The album also included "You Are the Sunshine of My Life", which likewise reached number one on the Hot 100. The two songs earned three Grammy Awards between them at the 1974 ceremony. The album was Wonder's most commercially successful to date, peaking at number three on the Billboard 200 and becoming his first album to reach the top of the R&B chart, where it remained for three weeks.
Wonder's next album Innervisions, released in August 1973, featured "Higher Ground" as well as the trenchant, racially conscious "Living for the City". Both songs reached No. 1 on the R&B charts. Popular ballads such as "Golden Lady" and "All in Love Is Fair" were also present, in a mixture of moods that nevertheless held together as a unified whole. Innervisions generated two more Grammy Awards at the 1974 ceremony: Best Engineered Recording – Non-Classical, presented to Cecil and Margouleff, and his first Album of the Year; at the ceremony the following year, he earned the award for Best R&B Song for "Living for the City". With Innervisions, Wonder became the most influential and acclaimed black musician of the early 1970s. The album is ranked No. 34 on Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
On August 6, 1973, three days after the release of Innervisions, Wonder was seriously injured in an automobile accident while on tour in North Carolina. Being driven by his cousin John Harris in a rental Mercury Monarch sedan on the Interstate 85, the car hit the back of a flatbed farm truck, leaving Wonder with a fractured skull and a cerebral contusion. He was rushed to the hospital, where he lay in a coma for four days. The injury resulted in a partial loss of his sense of smell, a temporary loss of his sense of taste, and a bump on the forehead. He was transported to Los Angeles after two weeks for continued treatment before returning to New York in September. Despite orders from his doctor to refrain from performing, Wonder made a surprise appearance at an Elton John concert in Boston Garden on September 25, and in November played at a homecoming benefit for Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Shaw was facing financial difficulties, so Wonder, who was a member of the university's board of trustees, rallied other acts including Exuma, Labelle, and the Chambers Brothers to join the concert, which raised more than $10,000 for the school's scholarship fund.
Wonder embarked on a European tour in early 1974, performing in France at the Midem convention in Cannes, in England at the Rainbow Theatre in London, and on the German television show Musikladen. On his return to the United States, he played a sold-out concert at Madison Square Garden in March 1974, highlighting both up-tempo material and long, building improvisations on mid-tempo songs such as "Living for the City". The album Fulfillingness' First Finale appeared in July 1974 and set two hits high on the pop charts: the No. 1 "You Haven't Done Nothin'" and the Top Ten "Boogie On Reggae Woman". The Album of the Year was again one of three Grammys won.
The same year, Wonder took part in a Los Angeles jam session with ex-Beatles members John Lennon and Paul McCartney that would become known as the bootleg album A Toot and a Snore in '74. He also co-wrote and produced the 1974 Syreeta Wright album Stevie Wonder Presents: Syreeta.
On October 4, 1975, Wonder performed at the historic "Wonder Dream Concert" in Kingston, Jamaica, a benefit for the Jamaican Institute for the Blind. In 1975, he played harmonica on two tracks on Billy Preston's album It's My Pleasure.
By 1975, at the age of 25, Wonder had won two consecutive Grammy Awards: in 1974 for Innervisions and in 1975 for Fulfillingness' First Finale. In 1976, when Paul Simon won the Album of the Year Grammy for his Still Crazy After All These Years, he wryly noted: "I'd like to thank Stevie Wonder, who didn't make an album this year."
The double album-with-extra-EP, Songs in the Key of Life, was released in September 1976. Sprawling in style and sometimes lyrically difficult to fathom, the album was hard for some listeners to assimilate, yet is regarded by many as Wonder's crowning achievement and one of the most recognizable and accomplished albums in pop music history. The album became the first by an American artist to debut straight at No. 1 in the Billboard charts, where it stood for 14 non-consecutive weeks. Two tracks became No. 1 Pop/R&B hits: "I Wish" and "Sir Duke". The baby-celebratory "Isn't She Lovely" was written about his newborn daughter Aisha, while songs such as "Love's in Need of Love Today" and "Village Ghetto Land" reflected a far more pensive mood. Songs in the Key of Life won Album of the Year and two other Grammys. The album ranks 4th on Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Also in 1976, Wonder heard about the demonstration of the Kurzweil Reading Machine, the first multi-font reading machine for the blind, on The Today Show, and later became the user of the first production unit, beginning a long-term association between himself and Ray Kurzweil.
Until 1979's Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants", his only further 1970s release was the retrospective three-disc album Looking Back, an anthology of his early Motown period.