This date marks the birth of Stevie Wonder in 1950. He is an African American singer and songwriter, who had his first success on the Motown label at age 13.
He was born Steveland Morris in Saginaw, MI. Blind since infancy, Wonder began playing the piano at the age of 4 and was a proficient singer and instrumentalist by the age of 13, when his first hit, “Fingertips Part 2” in 1963, was released by Motown, at which time he was given his professional name. He produced the albums “Signed, Sealed and Delivered” (1970) and “Where I’m Coming From” (1971), the latter written entirely by Wonder and his wife, Syreeta Wright.
On the album “Music of the Mind” (1972) he used modern recording technology to allow him to play most of the instrumental accompaniments. Wonder experimented with synthesizers and was one of the first musicians to make extensive use of electronic music in Black American song. A multi-instrumentalist, Wonder plays the piano, synthesizer, talk box, harmonica, congas, drums, bongos, bass guitar, organ, melodica, and clarinet. “Talking Book” (1972), an album on which he played all the instruments and sang all the vocal parts, contained the hit singles “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” and “Superstition,” and he won several Grammy Awards for “Talking Book” and his next album, “Innervisions “in 1973.
The same year he survived a near-fatal automobile accident. More Grammy Awards followed for the albums “Songs in the Key of Life” (1976), which contains the hit song “Sir Duke,” a celebratory tribute to American jazz composer Duke Ellington; and “In Square Circle” (1985). Wonder’s other albums include “Looking Back” (1977); “Hotter than July” (1980); “Characters” (1987); “Jungle Fever” (1991); the sound track to a motion picture by American director Spike Lee; and “Conversation Peace” (1995). In 1996 Wonder won three more Grammy Awards: for best male rhythm-and-blues vocalist, best song, and for lifetime achievement.
Wonder has also been active in such social causes as the anti-apartheid movement, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and the Retinitis Pigmentosa Foundation. An advocate of Black civil rights, Wonder spearheaded the effort to institute a national holiday in honor of the birthday of clergyman and civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr.
A prominent figure in popular music during the latter half of the 20th century, Wonder has recorded more than 30 U.S. top ten hits and won 25 Grammy Awards (the most ever won by a solo artist) as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award. He has also won an Academy Award for Best Song, and been inducted into both the Rock and Roll and Songwriters halls of fame. He has also been awarded the Polar Music Prize. American music magazine Rolling Stone named him the ninth greatest singer of all time. In June 2009 he became the fourth artist to receive the Montreal Jazz Festival Spirit Award.[80]
He has had ten U.S. number-one hits on the pop charts as well as 20 R&B number one hits, and has sold over 100 million records, 19.5 million of which are albums; he is one of the top 60 best-selling music artists with combined sales of singles and albums. Wonder has recorded several critically acclaimed albums and hit singles, and writes and produces songs for many of his label mates and outside artists as well. Wonder plays the piano, synthesizer, harmonica, congas, drums, bongos, organ, melodica and Clavinet. In his childhood, he was best known for his harmonica work, but today he is better known for his keyboard skills and vocal ability. Wonder was the first Motown artist and second African-American musician to win an Academy Award for Best Original Song, which he won for his 1984 hit single “I Just Called to Say I Love You” from the movie The Woman in Red.
Wonder’s “classic period” is generally agreed to be between 1972 and 1977. Some observers see in 1971’s Where I’m Coming From certain indications of the beginning of the classic period, such as its new funky keyboard style which Wonder used throughout the classic period. Some determine Wonder’s first “classic” album to be 1972’s Music of My Mind, on which he attained personal control of production, and on which he programmed a series of songs integrated with one another to make a concept album.[84] Others skip over early 1972 and determine the beginning of the classic period to be Talking Book in late 1972, the album in which Wonder “hit his stride”.
His classic 1970s albums were very influential on the music world: the 1983 Rolling Stone Record Guide said they “pioneered stylistic approaches that helped to determine the shape of pop music for the next decade”; Rolling Stone’s 2003 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time included four of the five albums, with three in the top 90; and in 2005, Kanye West said of his own work, “I’m not trying to compete with what’s out there now. I’m really trying to compete with Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life. It sounds musically blasphemous to say something like that, but why not set that as your bar?”
Written by Dianne Washington