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THE WONDER YEARS
Stevie Wonder
has been creating magical music for more than four decades. Earlier this year, he received the prestigious Johnny Mercer Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and has just been named the recipient of Billboard’s Century Award. He recently talked to Playback about his
legendary career.
by jim steinblatt
By Jim Steinblatt
Stevie Wonder – can it be that he’s been on the scene for over 40 years? He was just 13 years old, a sightless virtuoso in the Ray Charles mode, when his “Fingertips (Part 2)” topped the Pop and R&B charts in 1963 on the Tamla imprint of Berry Gordy’s Motown. Few children who score a big hit record remain in the public eye for more than one year, but Stevie’s career has lasted four decades. He is an American cultural icon known around the world. His phenomenal growth as an artist and songwriter has been played out against the backdrop of the turbulent national and international events of his and our times. His artistic success is matched by the public acceptance of his music – he can boast of nearly 30 Top Ten pop hits; over 20 Grammy Awards; induction into the Songwriters and Rock and Roll Halls of Fame; and countless other honors. In June 2004, he received the highest honor bestowed by the Songwriters Hall of Fame – the Johnny Mercer Award. And Billboard recently announced that Stevie Wonder will be recognized with that publication’s prestigious Century Award.
In his late teens, Stevie’s driving need to express himself musically in his own way led him to rebel against Motown’s successful but rigid recording formula of the 1960s. That led to an explosion of innovative music that has captured the imagination of generations of fans. He has produced love songs of lasting beauty (“For Once in My Life,” “My Cherie Amour,” “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” “I Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer,” “Until You Come Back to Me,” and dozens more); topical songs (“Living for the City,” “Master Blaster,” “Superstition” and “Happy Birthday” – a call for recognition of Dr Martin Luther King’s birthday as a national holiday), and songs of pure joy (“Isn’t She Lovely,” “Sir Duke”). Stevie’s songwriting has proven attractive to other artists, as well. Countless covers of Wonder-written songs have been recorded by talents as diverse as Joan Baez, Aretha Franklin, Peter Frampton, Frank Sinatra, Joan Osborne, the Beach Boys, Barbra Streisand, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, among many, many more.
Time 2 Love (Tamla), the first new album of all-new Stevie Wonder material since 1995 is scheduled for release in 2005. It’s a perfect time for this great American music creator to reflect on his long legacy while continuing to look ahead, which he did in an interview prior to the Songwriters Hall of Fame Dinner.
It’s interesting that you are the very first African-American to receive the Johnny Mercer Award.
Stevie Wonder: I didn’t know that. I’m very happy to be receiving this award. Johnny Mercer was a great writer. To know that, in these times when there’s so much craziness going on, for me to be receiving this award, God is blessing me with more songs, more music and more ways of expression. There have been so many great African-American writers who have gone before, it’s a pretty amazing thing for me to receive this award. Thinking of the world today and looking back on songs written by Johnny Mercer like “Moon River,” “Days of Wine and Roses” or “Lazybones.” A song is so incredible because you are not only able to capture the feeling you get from the melody but also to express the lyric.
It’s almost 45 years since you began to make music professionally as a little boy. Does it still feel as exciting to be doing this?
It’s an amazing thing to know that since 1961 I’ve been with the same recording company, even though Motown has gone through a lot of changes over the years. For me to still be in the business as a professional amazes me. I’m still very excited about it. I’ve been given the blessing to be able to create songs and to live life – I think songs come from life experiences and are an expression of different things that have happened or of emotions.
“We really have a great need today to have a place of unity, a place to learn the significance of song and to use that talent to further changing the world to a better place.”æ
æ— Stevie Wonder
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Are there three or four people you’d care to cite as important influences on your songwriting?
Obviously, Lennon & McCartney. Holland-Dozier-Holland, Bob Marley, Johnny Mercer, Henry Mancini, Ray Charles, Wyclef Jean, Bacharach & David, and many, many more.
For songwriters, musicians and artists, the world, except, perhaps when it comes to politics, is a colorless place – as I wrote in my song, “Sir Duke,” “music is a language we all understand with equal opportunity for all.” Music is a part of God’s design. It lets us take those different notes, frequencies and tones and put them together in a way that creates a place of harmony. Even in discord, there is a yearning for harmony. We really have a great need today to have a place of unity, a place to learn the significance of song and to use that talent to further changing the world to a better place.
At a point in your career, in the early 1970s, you were able to renegotiate your contract with Motown to allow you artistic control of your recordings. Following that, there was a flow of musical creativity from you that is still mind-boggling: Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Songs in the Key of Life. There must have been so much new music inside you that was dying to come out.
It was from years and years of my having a desire to write songs in a way that was relevant to how I was feeling and where the world was at. And also to really express songs in a way that I felt I wanted to deliver them in – using major sevenths or flatted fifths, or whatever. I wanted to do things in a way that was not necessarily “what R&B or Pop is supposed to sound like.” I have a love for all genres of music, including classical, and I wanted to take the harpsichord or clavichord to a whole other place in contemporary music. That’s where the Moog and ARP synthesizers played an integral part in my being able to paint the pictures of how I was feeling.
You’ve written important songs for numerous other artists. What comes to mind are “Tell Me Something Good” for Rufus with Chaka Khan, and “Until You Come Back to Me” for Aretha Franklin.
I really am thankful to God for the journey I’ve been allowed to take. This award only encourages me to do more.
You have a new album to be released soon – Time 2 Love. As an artist known for always moving forward, your public is expecting something they haven’t heard before.
This album is in the here-and-now, but it doesn’t mean that the songs aren’t a reflection of what has gone before.
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