Be still my funky-beatin' heart! Six classic Stevie Wonder albums have been remastered
and re-released for happy public consumption. We're talking about the great stuff, the
classics of the Motown years. We're talking Stevie Wonder's greatest hits and all the
tunes that should have been. Before these albums, Wonder had been the BOY Wonder, Little
Stevie Wonder, the wonder kid that made hits in the Motown mold and, while showing an amazing
amount of talent, wasn't really giving any hints of what was to come. In 1971, Stevie turned
21 and pulled a clever power play, threatening to leave Motown unless he was given artistic
control of his music. He wanted to make albums, not just hit singles and filler. Motown
made the smart move and gave the guy what he wanted, and the results are right here for all
to see and here. Let's take a look at each of the six CDs that came after he was given that
control.
Music Of My Mind (1972) doesn't have anything on it that everyone would instantly recognize,
if they ever recognized it at all, but it has something that a Stevie Wonder fan needs to hear:
seeds. The hooks are coming along here, but not quite sharpened. The deep street-groove that
would later turn songs like "You Haven't Done Nothing" and "Living For The City" into timeless
classics is evident in "Love Having You Around." The sensitivity that would someday endear
"You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" can be heard in mid-growth on "I Love Every Little Thing
About You." The most important revelation is Stevie the player. With the exception of a few
solos by guest artists, everything is played by Stevie himself. Few one-man bands have sounded
so alive and powerful. This was truly a musical genius testing the waters with quite a bit
of success.
The real breakthrough came in 1973 with Talking Book, an album jammed with unforgettable
songs. "Superstition" and "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" became instant radio hits,
both reaching #1 on the pop singles charts and
propelling the entire album up the pop and R&B charts, as well. Motown's leap of faith paid
off bigtime.
Again Wonder performed the lion's share of the music, but this time he brought in more
people for specific tasks. For the funky guitar chops that drive "Maybe Your Baby," he
brought in Ray Parker, Jr. (who later hit the charts with the theme from Ghostbusters).
For the quiet, independently riffing melodic guitars in "Looking For Another Love," Jeff
Beck and Buzzy Felton sat in. Each artist wrote a phrase, but it was still Stevie Wonder's
book, and it wasn't just a preview this time. Stevie had arrived.
If Talking Book was a great pop album, Innervisions was a landmark funk album, bursting at
the seems with deep, tasty grooves, rubberband bass lines, percussive keyboards and street
smarts. There really isn't a song here that couldn't have been a hit with the proper
publicity department push, but the ones that got the nudge, "Higher Ground," "Living For
The City" and "Don't You Worry Bout A Thing" all tore up the charts and are still classic
rock radio staples. If you only know the hits, and if those hits are favorites of yours,
you owe it to yourself to buy this CD and discover the breathtaking beauty of "Visions,"
the cool funkiness of "Too High" and bouncy dancability of "Jesus Children Of America."
"Golden Lady," "All In Love Is Fair" and "He's Misstra Know-It-All" could each get a paragraph
of their own here, but we have too much to talk about and not enough time. If you wish
to pick these CDs up one at a time, start here, by all means.
There was no way to follow Innervisions. 1974's Fulfillingness' First Finale suffered by comparison.
The hits, "Boogie On Reggae Woman" and "You Haven't Done Nothin'," hold up today as some of
his finest songs, but much of the album was too low key to really spark much enthusiasm.
"Heaven Is Ten Zillion Light Years Away" contains some dynamite background vocal vamping in
the gospel tradition, but the song feels half-baked and long, as do several of the others.
The laid-back dreaminess of most of the songs create something of a cohesive "groove," but
so do some lawn sprinklers. I can't say what the circumstances were here, but my guess is
that Stevie himself wasn't particularly in love with most of this material. It may have
just been time to do an album.
Stevie's 1976 release, Songs In The Key Of Life, was a big risk. He'd been out of the
spotlight for a while, for starters, and his previous album hadn't stacked up to the two
before it. So what did he do but come out with a double album that also included a 4-song
7-inch EP. The hits came fast and furious for a while. "Sir Duke" stands alongside Earth,
Wind & Fire's cover of "Got To Get You Into My Life" as some of the greatest horncentric
funk of the 70s, and "I Wish" is one of the most wonderfully energetic hits in the Wonder
canon. Stevie's sentimental side, often responsible for his more forgettable material,
produced a big hit in "Isn't She Lovely," and his jazzy side was responsible for one of
the most interesting cuts, the fusionesque "Contusion." This 2-CD set recreates the
double LP-plus in chronological order, and so the second CD begins with "Isn't She Lovely"
and continues on through the forgettable "Joy Inside My Tears" and the tough 'n' funky
"Black Man" all the way through the four song EP, which was really only notable for
"All Day Sucker." That tune had a clavinet track that could cut glass, and it sounds nice
and sharp on this remaster. Did Songs In The Key Of Life need to be a double LP? Definitely
not, so the 4-song EP was really pushing it, but if you're a true Stevie Wonder fan and you
want the works, you're going to appreciate the accuracy of this release.
Closing out this six-pack is 1980's Hotter Than July. Between this album and Songs In The
Key Of Life, Stevie had released a very strange double LP called The Journey Through The
Secret Life Of Plants, which had pissed off a lot of his fans who bought it expecting Sir
Duke Part Two. What they got instead was a lot of atmospheric instrumental music and just
a few vocal moments. In retrospect it's very nice music, but it sure didn't do a lot to
keep Wonder at the top of the heap. By 1980 he was in serious need of commercial redemption.
Hotter Than July, a single LP, was blasted by some critics for sounding cold and
thin, and there are certainly more than a few sounds that seem a bit synthetic, but listening
to "All I Do" one feels all the warmth of classic Wonder full force. There wasn't much to
complain about with the nasty-grooved "Master Blaster (Jammin')", a reggae tune clearly
inspired by Bob Marley & The Wailers and possesing a rhythm that forces dancing. Still,
there's a thin quality to the sound that makes you wonder what this would have been like
had it been recorded during the Innervisions sessions. Time marches on and sounds change.
For all its faults, Hotter Than July is a very listenable CD. In a way, it is out of place
in this stack of discs. The first five belong together, representing the genesis of a sound,
its development and its swan song. Hotter Than July really represents the beginning of
Stevie Wonder Mark III, the 80s version that took on the characteristics of the digital
technology used to create it. Definitely something lost there. Stevie Wonder's career has
been up and down ever since, with commercial highs like the McCartney duet, "Ebony And Ivory,"
and lulls of inactivity that allowed the public to forget he was out there at all. In another
sense, Hotter Than July may belong here because it contains "Master Blaster (Jammin'),"
arguably the final song absolutely necessary for a Stevie Wonder time capsule. That'd be
quite a capsule, too, stuffed to overflowing with great grooves, sweet ballads and perfectly
crafted tunes that crossed over between pop and soul/funk, opening the door for all kinds
of musical crossover styles that followed. All of these rereleases sound fantastic and
clear as a bell, and all come with lyrics and re-created liner notes. Just the kind of
attention and respect Stevie Wonder deserves.
