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Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
The Everybody Say YEAH! Edition
01:05:21
Stevie Wonder’s legendary songbook started when he was a “Little” young man. How a semi-improvised live recording became his first, and least likely, No. 1 hit.
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You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number one? Series. On today's show, when I say the name Stevie Wonder, what songs leap to mind? I don't need to tell you that Wonder is a legend and his catalog of hits is vast. Where do you even start? Well, if you're like me, I'm sure you think of this almost immediately.
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Very superstitious writings on the wall.
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If you've been at a party or a wedding recently, I'll bet you've heard this. Or maybe this. Okay, but what if I told you to limit yourself to Stevie wonder in the 60s? Then what do you think of probably this. Or this, Or even this. But here's the thing. Those last three songs I played respectively, For Once in My Life, My Cherie Amor and Uptight, none of these 60s classics topped Billboard's Hot 100. In fact, for his entire first decade as a recording artist, Wonder's only number one pop hit was this.
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Just a little bit louder. Clap your hand Just a little bit louder.
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That's Fingertips. To be exact, it's Fingertips, part two. And maybe you didn't even know there was a part one. This single is an oxymoron, a massive chart topping hit by an affirmed pop icon that now rarely gets played on the radio. Yet the Rock and Roll hall of Fame has enshrined Fingertip as one of its 660 songs that shaped rock and roll. And it is a joyous and fascinating single, an artifact of not just 1963 or Motown, but the history of African American popular song itself. How exactly did this live recording wind up kickstarting Stevie Wonder's career and establish an image that Wonder would spend the next decade trying to outgrow? These are important questions because they help decode the totemic artist Wonder turned into. By the 1970s, Stevie Wonder wasn't just one of the top performers on the charts.
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A boy's born in Hard Dye, Mississippi.
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He had reinvented his career. The Billboard charts, rock critics, and the music industry itself all lined up to coronate Stevie Wonder. Today on Hit Parade, we explore the emergence, the emancipation and the eminence of Stevie Wonder. How his years as a child star informed the man he became. You can hear it in his voice on that very first chart topping hit.
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Everybody see yeah, yeah See yeah See yeah yeah yeah yeah, yeah.
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And that's where your hit parade marches today, the week ending August 10, 1963, when Billboard's Hot 100 was topped by Fingertips Part 2 by Little Stevie Wonder. And yes, that was his moniker. There are enough stories about the man born Steven Hardaway Judkins to fill multiple podcast episodes from his charitable work and political activism.
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Martin Luther King, Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you.
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To the hits he wrote for others and his many duets, Even his role helping to popularize hip hop.
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And what would you say at a party? Jamming on the one Jamming Jamming on the one Jamming on the one.
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But, but. The story of how Wonder first came into the public consciousness in the early 60s is, in a way, most fascinating. And not only for its improbability, it also contained the seed for everything that would make Wonder exceptional throughout his career. Born premature in Saginaw, Michigan, In May of 1950, Steveland's blindness was caused by an overabundance of oxygen pumped into his hospital incubator that ultimately, ultimately detached his retinas. More positively, young Stevie's reliance upon his ears gave him deep sonic sensitivity and prodigy level abilities on a range of instruments, including piano, harmonica and drums, all of which he picked up before 10. When Berry Gordy signed young Steveland at age 11 to his Tamla label, the first imprint of his Motown recording company, he was in awe of the young man's talent, but unsure at first of what to do with him. This might explain some of the unusual experiments attempted at first. That's the original studio version of Fingertips, track one on the debut album, the Jazz Soul of Little Stevie. The very title of this album was something of a misnomer. The album was not entirely jazz and not exactly soul. Motown was not even a jazz label. Also, if you've been listening to this song as we've been playing it.
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You.
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May have noticed Stevie isn't singing. Gordy feared the young Stevie's voice would not be supple enough to handle a standard Motown, R B or pop record. By the way, this first track was called Fingertips because of the bongos Stevie was playing. For more than a year, Gordy's Motown team recorded a range of musical trials. One of the more promising, at least musically, was also a shameless marketing ploy, a deliberate attempt to place young Stevie in the lineage of another great artist, one who wasn't even on Motown.
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Let me tell you about a girl. She and my baby and she.
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That, of course, is Ray Charles, the sole pioneer who helped build Atlantic records in the 1950s and helped establish the combination of secular and spiritual that became known as rhythm and blues. And Charles was the other musician then commonly referred to as a genius. As a blind African American performer with natural instrumental gifts, Charles was an obvious, perhaps too obvious, model for young Stevie. According to Mark Hrabowski's biography, Signed, Sealed and Delivered the Soulful Journey of Stevie Wonder. Producer Clarence Paul privately called Gordy's idea to market Stephie as the second coming of Brother Ray cynical. But Berry was not above a clever gimmick. So Clarence Paul recorded Wonder, covering a half dozen Ray Charles songs for a tribute to Uncle Ray, Little Stevie's planned second album. Gordy was still so unsure of how to market the 12 year old wonder that he held back both albums, Jazz Soul and Tribute to Uncle Ray, for months. When they were finally released back to back in the fall of 1962, both albums failed to chart and neither generated even a minor hit single. The one place where the young man was succeeding was on the road. In 1962, Berry Gordy had launched a live multi act concert tour he called the Motortown Review. It traveled across the country in the great tradition of the so called chitlin circuit of black friendly performance venues. Gordy even sent his stable of artists into the Deep south where resistance to the visiting black performers by white residents was fierce. And at every date on the tour, Little Stevie was a showstopper.
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La la la la la.
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It is around this time, according to Hrabowski's biography of Stevie Wonder, that Berry Gordy, reviewing recordings of his Motortown Review for possible live album release, stumbled across an ungainly but weirdly compelling Little Stevie performance from an early date on the tour. Recorded at Chicago's regal theater in June 1962, it was supposed to be a set closing rendition of the jazz soul of Little Stevie track Fingertips. Only Little Stevie didn't go quietly. Part one of the nearly seven minute recording sounded like this.
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The name of the song is called Fingertips. Now I want you to clap your hand. Come on, come on, yeah. Stomp your feet, Jump up and down do anything that you want to do.
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Remember how the original studio Fingertips had no vocals and no harmonica? What Gordy was hearing was how little Stevie had transformed the song for the stage and how he was saying, stealing the show every night. Within the first minute, Wonder had switched from the bongos. Remember, that's why the song was called Fingertips to his beloved harmonica. Over the course of the tour, Stevie would try to extend all of his set closing numbers. Basically, basically as a dare to his handler Clarence Paul, and the rest of the acts on the bill, by the way. Among those other acts was young Motown signee Marvin Gaye, who was even playing the drums in Little Stevie's band. Wonder was not supposed to improvise, and yet he did so every night, extending his performances many minutes past their affairs. Official end time. And the band, including Marvin Gaye, would play along. Amazingly, everything we've played you so far is not the part of the song that would ultimately become a hit. The first half would eventually see release as Fingertips Part one, but the part that captivated Berry Gordy that day. It kicked off when Stevie lowered his harmonica and began improvising a vocal. Picture. A middle school age kid who doesn't want to go to bed and is using every creative stalling tactic to Prevent it. The 12 year old Stevie knew his handlers, the stage manager, the announcer and the other Motown acts all wanted him off the stage. And he is trying everything to forestall his goodbye. He does call and response with the audience. He jams on his harmonica. He makes up lyrics that are nearly gibberish. In perhaps his wittiest trick, little Stevie even switches the melody on his harmonica to a snippet of the nursery rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb. And then, at last, it appears, the song is ending and both the band and the announcer are inviting Little Stevie to take a bow. Stevie summons the band back with his harmonica and they comply. Amid the chaos, as band members scurry back to their instruments, bassist Joe Swift yells out, what key? What key? The song continues for nearly another raucous minute and the crowd goes wild. Little Stevie finally sings his goodbyes and a star is born. Motown here. Historians debate whether this was all an act. Some fans of the Motortown Review even believed this was Little Stevie's version of James Brown's famous nightly routine of pretending to leave the stage, play acting, exhaustion, then throwing off his robes and rushing back. But biographer Hrabowski quotes multiple Motown sources claiming this was truly the young Stevie Wonder's irrepressible energy, boundless charm and competitive streak. He would steal stage time in his quest to prove himself the ultimate headliner. And Berry Gordy agreed. Gordy was discovering that Wonder's personality, his sly, puckish charisma, was key to his appeal. Gordy's Tamla label issued both parts of Fingertips divided in half on either side of a 45 in the spring of 1960, and the side they promoted to radio stations was Part two. Stevie's protracted, chaotic, delightfully improvised refusal to leave the stage. Debuting on Billboard's Hot 100100 the first week of summer 1963, Fingertips Part 2 took only a month to reach the top 10 and three more weeks to top the chart. It spent three weeks at number one, and in its third week, its accompanying live album, Little Stevie Wonder, the 12 Year Old Genius topped the Billboard album chart, making Little Stevie the first artist to have the top single and album in America simultaneously. Indeed, Wonder's single and album set a string of Billboard chart milestones. Fingertips was the first ever live number one hit in Hot 100 history. For Motown. It was the second ever number one on the pop chart after 1961's Please Mr. Postman by the Marvelettes. And the 12 year old genius LP was Motown's first ever, ever number one pop album scored by a kid who, contrary to the album title, had just turned 13. Finally, and not incidentally, Fingertips was still the number one song in America at the start of the August week when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Led his march on Washington. Several music historians would later note that in one of the most consequential weeks for race relations in American history, the outgoing top song in the land was a quintessential African American single. A young black man not yet in his teens inspiring a largely black crowd to clap along and raise the roof gospel style to an improvised melody. With hindsight, Fingertips was a blueprint for the rest of Stevie Wonder's career. This one single contained two major hallmarks of his work. First, an irrepressible musical gift, one he felt driven to share with the world. And second, this is important, fierce independence. From a very young age, Stevie Wonder wanted to be in charge of his own destiny. If there was any downside to Stevie Wonder's improbable breakthrough, it was following it up. In the immediate wake of Fingertips, Gordy had Wonder record tracks that were equally sassy and cheeky, trying to capture in the studio what Wonder had so effortlessly exuded on stage, such as the self referential single Work Out Stevie. Work out. This exuberant track, Stevie's last top 40 hit as Little Stevie Wonder, stalled at number 33 in November 1963. The following summer, in July 1964, another self referential Stevie track, hey Harmonica man, was the first promoted as just Stevie Wonder. But the single only got as far as number one 29. Less than one year after Fingertips, as young Steven grew to a five foot eight young man and his voice began to deepen, the bloom was off this charming new act. In his Wonder biography, Mark Hrabowski quotes several Motown staffers noting that while Wonder was signed for his talent, he was at times marketed as a carnival, sideshow attraction or a quote, circus freak. Not just a kids star itself a dangerous path, but a novelty act. Prized for his instrumental abilities, but not yet perceived as an all around consummate artist. To get back to the chart's upper reaches, Stevie would need to reinvent himself again as an adult, as a songwriter and eventually as his own man. By 1965, Wonder noticed that the other acts who had been on the 1962 Motortown Revue with him and had not yet emerged as stars back then, were now exploding thanks to the quality of the Motown hit factory. The Temptations, for example, were topping the charts with a song by Smokey Robinson. And the Supremes, fronted by a young Diana Ross, were scoring hit after hit. Written by the in house writing team of Brian Holland, Lamont Doer and Eddie Holland, These hits were graced not only with Motown writing, but the Motown sound, the unstoppable playing of house band the Funk Brothers and a driving snare on every beat, not just the backbeat, making them irresistible to both white and black audiences. Wonder wanted a piece of this sound and as he crossed his 15th birthday, he needed a hit. The word around Motown was that the gangly adolescent might soon be dropped by the label. But Wonder wanted to try and write, or at least co write, his own breakthrough. And his inspiration came not from a fellow Motown artist, but from a new British invasion band, I Can't get no Santas. England's newest hitmakers, the Rolling Stones, topped the Hot 100 for the first time in the summer of 1965 with I Can't get no Satisfaction. Wonder loved the record, which was indebted to the sound of American R B. A guitar riff that sounded like a Motown horn and a Charlie Watts backbeat heavy on the driving snare. Wonder would adapt the stone's melody into a hit of his own. Co written with Sylvia Moy, the one writer producer in Motown stable, willing to work with the hyperactive Wonder and arranger Hank Cosby. Up Uptight featured daring lyrics about a boy from the wrong side of the tracks dating a rich girl who may well have been outside his race. Uptight, subtitled Everything's alright was pivotal for Stevie's career. Arguably it was the dividing line between his little Stevie period and his budding manhood. It returned Wonder to the top of the R and B chart and the Hot 100's top 10 where it reached number three in February 1966. Emboldened by this smash success, Wonder used his renewed capital at Motown to release more overtly socially conscious material than the label has to date. Wonder's follow up single was a cover of a song he'd been performing live for a couple of years, Bob Dylan's challenging, ambiguous folk song Blowin in the Wind. Ironically, in the summer of 63, the number one fingertips had held Peter Paul and Mary's smash cover of the Dylan classic at the number two spot. Wonder took his own version to number one on the R and B B chart and into the pop top 10, where it reached number nine. Later that year, Wonder's album Down to Earth sported a on its cover, a photograph of Stevie sitting with his harmonica on a stoop in a dirty graffiti painted ghetto. Down to Earth's lead single, written not by Stevie but by Motown writers Ronald Miller and Brian Wells, was the socially conscious A Place in the Sun.
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There's a place in the sun where there's hope for air Everyone wear my poor restless heart.
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Of course, if Berry Gordy had had his druthers, Wonder would be sticking to feel good Motown music, not protest music. Fortunately, Wonder was fulfilling that mandate for the company too. For the rest of the 1960s, Wonder generated both a consistent stream of hits for himself, co writing more than half of his singles and assembly line parts for the Motown hit Factory. For example, a melody line that Wonder co wrote in 1966 with Hank Cosby but did not complete was given to Motown legend Smokey Robinson, who added lyrics and recorded it with the miracles in 1967. You probably know this one. The immortal the Tears of a Clown fused the artful metaphorical lyrics of Smokey Robinson with a durable calliope like melodic hook and a driving bassline that was all Stevie. It would eventually become smokey and the Miracle's only number one hit together. Meanwhile, in the spring of 1967, Motown issued another Wonder track co written with Sylvia Moy, I Was Made to Love Her, a recording driven by Wonder's declaiming vocal and his harmonica. By the peak of the summer of Love, I Was Made to Love her had reached a lofty number two on the Hot 100, only held back from the top spot by the door's number one one hit, Light My Fire. And the hits kept on coming. The following spring, Wonder was back in the top 10 with another hit co written with Sylvia Moy, the tongue twisting shooby dooby Doo Da Day. The first hit to showcase Wonders playing on the amplified electric keyboard called the Clavinet. As consistent a hit maker as Wonder was In his late 60s period, he was bigger on the R and B chart than the pop chart. Uptight, Blowin in the Wind, I Was Made To Love her and Shooby Doobie Doo Dah Day were all number ones on the Billboard Rhythm and Blues chart, but they only landed within the top 10 on the Hot 100. This wouldn't have been remarkable if not for the fact that during this same period, the Hot 100 was being repeatedly topped by such crossover Motown superstars as the Supremes. And the Temptations. And remember that talented young fellow who played drums behind Little Stevie on the 1962 Motortown Review? By 1968, Marvin Gaye was topping the pop chart too. More frustrating for Wonder, during this late 60s period, Motown still maintained iron control over how his material would be released and when. And they sat on tracks that eventually became massive pop hits. For example, in 1967, Wonder recorded another song co written by Ron Miller, one of the writers of 1966's A Place in the Sun, a love song called For Once in My Life. But Berry Gordy sat on Stevie's recording for more than a year. To be fair to Gordy, the early versions of this song had been flops, and the song had been written as something closer to easy listening. Crooner Tony Bennett scored a minor chart hit with his version For Once in My Life I have someone who needs me Someone. When Gordy eventually relented on Wonder's more uptempo version, the song was a major hit, reaching number two on both the pop and R and B charts. And it might have gone to number one. And if it hadn't been released alongside Marvin Gaye's monster chart topper I Heard it through the Grapevine, which blocked Wonder on both charts. The same went for Wonder's My Cherie Amor, which Berry Gordy didn't think much of when Wonder co wrote it in 1960 with Sylvia Moy and Hank Cosby, A sparkling ballad with French lyrics inspired by the Beatles francophone hit Michelle. When My Cherie Amour was finally issued on a single in 1969, and at first as a B side, the song marched to number four on both the Hot 100 and the R and B chart. Before 1969 was done, Motown scored one more top 10 hit with a Wonder recording they had sat on for two years, called Yester Me Yesteru Yesterday. By the time it became a number seven hit in the fall of 69, it already sounded slightly dated to an earlier era of Motown and a younger version of Stevie. Clearly, Stevie Wonder was Outgrowing his contract, indeed his entire relationship to Motown Records, he was now a consistent enough hitmaker that the label wanted to retain him. But Wonder, in his late teens, was running out the clock on an agreement Motown had bound him to when he signed with the label back in 1962. Because he was then all of 11, his contract throughout the 60s paid him and his mother only a weekly sale stipend, while all of Wonder's royalties were held in a trust not to be accessed by Wonder until he turned 21. This bound Stephie to the label for a decade and incentivized him to keep generating hits. But more than wanting the funds in the trust that Berry Gordy was holding for him, Wonder wanted to control his own art, top to bottom, to be free of the hit factory, the kid from the Motortown Revue who wouldn't allow himself to be dragged from a Chicago stage. That willful artist was ready to petition for his creative freedom even before he turned 21. As the 70s began, every move Stevie Wonder made sowed the seeds for that autonomy.
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Love still strong.
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The first single on which Stevie Wonder took solo credit as the producer, was a barn burner. 1970s signed seal delivered I'm Yours. It opened with a sitar, now a staple in rock thanks to the Beatles, but relatively new in the world of R and B. And it built off of that foundation with a pounding, danceable Motown beat. It was Wonder's biggest hit to date on Billboard's R and B chart, spending half the summer of 1970 at number one, six weeks in total, and reaching number three on the Hot 100 by August. Within weeks of its chart peak, a second song that Wonder wrote for another act virtually simultaneously made its own run up the chart.
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It's a shame the way you mess around with your man It's a shame the way you hurt me It's a.
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Shame Stevie Wonder gave the Spinners their biggest hit in a decade with It's a Shame. The Detroit based group who had signed with Motown way back in 1964 but struggled to score hits, found themselves in the r b top 5 and the pop top 20 by the fall of 1970 with this insinuating single. It's a Shame was produced solely by Stevie, co written by him with wife Syreta Wright and friend Lee Garrett. And it even included drums, bass, guitar and keyboards played by Wonder himself. Wonder was about to turn 21 in May 1971, giving him time for just a couple more hits and one more album on his old Motown contract. He ended the run of singles from the signed Seal delivered album with a cover song even bolder than his Dylan cover of Five Years Earlier. A remake of the Beatles 1966 no. 1 hit We Can Work it out that reinvented the John Lennon Paul McCartney arrangement top to bottom.
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We Can Work It Out We Can Work It Out.
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Stevie's We Can Work it out reached number 13 on the pop chart and number three on the R B chart in the spring of 1971. One week after that peak, just days before his 21st birthday, Wonder released the album Where I'm Coming From. The first produced entirely by himself with no input from the Motown machine. All nine songs on Where I'm Coming from were co written by Wonder and Syrita Wright, including the hit if youf really Love Me, which reached both the pop and r b top 10. By the fall of 71, Stevie Wonder was now out of contract and instantly the most valuable free agent in all of popular music. Between 1963 and 1971, he had generated 21 top 40 hits, including a dozen top 10 pop hits, half a dozen of which had topped the R and B chart. In short, Motown did not only owe Stevie access to his trust fund, they owed him, period. The foundation for Wonder's epic 1970s. The period my slate colleague Jack Hamilton has rightfully called the greatest creative run in the history of popular music. That foundation was built in Wonder's first decade when he not only won, but earned his independence. Recorded with New York based electronic music experts Malcolm Cecil and Robert Marguleff, Music of My Mind would be a radical departure from both the Motown sound and Stevie's own prior work. Drenched not only in Wonder's beloved Clavenet, but a room full of synthesizers piloted by Cecil and Margalev, Music of My Mind was quite literally the musings of Stevie's mind, built out of keyboard improvisations that Wonder and his engineering team turned into songs.
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Mary wants to be a superwoman but is that really in her head?
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But I just wanna live each day.
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To love her for what she hear.
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It is remarkable that the most accessible and radio friendly song on the album was also its longest track, the eight minute Where Were youe When I Needed you'd? A sweet sounding but lyrically acerbic chronicle of the dissolution of Stevie's short marriage to Syrita Wright. Spread across both sides of a 45, Superwoman reached number 33 on the Hot 100 in the summer of 72. Remarkable for such a languid, challenging soul ballad, Stevie signed with Motown for a new contract that guaranteed him a million dollar advance and a double digit royalty rate much higher than anything Stevie or most Motown artists had ever received before. Having both established his independence and gotten the attention of the rock press, including Rolling Stone magazine, which lavished music of my mind with praise, Wonder was determined to finally and fully cross over to a white and black rock and soul audience. And then Wonder started work on his follow up album, the first recorded under the new Motown contract. And the presence in the studio of a British guitar wizard inspired a song that would change everything. Do It Jeff. Stevie Wonder befriended guitarist Jeff Beck in 1972 when the former Yardbirds axeman covered one of Stevie's song on a Jeff Beck group album. Beck spent several days in the studio during the recording of Wonder's next album and as thanks for his performance participation, Stevie pledged to write a funk rock song for Beck to cover. True to his word, Wonder did indeed write that song. But the bad news for Jeff Beck was that it was just too good for Stevie to give away. The song that started as Very Superstitious was first demoed by Jeff Beck and Stevie Wonder jamming together. The intention was for Jeff Beck's group to release the song first, but Berry Gordy and the Motown team insisted Stevie retain the song as his next album's first single. The final recording was virtually all Stevie. He played the syncopated drumbeat, the stabbing funk lines on his clavinet, even a Moog bassline topped by a searing vocal. The only guests were saxophonist Trevor Lawrence and trumpetist Steve Medio. Everything else was wonderful.
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When you believe in things that you don't understand and you suffer.
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In the lyrics, Stevie offered a veiled commentary about that year's U.S. presidential election in which Richard Nixon would win re election in a landslide. Wonder was outraged by the emerging Watergate scandal and Americans resulting confusion and inattention. Hence Wonder's chorus. When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer. Superstition Ain't the Way Released as a single in the fall of 1972, Superstition reached number one on the Hot 100 in January 1973. Stevie Wonder's first pop chart topper in nearly ten years since Fingertips Part 2 in the summer of 63. The album from which it sprang, Talking Book, which included a message from Wonder in braille on the COVID reached number three on the album chart by February. It was Wonder's first top ten album since the 12 year old Genius. And the album wasn't even done spinning off hits.
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That's why I'll always stay around yeah yeah, you are the apple of my eyes.
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Released as Talking Book's second single, you Are the Sunshine of My Life recalled the sweet soul sound of Wonder's late 60s music, now drenched in his rich Fender Rhodes keyboards in a supremely confident move. The first four verse lyrics of the song are not even sung by Wonder himself, but given away to backing vocalists Jim Gilstrap and Lonnie Groves. An immediate radio standard, you Are the Sunshine of My Life topped the Hot 100 by May of 73 as well as Billboards Easy Listening chart. These two back to back number one hits helped propel the Talking Book LP to more than 100 weeks on the Billboard album chart, the longest run of any Wonder studio album. Even its deep cuts became radio perennials such as yous and I Blame it on the sun and the album closing ballad I believe when I fall in love it will be forever.
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I believe when I fall in love with you it will be forever.
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And yet, for all of this now adult success, Stevie never lost his sense of childlike forgive me Wonder. Invited to appear on the still relatively young public television program Sesame street in the spring of 1973, the former Little Stevie Wonder did not water down his performance for the audience of preschoolers. He and his tight six piece band played an electric rendition of Superstition live on the Children's Television Workshop soundstage, even improvising Sesame specific lyrics. For the next four years, 1973 through 1976, Stevie Wonder would produce three albums that would not only all win the Grammy for Album of the Year, but permanently rank among the greatest albums of 70s pop. The fact that Stevie almost didn't survive the release of the first of these albums and recovered well enough to generate the other two makes their existence all the more remarkable. Days after the August 1973 release of of Inner Visions, Wonder was in the front seat of a car in North Carolina that crashed into a truck carrying logs. One log smashed through the windshield and knocked Stephie unconscious. The story, probably apocryphal, goes that days later in the hospital, one of his managers recovered Stephie by singing the chorus to his own Inner Visions track Higher Ground, and amazingly revived here, However frenzied its release, Inner Visions was indeed an exceptional album. Though it is the only one of Wonder's imperial phase albums not to generate a number one pop hit, Inner Visions is often ranked by critics as Stevie's greatest single lp. In addition to the number four hit Higher Ground, Inner Visions boasted the seven and a half minute masterwork Living for the City a fierce diatribe against a corrupt America and its marginalizing of black people and railroading of young black men into the prison system. Pitchfork would later write that Living for the City quote exudes Martin Luther King hope along with Malcolm X anger. Even this daring single featuring a spoken word urban street scene in the middle, managed to reach the top 10, peaking at number eight in January 1974. As he had done on his 1966 album down to Earth, where he pushed Motown toward the socially conscious, Wonder was turning harsh reality into mass appeal pop. Beneath his velvet glove, he wasn't pulling punches. Intervision's final track, the seemingly gentle wafting He's Mistra Know it all, was an evisceration of President Nixon. Got a counterfeit dollar in his hand the coolest one with the biggest mouth.
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Got a counterfeit dollar in his hand he's Mr. Know It All.
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During this imperial run of albums, Nixon was something of a white whale for Stevie. Both Talking Book and Intervisions had included tracks in which Wonder condemned the divisive president, however obliquely. In the case of Superstition on his next album, however, 1974's tongue twisting fulfillingness first finale, Stevie decided not only to be even more direct, but to make the presidential diss. His leadoff single, You haven't Done Nothing was strutting funk, the sound of a confident Stevie Wonder at his peak. It was also his most pointed Richard Nixon beef record ever, with lyrics unsparing, almost playfully mocking the president as the the Watergate scandal was reaching its crescendo. You brought this upon yourself. The world is tired of pacifiers. We want the truth and nothing else. And for the piece de resistance, as if showing off his command of the pop landscape, Wonder hired as his backing vocalists the Jackson five. He even called them out on the track. A former child star himself, Stevie was now showcasing the premier Motown teen pop act of its day. Little did he know Michael Jackson and his brothers would ultimately struggle even more than he did with the transition from childhood and ultimately generate greater pain. As for your Haven't Done Nothing, it landed in July 1974 and debuted on the Hot 100 the week ending August 3rd. Six days later, Richard Milhouse Nixon resigned the presidency. Three months after that, you haven't Done Nothing was the number one song in America. Stevie Wonder was now not only the most critically acclaimed act in popular music, he was the commanding force on the hit parade. In the second half of 1974 alone, wonder not only put out his own fulfilling this first finale album, he also wrote and produced the breakout hit for Rufus and Chaka Khan, Tell Me Something Good. And he produced the album Perfect angel for Multi octave vocalist Minnie Ripperton, which in early 75 would generate the lilting number one ballad Lovin youn. The same month Riperton's hit reached the top 40, Wonder himself was peaking at number three on the chart with his own single, Boogie On Reggae Woman, yet another flavor of Stevie's Fender Rhodes funk. One month later at the 1975 Grammys, fulfilling his first finale took home Album of the Year, Wonder's second year, winning that prize after the prior year's Inner Visions.
- [53:40]
B
And the winner is fulfilling this first finale, Stevie Wonder.
- [53:47]
A
This was an unheard of achievement. It was so unheard of that when Paul Simon interrupted Wonder's Album of the Year streak at the 1976 Grammys, a year when Wonder was momentarily ineligible, Simon couldn't resist a snarky but admiring joke. And most of all, I'd like to thank Stevie Wonder, who didn't make an album this year. By 1976, after talking book, Inner Visions and Fulfillingness had all sold millions, Wonder had the clout to renegotiate his Motown contract again, bumping his royalty rate to a then unprecedented 20% and guaranteeing him a $13 million advance for what would turn out to be improbably an even bigger album than all of its imperial predecessors.
- [54:50]
B
Did you know the true Love Ask for nothing.
- [54:56]
A
More than a year in the making and long overdue. Taking so long, in fact, that Motown staffers in 1976 started wearing t shirts that read, we're almost finished. Songs in the Key of Life was inarguably the most anticipated album release of the decade. When it finally arrived In September of 76, this massive double LP, plus a bonus 45, debuted on the Billboard album chart all the way up at number one. As you might recall from our Elton John episode of Hit Parade, prior to John's 1975 opus Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.
- [55:42]
B
Tonight, Sugar Bear albums.
- [55:46]
A
Simply did not debut at number one. Elton, who was himself at an imperial high point in the mid-70s, achieved this feat twice in 75 with his albums Captain Fantastic and Rock of the Westies. In 76, Stevie Wonder's songs in the Key of Life became the third album to debut at number one, and it went on to sell better than those two Elton John albums combined, ultimately certified ten times platinum. Motown didn't even need to issue the album's first single, I Wish, until songs had been in stores more than a month. A nostalgic ode to Stevie's own childhood, I Wish shot to number one on both the Hot 100 and the R&B chart in just two months. Four months after that the album spawned a second number one hit when Stevie's ode to big band pop and the music of Duke Ellington Sir Duke returned him to the top of the charts.
- [56:59]
B
Making Feeling All Love.
- [57:09]
A
Songs in the Key of Life would ultimately generate four top 40 hits, I wish Sir Duke Another Star, and as you may be surprised to learn, it did not generate seven, eight or nine hits. The album contains songs that are now considered radio standards and staples of the RB canon, most of which were not issued as singles, including the inspiring Loves in Need of Love Today, The deeply romantic knocks me off my feet, The menacing pastime paradise, which would later form the backbone of Coolio's 90s rap hit Gangsta's Paradise. And this may be the biggest shocker of all these non singles. Isn't she Love Routinely one of Stevie Wonder's most played, most requested, most beloved songs, this ode to his newborn daughter Aisha Morris was never issued as a 45 and hence did not chart on the Hot 100. In the last quarter century alone, Isn't She Lovely has been played on US terrestrial radio nearly 300,000 times. Wonder's third most played radio perennial after only Superstition and you Are the Sunshine of My Life. Songs in the Key of Life spent a total of 14 weeks on top of the album chart in 1976 and early 77. It was still lodged in the top 10 the week of the 1977 Grammys when Stevie Wonder ascended the podium one last time to take home Album of the Year.
- [59:31]
B
And the winner is Songs in the Key of Life. Stevie Wonder. I hope that all of you know.
- [59:36]
A
That I am fantastically, fantastically thankful. And with that his imperial phase was over, but certainly not his legendary status. Wonder would take a two year break from recording and he would never again be as prolific as he was in the first half of the 1970s. Songs in the Key of Life would be Wonder's last number one pop album, though of course he would continue to score top 10 platinum sellers into the 1980s and additional number one singles. Wonder was so established as a Hitmaker in the 70s and 80s and his peak era hits were so dominant they tended to overshadow the memory of his very first number one hit hit in 1963. In fact, for kids of my generation coming of age in the 1980s, the first time many of us even heard Fingertips was when Nelly Mel sampled it on shrimp Chaka Khan's 1984 pop and hip hop smash I Feel for you. Since Nielsen Music began tracking plays of terrestrial radio in the 1990s, Fingertips has never been among the 40 most played Stevie Wonder songs. In a typical week on US Radio, it is split, spun as little as a half dozen times across the whole country, less than such smaller hits and non singles as Rocket Love, these Three Words or Someday at Christmas. In a way, it's understandable. Little Stevie Wonder's first hit was a live document of his impish refusal to leave the stage, doing everything from playing nursery rhymes to making up lyrics just to forestall the inevitable. This was an unlikely hit song in the first place, but as the single that launched one of the greatest careers in pop history, the song that established Steven Hardaway Morris as the artist who would always insist upon following his own path, Fingertips Part 2 has earned its birth in the Rock and Roll hall of Fame and in the personal history of Stevie Wonder. Speaking of Wonder's history, in 2015 the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences paid tribute to one of their most decorated artists with the televised special Grammys tribute to Stevie Wonder. Among the guests in attendance performing that night were several modern superstars who all owed Wonder a debt. Many had imitated his sound and all of them aspired to his artistry, from Pharrell Williams to Annie Lennox to Ariana Grande to Lady Gaga. Also in attendance that night was Beyonce Knowles, the biggest R and B to pop crossover star of her generation and a woman who had also launched her hit making career while still a teenager. Perhaps then it was appropriate that Queen Bey chose, out of all the chart toppers in Stevie Wonder's vast catalog of hits, the one that started it all.
- [63:26]
B
I think y' all could do a.
- [63:27]
A
Little bit better than that.
- [63:31]
B
Everybody say yeah.
- [63:53]
A
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. My producer is Chris Barube and we had help with this episode from Danielle Hewitt. Special thanks also to journalist Annie Zaleski for her invaluable research help. The managing producer of Slate Podcasts is June Thomas. Our senior producer is TJ Raphael, and Gabriel Roth is the Editorial Director of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Subscribe Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture Gabfest feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the hit parade. Back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melancholy. Wow.
- [65:03]
B
Clap your hands just a little bit louder Clap your hand just a little bit louder Clap your hand just a little bit louder Now, I need y' all to read after me again.