Stevie Wonder is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and record producer born on May 13, 1950. His original name was Stevland Hardaway Judkins, but he later changed his name to Stevland Hardaway Morris.
He was a leading figure in popular music during the last half of the 20th century and has recorded more than thirty top ten hits in the United States. In addition to the top ten hits, it has also won twenty-two Grammy Awards and an Academy Award for best song. He has also been awarded the Polar Music Prize.
And last but not least; has been recruited by the Rock and Roll and Songwriters halls of fame.
For the Academy Award for Best Original Song, he is also the first Motown artist and the second African-American musician to win it. He won it with his 1984 single ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’.
Stevie Wonder was blind from birth, and still managed to sign with Motown Records at the age of eleven; and he still continues to perform and record for the label.
He currently has ten # 1 hits in the United States on the pop-soul charts and 20 # 1 hits on the R&B charts, and only to make it even better; his album sales total more than 100 million units.
Stevie Wonder plays the piano, synthesizer, congas, harmonica, drums, bass, organ, bongos, melodica, and clarinet.
In his childhood, he was best known for his work on the harmonica, but today he is best known for his keyboard skills and vocal ability.
At the age of thirteen, Stevie had a huge hit, called ‘Fingertips’. It was a single taken from a live recording of a Motor Town Revue performance in 1963. It appeared on the album, ‘The 12 Year Old Genius’.
The song features Stevie Wonder on vocals, bongos and harmonica, and Marvin Gaye on drums. It was a number one hit on the US pop and R&B charts and launched Stevie into the public eye.
When he turned twenty-one on May 21, 1971, he allowed his contract with Motown to expire and while negotiating with Motown he released two new albums.
After a short time, Motown accepted his demands for full creative control and rights to his own songs, and Stevie returned to the company in March 1972 with the album ‘Music of My Mind’.
‘Music of My Mind’ also altered the beginning of a long collaboration with the band.
‘Tonto’s Expanding Head Band’ which featured Malcolm and Cecil Robert Margouleff.
In the fall of 1972, the album ‘Talking Book’ was released. ‘Talking Book’ featured, among others, the # 1 hit ‘Superstition’, which is one of the best known and most famous songs he has ever done. This is also my personal favorite, because it has a certain ‘go’ and I like the mix of instruments.
Even though Stevie is quite an old artist, there are still a lot of people who listen to his music and therefore he is still on tour.
For example: in March 2002, Stevie Wonder performed at the opening ceremony of the 2002 Paralympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City, and on July 2, 2005, Wonder performed in the USA as part of the shows. ‘ Live 8 ‘in Philadelphia.
Stevie also performed at the Super Bowl XL pregame show in Detroit in 2006. He was singing several hit singles, with his only four-year-old son playing drums.
For ten years, Stevie Wonder hadn’t released any albums, but then on October 18, 2005, he released his, pretty good, album ‘A Time to Love’. Originally the album was meant to be released in May, but it was pushed a bit and then it was meant to be released in June; but it turned out that it was published for the first time in October.
On the other hand, the album was released electronically on September 27, 2005 on Apple’s iTunes Music Store so that it could be downloaded.
Stevie Wonder performed for President Obama in the White House and Wonder also received the “Gershwin Award for Lifetime Achievement” from the President of the United States, Barack Obama.
Personally, I find that Stevie Wonder does some very good songs, and I especially find that ‘Superstition’ is good. I must admit that he has done some songs in which he has disappointed me, but that happens especially when the songs are very slow. Still, I think he succeeds being an amazing songwriter and performer. Most of the time, it even manages to make songs very quiet, which can be quite a challenge.
