Stevie Wonder - AskMen
When young Stevie and his family moved to Detroit in 1954, he began singing with the Whitestone Baptist Church choir, where the sounds of gospel music filled and shaped his young mind, along with the secular R&B music of Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, which he listened to on his transistor radio.
a wonderful discovery
In 1961, at the age of 11, he met Ronnie White of The Miracles through a friend. White set up a meeting with the founder and president of Motown Records, Berry Gordy. At the age of 12, with a recording contract and a new stage name -- "Little Stevie Wonder" -- Wonder was definitely heading toward an illustrious career.
a many-hit wonder
Stevie Wonder's first album was 1963's The Twelve-Year-Old Genius, which generated the hit, "Fingertips (Part 2)." It became the first live performance of a song to reach the top of the U.S. pop charts, and later that same year, Wonder became the first recording artist to reach the No. 1 position on both the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B singles charts simultaneously. Not bad for a 12-year-old kid.
By 1964, Wonder's career was put on hold while his voice broke. Then, in 1965, not only did his voice change but so too his stage name. "Little" was dropped for good. He had a worldwide hit with "Uptight (Everything's Alright)," which he co-wrote with Henry Cosby and Sylvia Moy.
Near the end of the '60s, Wonder had amassed enough chart topping hits to fill his first greatest hits album, which included "I Was Made To Love Her" and "Work Out Stevie, Work Out."
By 1970, Wonder acted as his own producer and arranger in the recording studio, playing most of the instruments himself and writing songs with the help of his wife Syreeta Wright, who he married that September.
heading for higher ground
When Wonder turned 21, his contract with Motown expired. Instead of renewing it, he decided to create his own publishing company (Black Bull Music) and recording studio (Taurus Productions). In order to improve his songwriting skills, Wonder enrolled in some music theory classes at USC (University of Southern California).
Once he renegotiated his contract and achieved the autonomy he sought, he set out to record groundbreaking albums such as Talking Book ("You Are the Sunshine of My Life," "Superstition"); Innervisions ("Living for the City," "Higher Ground," "All in Love is Fair"); Fulfillingness' First Finale ("Boogie on Reggae Woman," "Too Shy to Say"); and Songs In The Key Of Life ("Isn't She Lovely," "I Wish," "Sir Duke"). Between 1973 and 1976, Wonder won a staggering 13 Grammy Awards.
In 1973, Wonder was in a car accident that almost took his life. He was in a coma for four days and lost his sense of smell, but this unfortunate incident only renewed his zest for life and musical creativity.
not so wonderful
After a burst of musical pioneering and creativity, Wonder took a three-year hiatus after the enormous success of Songs In The Key Of Life. During this time, he wrote and recorded a soundtrack for the documentary, The Secret Life of Plants. The accompanying 1979 album was greeted with lukewarm response, but today it is considered to be a precursor to the New Age sound. The next year, however, he released the platinum-selling Hotter Than July, which yielded the hits "Master Blaster (Jammin')" and the Martin Luther King tribute song, "Happy Birthday" (which eventually led to the establishment of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday as a national holiday).
The 1980s and '90s proved to be less prolific for Stevie Wonder. Of course, he had major hits such as the song "Ebony & Ivory" in 1982, his collaboration with Paul McCartney that promoted racial harmony, and won an Oscar for the saccharine "I Just Called To Say I Love You" in 1985, which turned out to be Wonder's biggest selling single of his career.
full-time success
In 1985, Wonder released the album In Square Circle, which spawned only one hit: "Part-Time Lover." The decade ended on a high note with Wonder's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.
1990 saw Wonder gain some praise for writing the soundtrack to Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, which he recorded in three weeks. The 1995 album Conversation Peace was panned by critics, but the song "For Your Love" won a Grammy for Best Single.
Wonder contributed to Spike Lee's movie Bamboozled in 2000, and recently performed at the Essence Music Festival in New Orleans in June 2003. Amid his latest accomplishments, Wonder married his second wife, Karen Millard-Morris, in 2001.
Read story