ARTIST

Stevie Wonder

Gaining fame as a blind child prodigy, singer-songwriter-musician Stevie Wonder would go on to seamlessly fuse '60s soul with '70s funk, making music with a strong moral conscience that always reflected a fundamental hope and joy. His accomplishments in the early to mid-'70s are still unmatched, creating an astounding body of work that will continue to influence music for many years to come.

Born prematurely, Wonder went blind from an excess of oxygen pumped into his incubator. He displayed a tremendous gift for music at an early age, inspiring Motown to release The 12-Year Old Genius, which contained his first hit single, "Fingertips." For the next eight years, Wonder provided a steady string of mainstream R&B hits for Motown, charting with bright, uptempo love songs showcasing his piano, harmonica, and vocal skills, like "Signed, Sealed, & Delivered" and "For Once in My Life."

In 1971 when he turned 21, Wonder produced two albums on his own, Music of My Mind and Where I'm Coming From, which he used to leverage Motown into a new deal that allowed him unprecedented artistic freedom as well as higher royalties. The deal paid immediate dividends for Motown as Wonder exploded, releasing four brilliant albums over the next five years that stand as some of the finest achievements ever in pop music -- Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness' First Finale, and the double album Songs in the Key of Life. Wonder's recording career has been uneven since then, but he remains one of the most respected figures in music today, finding occasional chart success and remaining active in a number of humanitarian causes.

After the dizzying heights reached between 1972 and 1977, Wonder worked for three years on Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants, a strange, mostly instrumental album that flopped. He rebounded the next year with Hotter Than July, which along with a couple of healthy singles contained "Happy Birthday," the song that launched the successful campaign to make Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a national holiday. Wonder has championed many causes, also recording songs that deal with drunk driving ("Don't Drive Drunk") and Apartheid ("It's Wrong").

In the '80s, Wonder softened considerably, enjoying popular success with several treacly ballads that were almost universally reviled by critics and many of his older fans (indicative of the split, Wonder's duet with Paul McCartney "Ebony And Ivory" won both "Best Song" and "Worst Song" in Us Magazine's People's Choice Awards). His soundtrack to Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, which harkened back to some of his older, funkier material, was a welcome reminder of the classic Stevie Wonder sound. Original Musiquarium is an outstanding collection of Wonder hits, and also sports several strong originals.

Written by John Quaintance