Stevie Wonder’s “classic period”
redux.slate.com
redux.slate.com
Up to that point I knew Stevie Wonder as the guy who recorded "I Just Called to Say I Love You", a song I hated as a kid. Well that opinion changed pretty sharpish I can tell you.
I've bought so many albums and singles since that I really, really like but I don't think Innervisions has ever been bettered. Just my humble opinion of course.
[1] there may be a few exceptions but they're Higgs-Boson rare.
[2] feel free to take it with a pinch of salt if you actually like that kind of "music". :P
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innervisions#Track_listing
Earth, Wind & Fire is in the same category for me but yeah going back decades
Stevie did everything himself, writing & playing ALL instruments. Beatles had several session players.
Stevie also had the great bassist James Jamerson on many of these tunes: check out Jamerson's amazing lines on "For once in my life"!
There's a great visualisation of his line here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At3OP5CvIRY
Similarly everwhere foundational, quite unknown and a ~dramatic end.
By the end of the verse, you realize how great Stevie's singing is, even though he's holding so much back.
I wonder if this could ever happen again, given the state of the music industry now.
http://www.wxyz.com/news/region/detroit/city-of-detroit-to-u...
> And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.
> And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.
Which admittedly is an slightly odd fit with the sense of having himself been given a second chance and a change of life which SW expresses in the song (and apparently in the NYT interview), but so it goes apparently.
The involvement of Margouleff and Cecil needs to be further highlighted. They were not only talented musicians, they were also engineers, producers, and pioneers in early synthesizer experimentation. They patched together a massive electronic synthesizer dubbed TONTO that consisted of various components including a Moog, which Stevie Wonder heard on their avant-garde 1971 synth album Zero Time. He literally showed up at their studio with the album under his arm and asked how TONTO worked. The story is told here (1):
So he takes my elbow and I escort him to the studio. We went down to the studio and I showed him the instrument. I put his hands over it and he realized that it wasn’t something that he could easily play. He tried to play it, but he couldn’t get it to sound like a normal keyboard, because in those days you could only get one note at a time. He asked me, “What is wrong with this keyboard?” I told him, “That’s how it works. It only plays one note at a time.” And then he got it. He asked me if we could record. I went upstairs and got my test tape and we put it on the two-inch machine. At this time, the Moog had been moved to Studio B in the basement. We ended up recording the entire weekend. I had to break into the tape store, and I had no authority to do it, but I did it anyway. I told Stevie, “Someone is going to have to pay for this tape at least.” He said, “Oh, don’t worry. I just got money put into my trust fund from Motown because I just turned twenty-one. I don’t have any contracts.” He explained the whole thing. He told Bob and me that he wanted us to be musical directors for his company and to help him get his music out there. He liked working with us, and we liked working with him. We got seventeen songs done that first weekend. And that’s how it all started.
In films from that era, you can see Wonder performing with TONTO in the background, with Cecil or Margouleff patching together components on the fly.
I saw an interview with one of them (see Soundbreaking, below) who says that they recorded something like 250 songs with Wonder, and they picked the best ones to go on the albums. I would love to hear some of the stuff that didn't make it onto vinyl!
PBS recently released an eight-part series on music production called Soundbreaking that includes clips and interviews with Cecil and Margouleff. It was co-produced by the late George Martin, and includes so many stories about the production of pop music from the 1950s to the present, including early multitrack recording with Les Paul, The Beach Boys and The Beatles, the synth era, disco, sampling, rap, the impact of music videos, EDM, laptop-based production, and more. It's amazing. Some short clips are here (2) but I urge readers to seek out the full program!
1. http://www.waxpoetics.com/blog/features/articles/malcolm-cec...
"In 1982 Stevie Wonder invited Raymond Kurzweil to his new studio in Los Angeles, and asked if "we could use the extraordinarily flexible computer control methods on the beautiful sounds of acoustic instruments?"[2] In response to this query, Raymond Kurzweil founded Kurzweil Music Systems, with Stevie Wonder as musical advisor.[1] A prototype of the Kurzweil K250 was manufactured for Stevie Wonder in 1983." [1]
What he wanted from Kurzweil was a synth to mimic an actual piano. He wanted to play a 'piano' on stage without the heft and burden of an actual piano. Further down in that wiki:
"The Kurzweil K250 is generally recognized as the first electronic instrument to faithfully reproduce the sounds of an acoustic grand piano."
A ROMpler has samples built in ( in ROM, although that doesn't mean masked/permanent ROM - probably FLASH ).
I'd compare it to when PCs had soundcards with FM MIDI vs. Soundfonts. The quality in sound went up immensely.
His music is on spotify, itunes, youtube, etc with hundreds of millions of listens
Yet there is no 5 year stretch in Prince's career that compares to what Stevie Wonder did from 1972-1976.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_albums_discography
7 platinum albums.
And bear in mind that gave away whole albums that were hits, and wrote classics like Manic Monday (while asleep) and Nothing Compares 2U and gave them away in this time.
If you want a stretch of pure brilliance, I'd pick:
Purple Rain Around the World in a Day Parade Sign O the Times Lovesexy
During this era he was also responsible for most of The Time's output, The Family, wrote a lot of his later hits, and kept plenty back simply for his own reasons which still may not have surfaced.
Also, responsible for the background music in this cult movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOOwGhaFpVk [NSFW]
For the curious, Victor Wooten, sacred virtuoso bass player said in videos that Prince influenced him on the bass, saying Prince's stuff was unheard of. And Prince isn't even a bass fan, I believe he was more in love with guitar and keyboards.
Stevie has a special place for me as a songwriter but as a performer Prince was next level. Different artists, love both
After his passing I saw videos of rehearsal, where he would drive sound stage check calmly with people, dropping jazz classics from his pocket and being cool with the crew.
A lot of what he did was so brilliant, for so many years, in so many genre.
ps: he also managed to make rock guitarists drop their jaw at the george harrison celebration, all done unrehearsed (for better surprise effect).