was born on this date in 1950 (later Steveland Morris). As Little Stevie Wonder he first recorded for Motown as a 12-year-old; his “Fingertips (Pt. II)” was the first live recording to ever reach number one. Stevie Wonder’s greatest achievements however, began with the album Talking Book (1972), one of just seven albums to be part of the NPR 100. (Listen to the NPR report here [Real Audio].) Steve Huey tells us about Wonder’s best albums at the All Music Guide —
The result, Talking Book, was released in late 1972 and made him a superstar. Song for song one of the strongest R&B albums ever released, Talking Book also perfected Wonder’s spacy, futuristic experiments with electronics, and was hailed as a magnificently realized masterpiece. Wonder topped the charts with the gutsy, driving funk classic “Superstition” and the mellow, jazzy ballad “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” which went on to become a pop standard; those two songs went on to win three Grammys between them. Amazingly, Wonder only upped the ante with his next album, 1973’s Innervisions, a concept album about the state of contemporary society that ranks with Gaye’s What’s Going On as a pinnacle of socially conscious R&B.
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Finally released in 1976, Songs in the Key of Life was a sprawling two-LP-plus-one-EP set that found Wonder at his most ambitious and expansive. Some critics called it brilliant but prone to excess and indulgence, while others hailed it as his greatest masterpiece and the culmination of his career; in the end, they were probably both right. “Sir Duke,” an ebullient tribute to music in general and Duke Ellington in particular, and the funky “I Wish” both went to number one pop and R&B; the hit “Isn’t She Lovely,” a paean to Wonder’s daughter, became something of a standard, and “Pastime Paradise” was later sampled for the backbone of Coolio’s rap smash “Gangsta’s Paradise.” Not surprisingly, Songs in the Key of Life won a Grammy for Album of the Year; in hindsight, though, it marked the end of a remarkable explosion of creativity and of Wonder’s artistic prime.