![]() ![]() ![]() In recent years, as I’ve begun to write my own song lyrics which now number in the hundreds it is Stevie Wonder-type song structures I tend to hear in my own mind as I write them. Many of them are closer to the jazz and classical method of songwriting you’d hear from a George Gershwin,Duke Ellington or Bach than you might from even the very man,another musically ingenious and un-sighted man: Ray Charles. One of the qualities I also admired about Stevie Wonder as I grew older were the unique combination of chords and notes of the melodies in his songs. So from that point on whatever album I could find of his-whether from the 60’s,70’s,80’s or his current music I’d pick it up. It made me want to hear everything Stevie Wonder ever made. And it started me on a quest to pursue exactly that which continues onto this day. It changed my outlook on reality-helped me see how too many people were ignoring imaginative and original thinking. With no intended melodrama, hearing this album made me want to be a better person. Something that could (and should) inspire them,in their own special ways,to tell their own story. Stevie Wonder tapped into his imagination to create something that everyone else could actually experience. After hearing this I realized why I never needed unnatural highs,such as from a drug. It reminded me of how Whoopi Goldberg described the emotion in the Star Trek film Generations-as if joy were something tangible that I could wrap myself around like a blanket. Hearing this made me feel something that a lot of adolescence especially during the especially glum musical ethic of the early/mid 1990’s likely felt much: pure, unadulterated joy. Songs such as “Love Having You Around” an “Girl Blue” have sound sonic’s that are.close to unbelievable. He was creating music as much out of sounds-different rhythms and musical harmonies as he was in writing mere catchy melodies. Having been exposed to everything else he recorded before and after that album since, I still never heard another album from Stevie Wonder quite like this one. I took it home,unwrapped it and put it into my miniature boombox. I knew by this that this was his big creative breakthrough,the recording that changed the focus of his music. I had just enough to pick it up-at the time a five dollar bill and a quarter. It was not until I was 14 years old that I walked into Strawberries Record Store (now long closed) and saw a copy of his album Music Of My Mind on cassette tape. His album Characters from 1987 was part of my growing up and somehow always in my mind as it was played quite a lot. My own personal experience with Stevie Wonder’s talent came from a very early memory: my mother singing me songs such as “My Cherie Amour” and “Isn’t She Lovely” in the form of lullaby’s. Along the way he has influenced artists who themselves influenced another generation after them,and also managed to be instrumental in getting Dr.Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday to become a national holiday. When he showed very strong aptitude for music, it was onto a blitz that included classical training at the Michigan School For The Blind and eventually signing with Motown records,where he still remains to this day. Somehow the odds were very much against this young man whose only musical outlet for a time was a toy harmonica given to him by an uncle. Growing up in a lower class family in Saginaw Michigan, his mother Lulu sometimes had to steal coal from the loading docks to help her family including her son Stevie,blind from birth due to an incubator malfunction. And late 20th century America had Steveland Morris,more popularly known as Stevie Wonder. A young child who grows to create music not only to be heard but seen and felt as well. Most generations have a specially prodigious musical talent to inspire them.
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