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Stevie Wonder Biography

originally Steveland Judkins or Steveland Morris

(1950–)

Related Works

Albums
1962 Tribute to Uncle Ray
1962 The Jazz Soul Of Little Stevie
1963 The 12-Year Old Genius Recorded Live

1963 With A Song In My Heart
1964 Stevie At The Beach
1966 Up-Tight (Everything's Alright)
1966 Down To Earth
1967 I Was Made To Love Her
1967 Someday At Christmas
1968 For Once In My Life
1969 My Cherie Amour
1970 Stevie Wonder Live
1970 Stevie Wonder Live At The Talk Of The Town
1970 Signed, Sealed and Delivered
1971 Where I'm Coming From
1972 Music Of My Mind
1972 Talking Book
1973 Innervisions
1974 Fulfillingness' First Finale
1976 Songs In The Key Of Life
1979 Stevie Wonder's Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants
1980 Hotter Than July
1984 The Woman In Red (soundtrack)
1985 In Square Circle
1987 Characters
1995 Conversation Peace
1995 Natural Wonder
2005 A Time To Love
Compilations
1968 Greatest Hits
1971 Greatest Hits, Volume 2
1977 Anthology aka Looking Back
1982 Stevie Wonder's Original Musiquarium I
1996 Song Review

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Related People

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Related Sites

The Unofficial Stevie Wonder Internet Archive

(born May 13, 1950, Saginaw, Mich., U.S.) American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, a child prodigy who developed into one of the most creative musical figures of the late 20th century.

Blind from birth and raised in inner-city Detroit, he was a skilled musician by age eight. Renamed Little Stevie Wonder by Berry Gordy, Jr., the president of Motown Records—to whom he was introduced by Ronnie White, a member of the Miracles—Wonder made his recording debut at age 12. The soulful quality of his high-pitched singing and the frantic harmonica playing that characterized his early recordings were evident in his first hit single, “Fingertips (Part 2),” recorded during a show at Chicago's Regal Theatre in 1963. But Wonder was much more than a freakish prepubescent imitation of Ray Charles, as audiences discovered when he demonstrated his prowess with piano, organ, harmonica, and drums. By 1964 he was no longer described as “Little,” and two years later his fervent delivery of the pounding soul of “Uptight (Everything's Alright),” which he also had written, suggested the emergence of both an unusually compelling performer and a composer to rival Motown's stable of skilled songwriters. (He had already cowritten, with Smokey Robinson, “The Tears of a Clown.”)

Over the next five years Wonder had hits with “I Was Made to Love Her,” “My Cherie Amour” (both cowritten with producer Henry Cosby), and “For Once in My Life,” songs that suited dancers as well as lovers. Where I'm Coming From, an album released in 1971, hinted not merely at an expanded musical range but, in its lyrics and its mood, at a new introspection. Music of My Mind (1972) made his concerns even more plain. In the interim he had been strongly influenced by Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, the album in which his Motown stablemate moved away from the label's “hit factory” approach to confront the divisive social issues of the day. Any anxieties Gordy may have felt about his protégé's declaration of independence were amply calmed by the run of recordings with which Wonder obliterated the competition in the mid-1970s. Those albums produced a steady stream of classic hit songs, among them “Superstition,” “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” “Higher Ground,” “Living for the City,” “Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing,” “Boogie On Reggae Woman,” “I Wish,” and “Sir Duke.”