The Wonder of Stevie - 2 - Talking Book | 1972

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

How do you follow lightning in a bottle? Well, if you’re Stevie Wonder, you go on tour with The Rolling Stones. Now catering to a wider (and whiter) audience, Stevie expresses himself as a Black artist in the best way he knows how: through music. And just months after Music of My Mind, he releases the second album in the streak, Talking Book.Featuring Barack Obama, Questlove, Deniece Williams, Ray Parker Jr. and more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Yes, I was a part of the Rolling Stones tour with him. Back in the summer of 1972, long before she went on to top the Billboard charts twice and win four Grammys, Denise Williams had just gotten the gig of her life as a backup singer in Wonderlove, Stevie Wonder's touring band. Her first assignment took her and the band all over America, opening for the Rolling Stones. Music of My Mind had just come out that spring

into great critical acclaim, but modest sales. And now Motown was looking to make Stevie go even bigger, beyond the black audience that knew and loved him. There was another listenership out there still to be reached. Almost exclusively white and just as predominantly male, who mostly wanted to go to concerts, experience some rowdiness, hear their favorite band, and see themselves reflected back to them.

These are people who love the Rolling Stones, who've been waiting for the Stones to come back and play in the U.S., and these were the people Barry and Stevie wanted to reach. What was that like for you, being on that tour? Scary as hell. Okay, what was scary about it?

Well, first of all, the Rolling Stones, you know, they got a whole other thing going on. Denise, I was going to ask, but I didn't want to get anybody in any trouble. It was a very different environment for him. We switched into rock and roll and, oh my God, I was scared. I mean, you know, this little girl from Gary, Indiana, Church of God and Christ, Faith Temple. I didn't know what to expect out with them. They had their own doctor out there to keep them going, you know, and the drugs and the, oh my gosh, you know, I came out one night to get on the bus to go back to the hotel that was in Chicago and the police were macing the crowd.

So I got maced, you know, I couldn't find the bus. I, you know, I couldn't find, I was, I had to call a cousin in Chicago to come pick me up and take me to the hotel. Okay, this scene Denise is describing in Chicago, it got repeated at pretty much every stop on the tour that summer. 31 cops injured on the first night in Vancouver, 60 arrests in San Diego, police tear gassing the crowd in Tucson, Arizona, and on and on. When they played three shows in Chicago in late June, the Stones stayed at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion in the Gold Coast.

You know, the other night I ended up at the Playboy Mansion in a room that in order for me to get out, I had to slide down a stripper pole and trying to get out of there and stuff. I mean, it's like I was praying, Jesus, I promise you, you get me out of here and get me away from this. I ain't doing this no more. You got my word. I'm done. I'm done. I plead the blood of Jesus in Jesus' name. I'm done.

Did you talk to Stevie about this? Like, did you tell Stevie, I cannot do this? I can't do it. I told him. I said, you know what? I didn't say I couldn't do that. I said, but I'll tell you one thing. I called on my angels, and they got me out of there with them deviants and them devils and stuff.

Y'all crazy. How did Stevie feel about it? He thought it was funny. Oh, I could tell you a bunch of stories. This is the Ray Parker Jr., Mr. I'm Afraid of No Ghosts Ray Parker Jr. He was 18 years old when Stevie called him at his home in Detroit and asked him to join the band.

Is there like a particular night that was memorable for you? Well, let me give you one. This is just one of many. We had been partying so hard every night and, you know, the band members going and stuff. And I think it was David Sanborn who came and got me and said, OK, man, let's get in the car. We're going out tonight. David Sanborn, the veteran saxophonist who was also playing with Stevie on this tour.

We were in Chicago. I was like, I'm too tired. We've already partied. And he says, no, no, no, not tonight. It's not tonight to be tired. And where we were going is to the Playboy Mansion in Chicago. And I'm trying to pass on the mansion. I don't even know what that is.

I don't know who Hugh Hefner is or the Playboy Mansion. And then the guys in the band, I think David Sanborn and Steve Medeo, the trumpet player, they were like, no, you're coming with us tonight. You can't miss this. Ray, Ray, why are you not talking anymore? Why'd you stop talking? Yeah. But that's the end of the story.

No, it cannot be. Yeah, it's gotta be. It's gotta be the end of the story. Suffice it to say, whatever happened inside the Playboy Mansion that night or in trashed hotel rooms all across America that summer, it was so scandalous that the Stones went to court to make sure that a documentary of the tour,

Cocksucker Blues, a film they themselves commissioned, not be shown in public. Because it contained scenes of drugs and sex and general mayhem that were potentially incriminating. The film and the tour became both legendary and legendarily notorious. And Stevie, well, this episode is about how getting mixed up in all of their chaos really worked out for him.

I'm Wesley Morris. I'm a critic at The New York Times. And today on The Wonder of Stevie, the second album in Stevie's classic period, Talking Book. I want to start actually with Talking Book in 72, right before Talking Book, and ask you about Stevie and the Rolling Stones tour in 1972. What do you know about that tour? I know that this is a crucial period in Stevie Wonder's development as a musician

in terms of giving him a bigger platform. And I guess the big question is, will he step up to the plate? This is Questlove, host of the Questlove Supreme podcast on iHeart, and one of the executive producers of this show. He's also encyclopedic in his knowledge of, well, pretty much everything about pop music, soul music, funk, and especially the genre known as Stevie Wonder. He's already a superstar at the age of 12.

He's even a bigger star at 16. of 12. He's even a bigger star at 16. And when he asks for his independence, he basically provides the goods and has the makings of what could be a global superstar. Like it's unheard of for one demographic to step outside of their comfort zone and grab an entirely other demographic. White artists cater to their white crowd. And this is one of the ways that Stevie Wonder will start living up to the promise of creative genius that can be commercially viable because he's going to face an entirely different audience that otherwise just knew him as that guy that sang that one song or the other song and whatnot. This, it felt different. Just having this mixed race billet all,

a black artist and his integrated band opening for these British white dudes who fancy themselves children of the American blues, that was kind of revolutionary in 1972. I don't want to belabor this because we're going to get into it later, just about what was going on in the country at the time. But for now, let's just state the obvious. America in 1972 was not the most peaceful place on earth.

There was all kinds of unrest in every category you can imagine. There was a war going on, obviously. And one of those other roiling categories involved race. Racist violence, a government actively at war with Black people, politics and policies that benefit from and exacerbate racial tension. And so the idea that Stevie Wonder will go on this tour with the Stones and win the hearts and maybe open the minds and eventually the record-buying dollars of hundreds of thousands

of amped up white people, that just comes with some genuine risk. It just does. And were the audiences receptive to you guys? Did everybody seem happy to see you? Yeah, the audiences were pretty receptive to us. Ray Parker Jr. again. We didn't get hit in the head with a tomato or, you know, like I remember when Prince opened for the Stones, they hit him in the head with a tomato or, you know, like I remember when Prince opened for the Stones, they hit him in the head with a beer bottle, you know. This Prince story was nearly 10 years after Stevie's tour. 1981, he opened two shows for the Stones in L.A.

He came out on stage in a see-through jacket and thigh-high boots and bikini briefs. Lingerie, basically. see-through jacket and thigh-high boots and bikini briefs. Lingerie, basically. And a lot of the 90-something thousand people there to see the Stones just start going batshit nuts. They're screaming for Prince to get off stage, shouting all manner of racist and homophobic slurs, throwing food, then beer bottles.

Prince stopped playing four songs into his set and reportedly wept backstage. And then he flew home to Minnesota and refused to play the second show until Mick called and convinced him to come back. That's basically how opening for the Stones could have gone for Stevie. A lot of these groups play in front of the Stones, and if you're not playing hard rock and roll,

which they tend to pick somebody playing something different from what they're doing, the crowd is out there playing, get off the stage, play some rock and roll, you know. But even then at the beginning, they didn't do that to Stevie Wonder. Take this one show he did at the Boston Garden as an example. Stevie and Wonderlove go out and they play their opening act, but then they learn that come time for the Stones to go on, Mick and Keith Richards aren't there.

Not just like not in the arena, they're not even in the state. They got arrested in Providence, Rhode Island that morning after Keith reportedly hit a photographer with his belt. The mayor of Boston at the time actually worked to get them out of jail, but then they had to get them up to Boston for the show. That's like at least 45 minutes away if there's no traffic.

Now, I don't know how much time you've spent in the Boston of 1972, but it is not hard for me to imagine that that crowd at the Rolling Stones that night might not have been super psyched that the band they paid good money to see hasn't actually taken the stage because they're in a different city. And here's this young black guy in an integrated band up there playing music that they didn't request. But for a couple of hours, that's what Stevie does. He keeps playing, rolling out songs

that aren't on the set list, keeping the crowd happy until Mick and Keith and the rest of the band showed up. Again, just to remind you, this is a tour in which there was some outbreak of violence or arrest or some insanity at just about every stop. It's still making Denise Williams quiver. So this situation in Boston is pretty fraught.

But Stevie, he just handles it. black person, no matter how much into the creative space you are. And especially with a figure like Stevie Wonder, who clearly uses his heart as his North Star. I think it's impossible to be a black entertainer and to not always be on high alert. I think it's impossible to not live in fight or flight. So you're prepared for every situation. Like Stevie Wonder was basically primed and prepped for this moment, for his spotlight. Yet, and this feels important to say, live in concert, Stevie's sound wasn't radically different

from what the Stones are up to. It's brassier and funkier and more melodic, blacker. But anybody in the house that night would have known it was still rock and roll. So the longer he and Wonderlove went, the farther along the crowd went with them. He knows the difference between a hostile environment, you know, segregated audiences down South

versus more liberal up North versus Chitlin Circuit. So Stevie Wonder knows exactly what tricks to pull from his hat to entertain people you know i think oftentimes artists especially black artists i believe that survival is often our our motivating factor you know, how can I bring the single or this particular product to the maximum audience? How do I make money? How do I survive? And I think more or less Stevie Wonder

was in just a place of how can I create beauty? I think that Stevie Wonder had the power of knowing how to disarm people from their biases. Stevie and Wonderlove played their final shows eight days after all that stress up in Boston at MSG, Madison Square Garden, to be exact. It's July 26, 1972, which is also Mick Jagger's birthday. That's Stevie on keys,

and they're all playing this medley of uptight and satisfaction. Stevie's got these sunglasses on, and he looks really happy. This footage is from Cocksucker Blues, the notorious unreleased documentary of the Stones' American tour. In it, Stevie's surrounded by a bunch of long-haired white dudes with horns, and all the members of Wonderlove are on stage, too. And that, that guitar lick right there, that's Ray Parker

Jr. When they shift from Stevie's uptight into the Stones' satisfaction, this incredible thing happens. incredible thing happens. Mick takes Stevie by the arm, and the two of them kind of bunny hop across the stage, weaving through all the musicians to these two mics that are front and center.

You can see Keith and Ray Parker Jr. jamming, and Denise and the rest of the Wonderlove singers are backing them up, and there are a zillion musicians having a good time up there. It's like a big party. And in the middle of it all, Stevie and Mick are side by side, and they start doing this little choreographed dance, throwing their hands up in unison and then doing these twirls together. And at some point, somebody comes out on stage

and throws a creamed pie at Mick, I guess because it's his birthday, and a bunch of it gets on Stevie. And one of the last things you see in this video is Stevie smiling this huge smile, wiping whipped cream from his face and just dancing like the happiest person in the world. I don't want to over-interpret this scene,

but if the purpose of this tour was to bring Stevie and his sound to an audience of hard rock and roll fans, and then win them over, you gotta think, well, that it worked out okay. Because this place seems like it's exploding with satisfaction. Hey, everybody. Smokey Robinson here,

and we're talking about Stevie Wonder. I hope you're enjoying this. I am. That run of albums that Stevie had, you know, he'd go to the Grammys, and he'd get seven or eight Grammys in the same night. As far as I'm concerned, you know, Stevie is. You know, he'd go to the Grammys and he'd get semi-Grammys in the same night. As far as I'm concerned, you know, Stevie is the musical man.

And his music has proved that. Stevie Wonder's music covers everything from gospel to blues to jazz, classical, whatever you can think of, you can find some of that element in Stevie Wonder's music. I don't know how music, period, would feel of that element in Stevie Wonder's music. I don't know how music period would feel if there was no Stevie

Wonder. Stevie Wonder has made a tremendous contribution to music around the world, not just here in the United States. His music is internationally profound. This is another thing that I love about Motown, man. We go places in Europe and all over

the world, and we're singing these songs. And probably 60 to 70% of the people in our audience don't even speak English, but they sing those songs. And they know them verbatim. Now, Stevie and I have been traveling

on the road all over the place, and you might be a person who does that too. And your home may be just sitting empty. Why let it be empty when it could be full? Turn it to an Airbnb and earn some money while you're traveling. So if you're curious about this, just go to Airbnb.com slash host

and find out more about it. Stevie released Talking Book three months after that Stones tour ended. It was his 15th album, and people came out in droves to buy it. It was wildly more successful commercially than Music of My Mind, which had come out almost eight months earlier. It topped Billboard's R&B album chart. It hit number three on the general Billboard album chart. Two of the album's singles,

You Are the Sunshine of My Life and Superstition, they were huge. Both those songs won Stevie Grammys. And all I'm saying here is that Talking Book was an enormous hit. Something had definitely changed. Okay, let's roll. Let's do it. And one of the people who lined up right away to buy it was this guy.

Hello, Mr. Barack Obama. How are you, sir? I'm pretty good. How are you doing? I am doing fantastic. Well, that's good to hear. Are you wearing a T-shirt, by the way? Just like you. This is Barack Obama,

the 44th president of the United States and an ardent Stevie Wonder fan, one of the most passionate Stevie Wonder fans ever to walk the earth, according to him. He also happens to be the co-founder of Higher Ground, one of the companies putting this show out. But the reason to sit down with him and talk about Stevie, one of the reasons anyway, is that he's a fan who graduated to a friend. So he really knows his shit when it comes to Stevie's music and background and, you know, what it all means in some greater, bigger sense.

So this is a real general question I wanted to ask you first. And it basically is, why does Stevie Wonder matter so much to you? So Talking Book was the first album that I ever purchased with my own money. So it came out when I was 11 years old. Where'd you get that money? Doing chores. Extra chores. I had chores and then there were some extra chores where you got a little bit bonus. And I was living in Hawaii at the time with my grandparents. And Stevie and that album somehow captured something in me that I didn't know was there. There was a vibe.

There was a sound, a feeling that I connected to. And for a black kid in Hawaii at a time when there weren't that many black kids around, to have this refuge was really important to me. And over time, I kept buying album after album, and those were always get-to sounds for me. And then when I met my wife, it turned out Michelle might be the only bigger Stevie Wonder fan than me. Okay. I exploited that to the maximum, sharing Stevie knowledge that indicated to her that I was a suitable prospect. Wait a minute.

When did you find out that she was a bigger fan? When did you find out she liked him at all? I mean, not that it's hard. I think it happened pretty early. You know, it's one of those first dates and you start asking, all right, well, what kind of music do you listen to? And she said, well, no, Stevie's my guy.

At which point I said, you know, Stevie's actually my guy. And so we then had a long Stevie conversation. And those are those markers in a relationship where, all right, are we going forward with this or not? And I'm pretty sure that that gave me some credibility with her. Okay. It would be odd if it didn't, is what I would say. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's a litmus test. I would say. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, it's a litmus test. So this album, Talking Book, it would have been telling you from the moment you looked at it before you would even have torn the plastic off that something unusual is going on here, and it's deep. Even you look at the Talking Book cover, he's wearing this shimmering robe,

and he's got cornrows, and he doesn't have his glasses on and he's feeling around some rocks. And you're thinking, well, what's he communicating here? Right? Allow me to describe it to you. Stevie's in this soft, velvety looking caftan. His legs are folded underneath and to one side. And he's wearing silver rings and a few bracelets. And one of them has some turquoise or maybe some opal or coral. And around his neck is a column of metallic squares. There's three of them. And the last one ends in three beaded tassels. It's like a kind of dream catcher.

And his hair is braided, too. Eight cornrows on either side of his head. Part of what he's communicating is that he is looking to transcend these categories that we are somehow being locked into. Thank you. Yes. Whether it's as subordinate, but also for that matter, you know, dominant, right? Part of what he's saying is I'm going to upend or scramble a bunch of these hierarchies.

a bunch of these hierarchies. Okay, so let's just talk for a moment about what these hierarchies are. When I first saw Talking Book and I saw Stevie Wonder in cornrows and beads, a man, Stevie Wonder wearing braids, is really central and really significant. Michaela Angela Davis writes about fashion, race, gender, hip hop. She was a stylist for, oh, just Diana Ross and Prince and Mary J. Blige and Beyonce.

For a black man to wear such a clearly African hairstyle, to so clearly connect his body to his ancestors, to so clearly communicate that I know that we are from here and that we were enslaved, and this is the hairstyle of the people that were stolen. This is the hair that gave you messages. This is the hair that were maps. This is the hair that gave you messages. This is the hair that were maps. This is the hair that hid rice and okra seeds. This is the hair that can hold beads.

No one did that. Cornrows hold things and hold stories and did something no white rock and roll guy could ever do. They cannot. There's one other especially striking detail here. Stevie, who's rarely seen in public without his sunglasses, isn't wearing any. And the sun is out. This is the only one of his album covers where he's not in glasses.

So this is a choice. You're being asked to behold the eyes of a blind person. And the whole thing, the shaman getup, the high desert setting, the way Stevie's hands are gently touching the earth like he's communing with, like he's tuning, it's deepest vibrations. I mean, it's practically begging you, like he's tuning. It's deepest vibrations. I mean, it's practically begging you to call him a prophet.

I remember staring at the album cover going, what? He does give you like Jesus. You know, he gives you black Jesus. He's giving like a spiritual leader. Look at that image on Talking Book. Like I would follow him. Which is another choice because blind people have been contending

with that particular stereotype of prophethood pretty much since the beginning of time. I mean, in some ways, TV is contending with the same thing that every single blind person contends with on a daily basis. You walk into a room and people either assume you are helpless

or you're some sort of mythical superhero. Or you're like an omen that has been sent to them to deliver a biblical message. That's Will Butler. He's a longtime music critic. He's written for the New York Times and Vice and The New Yorker. And now he works in accessibility communications for a company in Silicon Valley. Will's also blind. There's like a few tropes around disability and specifically blindness. There's the blind auger, right? The blind, all-seeing, all-knowing mythical figure. There's the blind villain or the disabled villain

who is bitter because of their disability. There's the blind beggar who's helpless on the corner with a tin can. And I think more recently, there's the blind superhero or the blind genius. And you see a lot of that pop up in the 20th century. And Stevie, I think, bears the brunt of that. I'm looking at the cover of Talking Book. I'm listening to Will Butler talk. And I'm thinking, is Stevie embracing the stereotype here?

Suggesting that he actually is in touch with the divine? And that this music is somehow spiritual or prophetic? Or is Stevie Wonder, one of the most famous blind people in the divine, and that this music is somehow spiritual or prophetic? Or is Stevie Wonder, one of the most famous blind people in the world, transcending the stereotype? Maybe nobody other than Stevie can answer this. And maybe he can't even really because he's an artist. And I don't know, sometimes art can't always be boiled down so neatly to this thing or that thing. But there's no question that this album cover, being what it is, is engaging with the fact that all sorts of people project things onto blind people. People attribute this super sense to blindness, not because they want to pigeonhole

someone and put them in a little box. I think people see the humanity in blind people and so they want to see their potential, right? People know intellectually that blind people can achieve great things, but they lack the imagination to think about what is the process of practicing and rehearsing and learning that you have to go through to get there. They can't imagine all the steps it would take to get from not knowing anything about

a drum kit to being able to play like he does. And without being able to visualize that process, you take the shortcut to like, well, it must just be some super sense. And Will's right. For Stevie, this recording process isn't as simple as sitting him down in front of a bunch of instruments and letting some superpower do all the work. There is real intent behind this process. Craft. Not just to help him create in the best way possible, but to create in a way that would be extremely accessible for him. When I talked to Bob Margalef, Stevie's longtime collaborator and one of Tonto's engineers, he told me how their

process worked. I like to say like Stevie was the rocks and Malcolm and I were the water. He filled the space and we filled the spaces in between to support him. And there were little things even in the studio. When I walked into the studio with him, first couple of times I said, there's three steps here, walk down, now turn to the right. And we set up all the instruments that needed to be set up. And there were little common things like making sure that the mic stands were high enough up on the booms that Steve wouldn't walk into and bang his head or get thrashed and stuff. We had to make really sure that the rooms were friendly for him as being unsighted. And as soon as a couple of days into it, he was moving around the studio. You wouldn't even think he was unsighted because we kept things very predictable.

We gave him the maximum amount of freedom. He was totally confident in moving into space, and it was important for him to be able to feel that way. The packaging for Talking Book also included a Braille inscription. It reads like this. Here is my music. It is all I have to tell you how I feel. Know that your love keeps my love strong. So I'd say the cover of Talking Book is reappropriating blindness, transfiguring it.

Stevie might not be saying, look at me, the blind shaman, but he certainly is saying, look at me, the blind shaman, but he certainly is saying, look at me, the black artist, the blind artist. And that, I'm going to argue, is what made this album a powerful political statement, as powerful in its way as any other black art, as any art being made at the time. You know, there were folks who were trying to be explicitly political, who were trying to be explicitly political, and there were folks who were shying away from politics. And somehow Stevie was able to write music that lifted up the dignity of Black people and made day-to-day living as a Black person in a country that was still burdened by racism and oppression. He could find beauty and joy and irony and hypocrisy and anger and love in all that in a way that made you feel we were seen

and could define our own reality as opposed to having to depend on somebody else's definitions. as opposed to having to depend on somebody else's definitions. Now, the album cover is important. And really, I could talk about the covers of Stevie Wonder albums all day. But obviously, the other thing that matters is the music. There are things going on on Talking Book that are so nuanced and sneaky and

brilliant and also easy to overlook because Stevie Wonder makes everything look so easy. Here's Questlove again. Like, I'm a person that really takes for granted Stevie Wonder's gift of songwriting. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we all do.

That's why we're doing the show. Yes, exactly. Even to the point where a downright gorgeous sonic equivalent to the Mona Lisa song, like, You Are the Sunshine of My Life. Ooh, Questlove, let's talk. That song is so beautiful. And the song is so spellbinding and so magical that it's probably not even in my top 50 Stevie Wonder songs. Like, that's the danger of being Stevie Wonder, where his Steph Curry level of marksmanship, his marksman assassin standing 10 miles away from his target and still hitting it bullseye.

Like, that zone that he's about to enter in is so, like, you take it for granted. Until fairly recently, You Are the Sunshine of My Life was so omnipresent that it became a kind of sonic wallpaper. At some point, you'd be hearing it all the time, other versions by so many different people, in elevators and grocery stores as hold music. So it's easy to casually listen to it and think, easy listening! But you should not think that. It's also easy to imagine, say, Frank Sinatra doing a cover of it back in the day, which, of course, he did. It's pretty good.

But by the time Sinatra's covering it, I mean, it's an American songbook staple. And that's because there's so much more going on in it. This song is working on so many complex levels, both as a song, obviously, and as the first thing you would have heard when you placed the needle in the groove on Talking Book. Track one, Talking Book. That's Rick McLaughlin. He's a musician and associate professor at the Berklee College of Music, where he teaches, I swear to God, a class on Stevie Wonder. And Rick is one of those rare people who has a deep knowledge of Stevie's music, how it works, and he's got an intense, unquenchable belief in it. Imagine a class about Stevie.

Imagine Rick gathering the kids around him in this class and telling them a story about this very foreign experience. The hoopla that surrounded the release of a physical album. A thing you held in your hands. And imagine specifically him telling them about the morning of October 27th, 1972, the day Talking Book came out. On a Tuesday morning, you go to the record store, you're first in line, and there's 50 other people behind you. You buy that record and you take it home, and the first thing you hear is that kind of chiming sound. It's a, you know, electric piano.

What he plays is actually this whole tone scale thing. It's weightless. It's weightless. I actually think that You Are the Sunshine of My Life is a great song because you are immediately destabilized by whatever it is you think this song is going to be. Absolutely. You are the sunshine of my life. So my version of you running home with your copy of Talking Book and putting this song on is, A, who is this singing?

Right. And then B, who is this other person singing? Right. Right. And three, when is Stevie coming? Exactly. I feel like this is the beginning. The singing he does on that record is, in contrast, it feels to me,

the timbre is really clean on those first two verses. And then Stevie shows up, and he turns it sideways. There's something about the succession of those sounds, plus there's actually two forms of weightlessness that happen in the introduction. One is something called a sus chord, suspended. And then this whole tone thing that we talked about a little while ago, the whole thing is like waiting for

Stevie to come in. Right? And then what were the lyrics that you just said when he sings? I feel like this is the beginning. Yes. That's the story right there. Yes. The story Rick is talking about is also the story of a

shift in tone. From a kind of generic, easy listening sound into what I can only describe as a blacker way of singing. He brings a touch of stank to this music. Seasoning it. Singing the word heaven so low that it could be hell. The way we say bad whenever something is good. His choice of seasoning, it's not as explicit as something like James Brown, say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud. It's just a way of presenting your blackness as undiluted and personal and natural to who you are. You're just being yourself

and this is who you are. Caftans, cornrows, coral, dream catchers. This is the beginning. At this particular time, in thinking about the 70s, it's about introspection. This is Lorna Simpson, one of America's great visual artists and photographers. She's a deep thinker of the human condition, too.

Black humans' conditions. She breaks down how Stevie brings the interior to the exterior on this album. If you think about Black introspection and a Black interior, then all the albums and all of the ways of thinking about kind of Black life is to signal that there is a black interiority. That was a particular period where people, artists, were thinking about their relationship to being in America, very specifically, and what they saw going on, and that they could not do it through the kind of mold

of the music industry that their career started in. So I think there is, the 70s kind of creates this opportunity for personalized introspection, not to say that they weren't any other thing, but the vehicle by which their music was crafted was completely different than kind of this period that we're speaking about. Okay, amen. Ah! Hallelujah! It's the freedom to explore yourself, your feelings, your people without the constant constraint of spectatorship or the obligation to interpret.

This is part of what gives Talking Book its beauty. It just sounds free, musically and emotionally. The second track on side one, Maybe Your Baby, it's a funk tune set to the old blues concern about being stepped out on by your woman. The song is kind of the polar opposite of the song we just heard. For what it's worth, Stevie's marriage to Sarita Wright was on the rocks while he was making this album,

but their creative partnership was still intact. And it's not a huge stretch to imagine that they might've been working out the demise of their love through music. So I'm often wondering if the end of You Are the Sunshine of My Life has an abrupt ending, like a pop, like, and then he's woken up to reality. And then suddenly, like, this is when reality sets in. Questlove again. Because, you you know you are the sunshine of my life starts like a dream and it feels like a dream you know what i mean yes yes those chimes

the chiming of the keyboard yes yes if it weren't for the fade out of of the song it's it's as almost if i feel like an amateur would have been Captain Obvious of like a person like me. I would have actually segued those two songs in a very abrupt manner. So abrupt that it's almost as if you were jilted from a dream. And now this is reality because maybe your baby is the exact opposite of you are the sunshine of my life and he's dealing with betrayal Always the early adopter of new technology, Stevie finds a new trick with the song to express betrayal. It's a technical achievement. that Stevie Wonder sort of does this technique

really not successfully seen or at least commercially since the days of Alvin and the Chipmunks. And that's called recording his vocals in Varyspeed. Wait, what's Varyspeed? When Stevie Wonder is set to sing his vocals, he will have the engineer

slow the music down to a very slow pace. speed. When Stevie Wonder is set to sing his vocals, he will have the engineer slow the music down to a very slow pace. And then Stevie Wonder will sing the song in his natural voice. So, when said music is sped back up to its normal place,

then Stevie Wonder's voice will sound like this. So much in your favor. So it's kind of weird for me, because I see Maybe Your Baby also as a cinematic movie, in which I feel like the normal voice Stevie Wonder, which is the lead vocal, is just realizing that love has been betrayed. Maybe your baby done made some other plans. It probably would have been enough for him to settle for the vocal trick, right?

Ooh, a new toy. But remember, whole, not parts. So Stevie's using an old trick, one of the oldest tricks in the book, a guitar. And to play it on us, he enlisted Ray Parker Jr. The first song I worked on was Maybe Your Baby. Maybe Your Baby is nearly seven minutes long, and half of it feels occupied by Ray doing three solos that he performs like it's the last time he's ever going to touch a guitar. To me, I never even heard sounds like that.

When I heard, I was like, what the heck is that? And where does the guitar go if that's going on there? I mean, to me, it was like something altogether new. How does he explain to you what he wants you to do on this record? Well, he just tells you right about here, I can use some guitar, play what you feel.

And then he fine tunes what you feel in case you end up on the wrong note at the end or something that he's not trying to express. So you try to read his mind and you interpret what he wants to play. And by the way, there's one important thing that we've left out of this entire conversation. What's that?

Out of all of the instruments Stevie plays, and he plays the drums great, the piano, the synthesizers, the harmonica. He sings, He does everything. He just can't play the electric guitar. Jeff, let's talk about a little job security. The three songs in N Talking Book are a trio of love songs. Songs about heartache, blaming on the sun, looking for another pure love,

and I believe when I fall in love it will be forever. Each one is a gem on its own, but for me, they're a hole within the hole. Man loses love, man searches for love, man thinks he's found love. Sarita wrote another pure love in Blame It On The Sun with Stevie. And the most devastating thing on that song is the moment toward the end where Stevie sings that his heart is blaming him for what went wrong.

And then this beautiful thing happens. This female voice comes up to basically say, hmm, this is new. Your heart claims the new this time. I love the ownership that comes at the end of this record. He owns his part of the demise of the relationship and uses the chorus of something like Blame It On The Sun to say so.

Even if this is not literally her voice here, it feels like Sarita's there to fact check him and resolve mutually that it's time to move on. Maybe she's the baby who'd unmade some other plans. If you've got great confessional songwriting like this, maybe you don't need divorce court. Now, having said that, I could spend a month talking about every single track on this album, including those three songs. I didn't even mention Big Brother, and it's one of Stevie's strongest pieces of political songwriting.

But time is short. I mean, I could spend another month on track four alone. So, apparently, could this guy. Tuesday heartbreak. Right. I mean, you could just get into that groove and it would transport you. Tuesday heartbreak. Seemed to be unfair. I mean, come on, listen to that. You're listening to the wonder of Stevie from Pineapple Street Studios, Higher Ground Audio and Audible.

And do you want to hear more? There's a very special bonus episode only on Audible featuring me, Wesley Morris, and former President Barack Obama in an enlightening conversation with Stevie Wonder himself. Visit audible.ca slash wonder to listen now. Getting bogged down by how much new music there is out there? There's a lot. Consider a daily dose of the All Songs Considered podcast. It's the easiest way to get tuned into the music world. We spend hours combing through the new music universe from emerging bands to time-tested icons

to bring you your next favorite artist. To get up on your music know-how, listen to All Songs Considered from NPR. There's another song and another matter that has to be addressed. Because it's important. Everybody knows Superstition. It opens side two of Talking Book. And it's a song y'all have been misinterpreting for decades. And I want to set the record straight once and for all.

Because you know what Superstition isn't about? Halloween! Lyrically, Superstition is just true poetic conciseness. The whole thing fits on a cocktail napkin. I'll be fair. It does make use of Superstition is just true poetic conciseness. The whole thing fits on a cocktail napkin. I'll be fair, it does make use of superstition imagery. 13-month-old baby broke the looking glass. Seven years of bad luck, the good things in your past. And according to Stevie, the devil is on his way.

I got to admit that I, too, have bought into the Halloween of this song. But about 20 years ago, Superstition told me something else. The song told me it was a wish for black people to avoid low expectations, not to fall for the idea that their blackness is an American curse. That's the ladder you're not supposed to walk under.

Why do we even think that? What happens if we let go of blackness as a curse, as a problem? Conversely, what if white people stop their superstitious purse clutching and crossing the street as a black person approaches? Because when you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain't the way. The superstition is racism. It's a devastating way to open side too, with a song that feels secretly about untapped black power. But what does that genius sound like to the genius himself?

As he's, I don't know, geniusing? We don't often get to hear that. Sometimes with the Beatles and Aretha Franklin and Prince, some documentary or outtakes will surface showing them in process. I'd never heard anything like that with Stevie Wonder. But then a little miracle happened for me. I got to hear component parts for Superstition. Stems is what people in the music business call them, like flower stems.

Before these stems came into my life, if you had said, Wesley, what's the baseline of Superstition? I would never in a million years have said this. Never. But that's what this actually is. I would never in a million years have said this. Never! But that's what this actually is. It's the baseline to superstition. What I thought the baseline actually was, was... What I thought was the baseline was actually a clavinet.

Individually, they could really be sketches for distinct songs, but really, they're the onions for the Sofrido Stevie's making. Then, he takes that basic clavinet chord progression and adds salt and pepper in the form of little notes and some swing and a half note that do indeed funk the basic progression up. And he starts to saute them all together so that everything's dancing in the pan. They all have their own parts, but they play together. They play off each other.

Here come the green peppers! They play off each other. Here come the green peppers! What's great about hearing these individual elements is that you can hear Stevie bleeding through what I think are probably headphones. When there's a rust between chords, it's very faint, but it's there. Okay, let's add another ingredient. Stevie, can we have the garlic, please? Then he throws in some chilies in the form of delays and slapback,

this type of rapid echo that gives the sounds a depth of flavor, basically more salt and a little more garlic. Now, in the stems we got our hands on, the drums are mic'd three ways. From the left and the right, and then down at the bass drum, so that each element is its own distinct sound. And just to reiterate this, all of these pieces, or many of them,

especially with the clavinet, can actually stand on their own as solo compositions. Now, I know this isn't typically done when you're making a sofrito, but I want to add some wine to the pan to the glazette. Hit me. That's Trevor Lawrence on tenor sax and Steve Medeo on trumpet.

You can hear them waiting to add their sizzle to what I'm going to argue is the chorus. If you listen closely, you can hear their hands on the valves of their instruments, if I'm going to argue is the chorus. If you listen closely, you can hear their hands on the valves of their instruments, if I'm not mistaken. And what happens is they basically have to play two parts, one from the left and one from the right. And now, check out this steak before it goes in the pan. Very superstitious

Writing's on the wall Very superstitious Letters not to fall But the point here is that with a lot of songs, great ones included, they're found in collaboration. When you're a one-person band, the jam is you. I mean, he's just goofing around like he's still making music in my mind.

Stevie tended to be right about a lot of things, but not everything. I mean, take me. There's one thing I believe in that I don't understand, and I have yet to suffer for it, and that's his genius. Motown put the song out in October of 1972, and by January of 73, it had taken over the Hot 100's number one spot, something Stevie hadn't achieved since he told everybody

to clap their hands on Fingertips Part 2 in 1963. After Talking Book came out, the New York Times wrote about how Stevie was beloved not just by his longtime black listeners, but by, quote, young and not-so-young whites, unquote. The New Yorker referred to his, quote, huge interracial audience, and a cover story on Newsweek announced, quote, Stevie is the favorite of young, old, black, white,

the hip, and the square. And when you've got the number one song in America, there are just places you're suddenly allowed to go. Everyone else might have to ask for directions on how to get there, but you're allowed to set up your band and jam out. I'm talking about the time that Stevie went on down to the children's television workshop to teach the kids. I got something just for you. Oh, yeah.

Oh, just for you. Just go ahead. Go ahead. Goes like this. Oh, boy. Oh, OK. OK, here. We do it now.

I'm going to do it. OK, here we go. OK, boy. You got that? Okay, here, here. We do it now. I'm going to do it. Okay, here we go. Okay, okay, okay. And then got down. You don't want to save me. I have to sing Sesame Street's song. My favorite live Stevie Wonder performance is Sesame Street.

Ray Parker Jr. again. When we did it, I had no clue that it was going to be that big of a deal. When I was a kid, I used to watch Sesame Street and playing on Sesame Street with Stevie Wonder. I thought, wow, this is really cool, man. I'm on Sesame Street and I'm playing with Stevie Wonder and it's all being recorded. Just think about this for a moment. It's now the spring of 1973. And this is the place Stevie Wonder now occupies in American popular culture.

A guy who can spend a summer touring with one of the dirtiest acts in popular music. spend a summer touring with one of the dirtiest acts in popular music. And then, nine months or so after the end of that tour, finds his way to Sesame Street. He's about to turn 23 years old. 23! And if there are any doubts remaining out there as to just what a hot streak he's on, well, Stevie's about to put those doubts to rest. Six months after leaving a crater outside Mr. Hooper's store, he'll release Inner Visions, the third album in the streak. And if we're talking about transcendence, that's the album that makes him artistically untouchable and untoppable. See, Barry thought that they were so powerful making love songs and the music that they were making that was not political. And so he did not want them to lose that particular identity because he wasn't sure what the political identity would do to their careers.

That's next time on The Wonder of Stevie. This has been a Higher Ground and Audible original. The Wonder of Stevie is produced by Pineapple Street Studios. Higher Ground Audio and Audible. Our senior producer is Josh Gwynn. Producer is Janelle Anderson. Associate producer is Mary Alexa Cavanaugh. Senior managing producer is Asha Saluja.

Executive editor is Joel Lovell. Archival producer is Justine Daum. Fact checker is Jane Drinkard. Head of sound and engineering is Raj Makija. Thank you. by Davey Sumner and Raj Makija. Additional engineering by Jason Richards, Scott Gilman, Javier Martinez, and Lian Do. Score and sound design by Josh Gwynn and Raj Makija. Original score performed by Carles Music and Raj Makija. Additional music provided by Epidemic Sound. Hosted and executive produced by Wesley Morris. Higher ground executive producers are Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Corinne Gilliard Fisher, Dan Fehrman, and Mukta Mohan. Creative executive for higher ground is

Janae Marable. Executive producers for Pineapple Street Studios are Jenna Weiss-Berman and Max Linsky. Audible executive producers are Kate Navin and Nick D'Angelo. The Wonder of Stevie is also executive produced by Amir Questlove Thompson, Anna Holmes, and Stevie Wonder. Questlove is the producer of this show courtesy of iHeart

and can also be heard on Questlove Supreme from iHeart Podcasts. Recorded at Different Fur, Patches, The Hobby Shop, and Pineapple Street Studios. Head of Creative Development

at Audible is Kate Navin. Chief Content Officer is Rachel Giazza. Copyright 2024 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. Sound recording copyright 2024 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC.