"Master Blaster (Jammin')" /

Stevie Wonder

Man, is it steamin' hot out there. And when the temperature goes up the charts, here's my go-to track. A little funk, a little reggae, and you've got this jubilant #1 reggae/soul hit, from Stevie's Hotter Than July LP from 1980. First track, side two, of Stevie's best-selling LP in the UK.

"Everyone's feeling pretty / It's hotter than July / Though the world's full of problems / They couldn't touch us even if they tried." This is what I need to take the stink off of this sweltering heat.

Stevie wrote this ecstatic anthem to celebrate the peace agreement signed in April 1980 to end 15 years of civil war in Zimbabwe. True, this pact put the controversial Robert Mugabe into office, where he's still entrenched, despite economic failures and a shaky human rights record. But the effervescent mood of this song endures.

And what's wrong with believing the best of people? In this rancorous election season, it wouldn't hurt any of us to operate with a spirit of forgiveness and some faith in human nature. "When you're moving toward the positive / Your destination is the brightest star."

No, it's not an escape. The production goes full-on into the heat of the summer -- that languid bass line, the fly-swatting drums, the exhaling background singers. Let a little sweat roll down your brow; don't stay indoors and shiver in refrigerated air. Embrace existence.

Jammin' until the break of dawn. Of course, we have to pick up the reference to Bob Marley's masterful "Jamming," from his 1977 LP Exodus. ("Marley's hot on the box"...Joined as children in Jah.") Stevie's generosity toward other artists has always been a model for the rest of us.

And yes, this was released over a quarter of a century ago. But you tell me: Does it sound dated? Does it not lift your spirits? IS IT NOT A SONG FOR THE AGES?

Bless you, Stevie.

My Musical Advent Calendar

"What Christmas Means to Me" /
Cee Lo Green

I'm coming right out and saying it -- I hugely enjoyed watching Cee Lo Green as a judge on The Voice and I really haven't enjoyed the show since he left. Love ya, Pharell, but it's just not the same.

If anybody was going to breathe life back into the Christmas album concept in 2012, it was gonna be Cee Lo. I'm guessing nobody predicted that his Cee Lo's Magic Moment album would have been quite such a hit, but it makes total sense to me.

And of all its recycled (let's call them re-gifted) numbers, this one has to be my favorite.

Okay, for starters -- the original was written for none other than Stevie Wonder, for his massively wonderful 1967 Someday at Christmas LP (more on that to come in days to come). It was written for Stevie by Berry Gordy's brother George and sister Anna (who also married Marvin Gaye), along with Allen Story -- talk about good bloodlines.

True to songwriting convention, it's a catalog song, cramming in all the things he loves about Christmas -- mistletoe, carols, candles, holly -- with a love song subtext: she's smiling, she's giving him cards and kisses, and the new year looks pretty good if they can only be together.

But there's that bright and snappy Motown sound, swinging just behind the beat, with a great bass line, splashes of horns, and silky smooth backing vocals. And Cee Lo has the exquisite taste not to muck around with the essence of it. Where Stevie had a sweet harmonica solo, Cee Lo inserts some gospel-inspired scatting, and yeah, the production's a little more ramped up -- but give Cee Lo credit, he's an acolyte of the R&B DNA, and he's not about to fix what doesn't need fixing.

If nothing else, Cee Lo's Magic Moment  resurrected some classics of the holiday repertory for millennials who might otherwise never know "Baby It's Cold Outside" or "Merry Christmas Baby" (more on those later too!). One of the things I loved about Cee Lo on The Voice was his astonishingly eclectic range of musical knowledge; he's like the Atlanta version of Elvis Costello, listening to everything with greedy and receptive ears.

Oh, and -- let's not overlook this -- he just has a crazy rich soul voice, full of love and positive energy. Which, come to think of it, is what this holiday season should be all about. 

 

"I Was Made to Love Her" / Stevie Wonder

Ah, that harmonica.  Who else but Stevie Wonder?

I had been thinking about Stevie and the harmonica lately -- something I heard on the grocery store musak, although I couldn't swear it was a Stevie tune. But that sweet, swinging harmonica made me suddenly hunger to listen to Stevie Wonder.

And then, by serendipity, in an email thread I learned this morning that some dear buddies from my first New York City job were all also having Stevie Wonder marathons to combat the cabin fever of being snowbound.

But of course! 

It's early, granted -- 1967, when Stevie was just sixteen years old, before he really took the reins of his own career. Though he co-wrote this song, his mother, Motown songwriting headmistress Sylvia Moy, and his producer Henry Cosby had a hand in it as well. (Moy was from Arkansas, which is why it begins with the baffling line "I was born in Little Rock," whereas Stevie originally hailed from Saginaw, Michigan.)

But he claims it was autobiographical, about the first girl he ever fell in love with, and the pure joy of first-time love runs through it like a shot of adrenaline.  He's already trying out his own version of talking-blues-soul -- "You know my papa disapproved it / My mama boohooed it" (can't you just imagine Bob Dylan crooning that?).

On the invaluable website Song Facts, I read that Henry Cosby took Stevie to a Baptist church in Detroit to show him how a gospel preacher might sing this. He also dragged people off the street into the studio so that Stevie could sing it to an audience -- Stevie always sang better with an audience. Now there's a brilliant producer for you. Whatever he did to coax the magic into being, it worked.

Maybe it was the older songwriters who pushed this song into a celebration of long-standing love ("That's why we made it through the years"). Stevie had probably been with that girl for weeks, months if he was lucky, not "years." But he sells it with such confidence, I never questioned it.

What really sticks with me, though, is the images of those kids -- "I was high-top shoes and shirt tails / Suzy was in pigtails," and in the last verse, "I was knee-high to a chicken when that love bug hit me."  Seven years later, Stevie would start out "I Wish" (on his masterpiece Songs in the Key of Life) "Looking back on when I / Was a little nappy-headed boy."  What a journey he'd traveled between this song and that one.

But it was a huge, I mean HUGE hit in 1967, preventing from hitting Number 1 on the charts only by the massive megahit "Light My Fire" by the Doors.  (Think of those two songs emerging at the same moment in time.)  That commanding bass (James Jamerson?), that sassy guitar line, crisp horns held back in the mix, and above all the soaring exuberance of Stevie's harmonica.  An instant classic, it was. And it sounds as fresh today as it did 48 years ago.

My Musical Advent Calendar

"Someday at Christmas" /
Stevie Wonder

Instead of a glitter-spangled scene with doors for every day of December, how about a daily treat from my iTunes holiday playlist?

Yesterday, we had Kevin Morris -- today, Stevland Morris.

Promoting peace and love for the Christmas season?  Keb' Mo' (see yesterday's post) didn't invent the idea -- in fact, I'm pretty sure he grew up, as I did, with this Stevie Wonder classic in his head.

Written by Motown stalwart Ron Miller, who'd penned many of Stevie's earlier Motown hits, this gem appears on Stevie's 1967 album of the same name.  Let's get some context here: Stevie was 17 years old at the time -- seventeen! -- and despite the political ferment of the times, he was still pretty much a Motown property who did and said what Berry Gordy told him to.  It would be a couple more years before Stevie had enough hits under his belt to push Gordy for the right to write and perform more socially relevant material. But the Stevie who was soon to give us Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life was already starting to feel his wings, and you can feel his social conscience thrumming through this song.

Idealistic? You bet. "Someday at Christmas men won't be boys / Playing with bombs like kids play with toys" -- we're still waiting for that, Stevie. And we're still waiting for the day when "there'll be no wars," when "all men are free," and where there "no hungry children." I'm tempted to say that this song foretold the future, but no, those same problems were there in 1967 too. The thing is, we haven't solved them yet, not by a long shot.  Which is why we still need this song today.

And there he is, with that glorious young voice, melismatic and earnest and trustingly naïve.  It's a near perfect production, building at just the right pace, layering on more with every verse -- strings, a choir, the whole shebang -- but never tipping over into cheesiness. And what's even more important: This song never gets preachy or hectoring.  He's just dreaming, and hoping that the Christmas magic will help his dream along.

Well, it's 47 Christmases later, and we're still a mess of a world.  But every year, hearing Stevie sing this gives me new hope.  And if that isn't the Christmas spirit, I don't know what is.

BETWEEN THE BEATLES COVERS

"We Can Work It Out" / Stevie Wonder

And now for something completely different...

It's one thing to cover a Beatles song if their records were the soundtrack of your childhood, the inspiration that made you decide to become a musician. But Stevie Wonder was their peer, more or less; with his first album released in 1962, he was already a Motown star when the Beatles first hit the scene. So why cover a Beatles hit?

Granted, Motowners were probably as eager to ride the tail of the Beatles phenomenon as anybody. If it helped them escape the confines of the soul charts and tap into a crossover market, all the better. Given that the Beatles themselves were influenced by American R&B, repaying the favor was only natural, and Beatles songs really did lend themselves to being soul-ified. (Check out Marvin Gaye's "Yesterday" or Gladys Knight's "Let It Be".)

But this wasn't just a filler track for Stevie; it was track two on his 1970 album Signed, Sealed, Delivered  and he released it as a single in 1971, which hit #13 on the Billboard charts and earned him a Grammy nomination. At a time when Stevie was intent on proving his chops as a songwriter and producer, he still invested this much in a cover song. You have to think there was something about this song that really spoke to him.

Well, duh -- there's something about this song that really speaks to me too.

But then what does Stevie do?  He steers the song straight into Funkytown. He kicks up the tempo, leads off with a sassy keyboard intro, scats the lyrics, and takes that McCartney syncopation to a whole new level. Listen to how he punctuates the line endings, with a bah-dum-pah guitar lick straight out of the Jackson Five. That fed-up John Lennon bridge, the thinly veiled threat about "Life is very short / And there's no time / For fussing and fighting"?  Stevie drops the spooky waltzing harpsichord entirely and sings this with straightforward peacemaking intentions.

While McCartney was pleading with his girlfriend, Stevie sails along on a wave of optimism and confidence.  Sure, we can work it out!  Suddenly this song is no longer about a romantic relationship -- it's about blacks and whites finding a common ground. He adds a musical break full of sweet yearning harmonica, coaxing all sorts of mellow sounds out of that lonesome blues instrument -- it sounds downright Burt Bacharach. Whenever Stevie returns to his harmonica prodigy roots, you have to know it's a good thing.

It took another ten years for Stevie and Paul to finally collaborate, and then the product was the cringe-worthy "Ebony and Ivory." They both should have known better. I prefer to pretend that never happened, and turn up "We Can Work It Out" one more time. 

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

I've been stuck in a continual loop of summer songs, thanks to a Facebook thread -- so I'm primed to see what surprises the Shuffle's gonna throw my way today....

1. "In the Bleak Midwinter" / Cyndi Lauper
From Merry Christmas -- Have a Nice Life! (2004)
Ha -- talk about a change of seasons! The irony is just too perfect. Yes, a traditional English Christmas carol from Cyndi "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" Lauper. I always liked Cyndi -- her Boho flake image seemed as genuine as Madonna's seemed calculated -- and an off-the-wall choice like this seems totally in character for her. Here she tenderly strums her autoharp and unleashes a pure madrigal voice to produce a true olde English sound, plaintive penny whistle and all.

2. "House of the Rising Sun" / Alan Price
From Rising Sun (1980)
No, not the Animals' version -- this is solo Alan Price, nearly 20 years later, reclaiming the song that made him famous (well, he did arrange the Animals' version, and still gets songwriting royalties). Somehow it works just fine, with a jazzy tempo, scolding sax, and a brand-new syncopated organ solo in the middle eight. It won't replace the original in my heart (one of my 100 Favorite Singles), but this rendition is perfectly delightful on its own merits.

3. "Think" / Aretha Franklin
From Aretha Now (1968)
Soul Sister No. 1, setting that man straight. I'll confess, I can't hear this anymore without picturing Aretha in her pink waitress uniform, reading the riot act to Matt "Guitar" Murphy in The Blues Brothers, while Belushi and Ackroyd watch from their diner stools and Lou Marini plays his sax atop the diner counter. (Here's the link: Think.) A great moment in film!

4. "All Day and All of the Night" / The Kinks
From The Kinks (1964)
Those first grating chords, and an idiot grin busts out on my face. That's how I know the Kinks are my favorite band -- the way the world stops for me when this song pops up unexpectedly. Not my fave Kinks track, not by a long shot, but compared to most of the rest of all music? No contest. Dave's churning solo could have been cut yesterday, that's how raw and vital that guitar sounds.

5. "I'll Fight" / Wilco
From Wilco (The Album) (2009)
I'm not a rabid Wilco fan, which is why I was immune to the backlash against this album. "Safe"? "Commercial"? It's like the R.E.M. thing all over again. Who cares? I enjoy Jeff Tweedy's music -- a burnished patina of Americana laid over hooky tunes with ambiguous lyrics. Though there's nothing ambiguous about that first verse: "I'll fight, I'll fight, I'll fight / I'll fight for you, I will." That absolute commitment buoys this upbeat track, a spectacularly non-whiny love song -- what a rare thing!

6. "Pastime Paradise" / Stevie Wonder
From Songs in the Key of Life (1976)
Fact of life: I will accept any political rhetoric if it's delivered in Stevie Wonder's blissfully tuneful package. Maybe I'm hypnotized by that supple Latin percussion, the fluid synthesizers, the lush symphonic texture that Stevie could mastermind at the height of his golden period. When I listen to the words, I think, What idealistic nonsense! But Preacher Stevie makes me believe.

7. "Rivertown" / Hayes Carll
From Little Rock (2005)
Roots, roots, roots. Or is it alt.country? My friend Jim emailed me a few twangy tracks by this guy, and I've enjoyed them without ever getting around to exploring more of his music. It's all in the Townes Van Zandt / Steve Earle / Robert Earl Keen line, but very likeable -- even this lugubrious story, told with a slouchy beat and the lonesome whine of pedal steel. (On other tracks, Carll balances that out with a goofy sense of humor). A bit generic, perhaps, but moody and mesmerizing.

8. "Younger Girl" / Kippington Lodge
Oh, how embarrassing. Yes, I'm such a Nick Lowe sap that I even have this rarity, a live-from-the-BBC recording of a Lovin' Spoonful cover by Kippington Lodge, Nick's first band when he was still a teenager. I don't even think it's Nick singing, more likely his schoolmate Barry Landerman. And that woozy, wheezy organ -- Bob Andrews? Chronology is hazy with obscure tracks like this. Is this version better than the Lovin' Spoonful's? Oh, come on, that question is not even relevant. It's Nick.

9. "Towers of London" / XTC
From Black Sea (1980)
Eccentric architectural musings from Andy Partridge (unless Alex tells me it's Colin Moulding). No wonder Andy and Robyn Hitchcock like to collaborate -- this could be the B-side to "Trams of Old London." A whole song about the navvies who built Tower Bridge for Queen Victoria -- now that's what I call a pop song! But it is, it's so catchy, with that New Wave-y quirky production. I really need to do a full post on this song.

10. "Oh, Gosh" / Donovan
From Troubador (compilation)
What gives this track such an airy texture? Is it the breathy jazz flute, the light brushes on the drums, the plucked upright bass -- or was there really a summer breeze flowing through the studio in 1968 when Donovan cut this track? Nobody could sell that flower child vibe like Donovan. The sincerity is what does it -- "Oh gosh! Life is really too much / (Life is really too much)" (I love how his doubled vocals split, jumping from speaker to speaker, doing a one-man call-and-response). Blissful.

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 41-45

Ah -- a tale of Five Obsessions. Five fleeting obsessions perhaps, but powerful while they lasted.

41. "Get Back" / The Beatles (1969)
The Beatles, of course, are one of the major obsessions of my life. But I'm thinking of a more particular obsession here -- my obsession with the film Let It Be. In May 1970 my friend Karen Butcher and I went to the Vogue Theatre in Indianapolis (then a real movie theater, not a music club like it is now) to see Let It Be the weekend it opened. We saw every showing that first Saturday, in fact, hiding out in the bathroom between screenings so the ushers wouldn't throw us out. Slipping back into our red plush seats in the dark, we avidly drank in every mumbled line of dialogue, every grainy shot of Our Boys. That climactic scene on the rooftop of the Apple headquarters on Savile Row riveted us, as the band played an unannounced LIVE BEATLES CONCERT in the middle of the London working day. (Can you imagine opening your office window and hearing that?) Karen and I were no casual Beatles fans -- throughout that next summer, we'd spend countless evenings sitting on Karen's front porch, holding imaginary conversations with our future husbands John Lennon (Karen's) and Paul McCartney (mine). (I'm not sure how we killed off Linda Eastman and Yoko Ono, but I'm sure it was bloodless and legal.) We lived in that movie. Of course, we already knew "Get Back" -- it had been released as a single way back in the spring of 1969, even before Abbey Road. With its chugging locomotive rhythm track and blithe McCartney melody, not to mention Billy Preston tripping all over on the keyboards, it teased us with riddling character portraits -- loner JoJo rambling from Tucson to California, transsexual Loretta Martin -- everyone trying to get back to where they once belonged. Hearing it resurface in Let It Be was like meeting an old friend. Now, years later, I know that the Beatles actually recorded Let It Be first, planning it as a back-to-basics reunion titled Get Back; it was still in production when -- having moved on to Abbey Road -- they decided to split. Shrewdly, they finished Abbey Road, then recast the Get Back material as their farewell, Let It Be. All along, we fans were kept in the dark, ignorant of how carefully the break-up was being orchestrated. But by the time Karen and I sat in that movie theater -- watching them on that rooftop, Paul with his bushy black beard and John in his round spectacles and short fur coat, peeling off a rare guitar lead -- we knew we'd never see them again. And at the end, John's sardonic sign-off -- "I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and I hope we pass the audition" -- well, crikey.

42. "Message In a Bottle" / The Police (1979)
Let's just get it right out there: Sting was the hottest guy in rock music in 1979. Those wary eyes, that sulky sneer . . . and there I was, with my longtime weakness for bassists. Against the hard-edged sounds of punk, metal, and disco, the reggae groove of the Police almost single-handedly kept the roll in rock 'n' roll for a couple of years. It's hard to believe that a three-piece combo could create a sound this full; that melodic, lounging bass line was essential. Their tracks were tight, lithe, muscular, but never felt stripped-down. Add to that the reverbed, minor-key spookiness of tracks like "Roxanne," "Don't Stand So Close to Me," and "Walking on the Moon," and there was really no way I could resist. By the time they hit it big in the US, the Police were cranking out sunnier, blander easy-listening tracks like "Every Breath You Take" and "Everything She Does Is Magic," and I lost all interest. But when this song came along -- their first #1 hit in the UK, from their second LP Reggatta de Blanc -- I was completely under its spell. Fine songcraft, developing the image of a castaway shipwrecked on some desert island (in the Caribbean, from the sound of it), sending out an "SOS to the world" in countless pleading bottles. Sting's mopey wail fit this song perfectly, declaring, "Love can mend your life but / Love can break your heart" (our first clue that the island is a metaphor for heartbreak -- the old John Donne "no man is an island" line). And then after the instrumental break, in the third verse, the money shot: "Woke up this morning / Don't believe what I saw / A hundred million bottles / Washed up on the shore." Can't you just see them, camera panning out to show them all, bobbing in the surf? A lesser songwriter might have turned this into a happy ending, but not Sting -- he interprets it: "Seems I'm not alone / In being alone / A hundred million castaways / Looking for a home." Everybody's lonely, the message goes; everybody hurts. But me personally? All I could think about was mopping the tears of poor shipwrecked Sting, brushing the sand from his blond hair, tasting the salt on his sun-bronzed skin. . .

43. "If This Is It" / Huey Lewis & the News (1984)
Another case of fangirl lust. Huey Lewis wasn't my usual type -- I favored long-haired skinny Brits, not clean-cut virile preppie types from California -- but that hoarse edge to his voice snagged my heart. (His resemblance to Jeff Bridges didn't hurt, either.) Huey Lewis flirted at the edges of New Wave hipsterdom -- his original band Clover, sans Huey, backed Elvis Costello on his first album -- but his essential talent was for clean radio pop, with enough of a retro gloss to cash in on the Eighties' 1950s nostalgia. For a while there, Huey & Co. were just cranking out the hits -- "The Heart of Rock and Roll," "Power of Love," "I Want a New Drug," "Heart and Soul" -- all lively, well-crafted tracks that got tons of radio play. No less than four hit singles were released from their megatuple platinum LP Sports; it would've been the year's #1 album if not for Thriller. In the early 80s MTV exposure was also critical, and the video for "If This It It" is a classic, a stylish sitcom set on the Santa Cruz boardwalk. (Remember the band, buried in sand up to their necks, doing the doowop harmonies on the chorus?) It was all mainstream as hell, and you know me, mainstream is not usually my thing. Besides, in 1984 I got engaged and then married; naively I assumed that the fangirl part of me would now be locked up in a streamer trunk, along with the faded corsages and torn ticket stubs. But there we were, in September 1984, on our honeymoon, a tour of quaint New England inns (no Poconos heart-shaped tubs for us!). And every time we turned on the car radio -- I'm telling you, every time -- there was Huey's pleading rasp, urging me to reconsider, "If this is it / Please let me know / If this ain't love, you better let me know!" I didn't reconsider, of course; I had no reason to. No matter how many times Huey cajoled, "Girl don't lie, and tell me that you need me / Girl don't cry, and tell me nothing's wrong." (Oh, how he growled with frustration on the "rl" of "girl!). I'd look out the car window, press my knees together. But I knew that the fangirl was still in the back seat; she wasn't going ANYWHERE.
44. "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat" / Herman's Hermits (1965)
My first post-Paul McCartney crush, fed by a crush of hype in Tiger Beat and Sixteen magazines. But oh, Peter Noone was adorable in 1965, with his crooked front tooth, his shiny gray eyes, and that sleek mop of fair hair. He may have been a manufactured teeny-bopper phenom, but he was MY manufactured teeny-bopper phenom, and he actually had the singing talent -- not to mention the acting chops -- to pull it off. Hell, he's still out there flogging these oldies. (And still adorable.) Herman's Hermits actually had two careers -- an initial run in the UK with a string of respectable R&B numbers, then a crossover to the US when they increasingly specialized in goofy English music-hall songs like "Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter" and "Henry The Eighth." Released in January 1965, "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat" marked the crossover -- it climbed to #2 on the US charts, but in the UK it was only the B-side to "Silhouettes." All I knew was, it was track one on their second US album, Herman's Hermits on Tour (I've still got my battered copy, with its cheesy cover graphic of the band inserted into a hot-air balloon). Producer Mickey Most was taking no chances; "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat" features the same stompy beat and cheery girl-group-style harmonies as the Hermits' debut single "Something Good." The song was written to order by John Carter and Ken Lewis, incidentally the backing vocalists on the Who's "Can't Explain," who also sang in their own group The Ivy League -- remember "Tossing and Turning?" I loved Herman's guttural Manchester vowels as he sang, "Cos you're the one I lo-ove," but the best part is that little cry at the end of the bridge, when he sings, "I get the feeling, you're ooooh-wee (ah!)" He'd cock his head, hook his thumbnail on that crooked tooth, and all us little fanbabies would just dissolve. . . .

45. "Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing" / Stevie Wonder (1974)
If Jeff Bridges gets the Academy Award for Crazy Heart this year -- and oh, how I hope he does -- it won't just be because he was brilliant in Crazy Heart, though of course he was. It'll be because he's been brilliant in every single damn movie he's made since his 1971 debut in The Last Picture Show. Same thing here with Stevie Wonder. No single Stevie Wonder track stands out enough to make it into my Top Ten, but Stevie is so close to my heart, he had to be on here somewhere. For sheer musicality, nobody (except maybe Paul McCartney) can equal the guy. But which single to write about? "Uptight (Everything's Alright)"? "Superstition"? "Livin' for the City"? "I Wish"? "Part-Time Lover"? It's an impossible choice. But in the end, the Stevie Wonder LP I loved most was 1973's Innervisions, at the apex of his amazing streak from Talking Book through Songs in the Key of Life. It came along the spring of my junior year, when I had just started editing the college newspaper, was proposing my senior thesis, was in the thick of deciding where my life should go (like I've EVER figured that out.) Some days the only way to survive was to lock my dorm room door and put Innervisions on my turntable. By the time "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing" came along -- side two, track four -- I'd be lost in Wonder. That crazy tango intro, with Stevie muttering some jive-ass hustle ("Paris, Beirut, Iraq, Iran ... you know, I speak very very fluent Spanish!"), morphing magically into a smooth-as-silk samba. "Everybody's got a thing / But some don't know how to handle it / Always reachin' out in vain / Accepting things not worth having" -- gee, was that my life or what? And there was Stevie, with those long, caressing, overlapping lines of the jazzy chorus, reassuring me: "Don't you worry 'bout a thing, mama /Cause I'll be standing on the side /While you check it out." Lyrics aren't Stevie's strength (again, like Paul McCartney) but even an English major like me can forgive a little verbal fuzziness when the sentiment is so beautiful. Stevie in the studio must have been like a kid in a candy shop, delighting in how many musical textures he could pile on, pouring it all into one richly complicated groove. And soaring above it all, his soothing vocals: "Everybody needs a change / A chance to check out the new" (or "loo," as I always heard it). "But you're the only one to see / The changes you take yourself throo-oo-oo-oo-oo-ough," ringing the chord changes on that "through." I can feel myself relax, even now; I can breathe again. Better than yoga, Stevie.

“I Was Made to Love Her” / Stevie Wonder

28 DAYS OF LOVE SONGS

I suppose I could have written about “I Just Called to Say I Love You” – but after Jack Black’s record-store tirade in High Fidelity, I’ll never again admit I like that song.

It’s still safe to like early Stevie Wonder, though, right? This one’s just a pure, clear soul beauty from 1967. It’s a perfect Happy In Love song, about two childhood sweethearts who are still together. Except for a little parental friction way in the past (“my papa disapproved it, / My mama boo-hooed it”), they’ve made it through and are still happy together.

He almost sounds out of breath, rushing enthusiastically through word-crammed lines. As Stevie flash-forwards through their lives, he tosses off glancing details – “I was born in Little Rock,” “I wore hightop shoes and shirt tails / Susie was in pigtails,” and my favorite, “I was knee-high to a chicken / When that love bug bit me.” Mountains are crumbling, trees are blossoming, and Stevie’s got the fever – there isn’t a love song cliché he doesn’t trot out. He strings it all together exultantly, reiterating “My baby loves me / My baby needs me / That’s why we made it through the years” and “Don’t you know I was made to love her / Build a world all around her / Yah! Hey, hey, hey.” It’s completely uncritical, but who cares? Maybe that is the secret to staying happy.

Besides, it’s all just an excuse for Stevie to style away over one of the best rhythm grooves Motown ever crafted -- a confident funk-laden bass line, brash steady drums, topped at the end of every verse with a sassy flourish of vibraphones (or is it some kind of synth?). As the song goes on, they layer on back-up yeah-yeah-yeahs and syncopated strings, and like the icing on the cake, a joyous harmonica solo by Stevie -- man, I'd forgotten what a harmonica prodigy the boy was. It builds and builds, till it's practically bursting through the roof with joy.

Sure, these lovers are still happy together -- and what's more, I'm happy, just listening to him sing about it. If anybody else did this, it would sound simple-minded; but somehow Stevie Wonder can pull off this sort of magic, over and over again.

I Was Made To Love Her sample

“Sweetest Somebody I Know” / Stevie Wonder

One evening I was walking around Midtown, killing time before a show – and suddenly, a block away, I saw a scrum of flashbulbs and reporters, and in the middle of it all was STEVIE WONDER, his face all lit up with that iconic grin. My heart leapt up to see him again, after all these years.

That night I realized it had been years since I’d heard a new Stevie Wonder album. But hey, Stevie Wonder produced more brilliant music by age 30 than most artists can ever expect to do in a lifetime -- if he never sang another note, he’d still be way ahead of all his peers. “Superstition,” “Sunshine of My Life”, "For Once In My Life," "Part-Time Lover," the lush and haunting "Lately" -- most artists I know would kill to have written even one of these.

Then last summer, sitting in a paella restaurant in Barcelona, I finally heard a new Stevie Wonder song (from his 2005 album A Time To Love, actually, but still new to me.) I recognized him at once; not just the voice, but the phrasing, the melodic and rhythmic freeness, the whole marvelous flow. “Sweetest Somebody I Know” is simply drenched in Brazilian samba. Whatever cat is playing the guitar on this is suave as can be, and in the middle eight, Stevie cuts loose with perfect exuberance on the harmonica. I find myself grinning like a complete sap every time I hear it.

Stevie’s voice hasn’t changed one bit. Listen to that joyful quality, as if he just had to burst into song, his heart was so full. He plays cat-and-mouse with that syncopation, a man who lives so deep inside the rhythm that every hesitation or anticipation is meaningful. I hang breathlessly on every beat, even when he's dancing repeatedly on the same note, waiting for him to soar upwards with that boppy melody. It just makes me feel happy.

Stevie Wonder’s not a polished wordsmith; in fact his stuff reads like it’s from somebody who didn’t bother much with English class. (Given that Stevie Wonder was an established Motown star by age 12, that may well be the case.) This one’s got a couple tortured lines, like “And it would behoove me and my soul if I did state my case,” or “In a time when people are on with making sure that they're okay / You pour out your love every second, every minute, every hour of the day.” But somehow with Stevie, those stuffed-in extra syllables, the stilted grammar, don’t matter one bit. It's such a beautiful outpouring of love, I can’t quibble.

Being a star early turns some people into complete jerks. I get the idea that with Stevie, however, fame kept him innocent, buffered from the world by his own celebrity. His idealism, his pure musicality, have never been damaged. I don’t know this for sure; maybe he kicks his dog and cheats on his wife and screams at his assistant like any other hot shot. But just don’t tell me about it. Leave me with my faith in Stevie Wonder; it's one of the things that makes life worth living.

Sweetest Somebody I Know sample

“Living for the City” / Stevie Wonder

MOTOWN WEEK #3

I grew up with Stevie Wonder. First he was Little Stevie Wonder, Motown’s 12-year-old genius, doing “Fingertips” on TV (I just thought he wore those sunglasses to be cool, until my mother set me straight). A blind black child prodigy seemed just a novelty, though; it wasn’t until the later 60s, when his voice changed and he started that amazing run of hits (“”For Once in My Life,” “My Cherie Amour,” “Signed, Sealed, Delivered”) that I sat up and took notice, even in the midst of my Beatlemania. And then, just as I began to itch to leave the nest and go to college, Stevie turned 21 and struck out on his own, re-negotiating his Motown deal to obtain artistic control.

Artistic control – wasn’t that what we all wanted in 1971? Except what I did with it was a few not-half-bad English papers; what Stevie did with it was Talking Book. And then Innervisions. No one since the Beatles had written entire albums that scored so high on both social meaning and sing-along-ability. By the time Stevie hit Songs In the Key of Life, I felt like the kid down the street had just earned the Nobel Peace Prize.

By then I’d outgrown commercial Motown and discovered “real” blues, but Stevie’s politics earned him a free pass. Why a pampered child prodigy should be an authority on ghetto life I don’t know, but I believed it when Stevie sang it. This song in particular, which clocks in at 7:03, was an entire mini-opera. It begins at the beginning, naturally, with a hardscrabble childhood in the rural South (Stevie, by the way, was born in Saginaw, Michigan, far from Hardtime, Mississippi) – it’s like a Richard Wright novel, piling up the injustices, the father’s low-wage 14-hour days, his mother scrubbing floors for the white lady, his sister wearing secondhand clothes, his brother unemployed because “where he lives / They don’t use colored people.”

Oddly enough, coming from a tunesmith like Stevie Wonder, this song’s not much on melody – the verses are like talking blues, though the chorus is more catchy. The real hook is the repeated synthesizer riff, a jazzlike fanfare melting through several chord changes. Notice how Stevie’s voice gets a harder edge as his protagonist gets older and more frustrated with life. Eventually things slide into a long musical interlude, simmering synthesizers and counterpointed vocals, propelled by that same hard-driving beat that’s hustled us along from the start.

By all rights the song should be over now, but no – now our hero arrives in the city, the promised land. In an awed voice Stevie exclaims "Wow! New York, just like I pictured it -- skyscrapers and ev'rything" (a line that became my personal slogan for several years) as the track evolves into a cinema verite montage: sound effects of a bus pulling into Port Authority, a street hustler’s jive patter, sirens wailing, the echoing whack of a gavel, and the clang of a prison door (“Get into that cell, nigger!”) – boom boom boom, a swift and shocking series of events. By the time Stevie sings again, all that’s left is a gruff vocal wreck. But our hero's still singing, damn it. He’s still singing.

This one song telescopes 25 years of civil rights protests into one man’s story, and I have to say, Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” never reached me the way “Living for the City” did. Here I was, a white college girl identifying with these characters in a Motown song – but then, that was the early 70s, when we still hoped we were all on the same side. Well, some of us still do, thanks to Stevie Wonder. Maybe they should have given him a Nobel Prize.