early albums by Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder has got to be…possibly the greatest person to ever record music. Listen the album Innervisions and tell me, with a straight face, that it isn’t the greatest R&B album ever created. Yup, 5 out of 5 for that one. But wait, would you believe that Stevie had an ‘early period’ (before breaking mainstream) that consisted of almost 15 full length albums? It should also be noted that he was just over 20 when he got popular, meaning several of his albums were released before he had hair growing near his willy! Allow me to now review a few of the albums he released before the age of 20.

1962 – The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie

Oh yeah, before all those R&B albums, he was indeed a jazzman! Unfortunately, Stevie’s actual involvement in the album is pretty minimal; out of nine songs he co-composed only two. He still performs the hell out every song, sounding like a true-and-true grown up jazz artist. I kind of like this album, if only for the whole novelty aspect of it all. As an actual jazz LP, it doesn’t fair very well, with most songs clocking in at under three minutes. It’s a short and shallow jazz record, with each song being extremely catchy but lacking any aesthetic significance within the realm of jazz. This isn’t vocal jazz-pop either, this is the semi-improvisional fast paced stuff which I typically eat up, or perhaps a gentle parody of such. I still dig this album nonetheless, it’s completely listenable from start to finish and Fingertips is undeniably good. Recommended for…I dunno. Fans of jazz? Fans of Stevie Wonder? Whatever, it’s alright, even if it does seem like a soundtrack to a bad cop movie at times. Score = 6.5 out of 10

1962 – Tribute To Uncle Ray

I assume he’s referring to Ray Charles, or perhaps this album exists for the purpose of worshipping some Hindu diety of shallow pop music. Gone is the whole big-band impro-jazz thing, now ‘Little Stevie’ has moved onto making accessible radio vocal-jazz-soul tunes. It all borders into that really creepy territory where pre-pubescent artists write about love. The music is ridiculously catchy, but also painfully cute. I really wish I was a child molester, I would just looooove this album. Sounds like Stevie’s balls haven’t quite dropped yet, but to be fair he has a terrific pitch-perfect voice. I did some research about the whole ‘Ray’ thing, turns out he composed every song! Unfortunatley, he didn’t pen any lyrics, meaning they were probably written by business men with music degrees without any originality or depth. The lyrics bring new meaning to the terms stock and kitsch, at one point the album amazed me with a twelve year old singing “all night long!”. Musicianship is solid, otherwise there isn’t much value. Score = 5.5 out of 10

1963 – With a Song in My Heart

…and an infection in my ear! This somehow has even less appeal than the previous two albums. This is the album where they dropped ‘little’ from Stevie’s name, so I assume this is the time he went through puberty or something. Unfortunately Stevie’s voice still has that creepy high-pitched pre-pubescent kiddie-diddlers-dream sound to it, so I guess not. As far as the sound of the album goes, it’s yet another step forward into the ‘early/predictable’ R&B part of Mr.Wonders discography, this time a lot slower and heavier on the string section. The violins up the cheese factor by about 8000 times. As far as this kind of slow/jazzy motown music goes, I’ve heard it done very well. Unfortunately for Big Stevie, the lyrical content (in actual music made by adults) is always about love making, a topic I think producers would get arrested for making a 13 year old sing about. It’s sort of like when JoJo told her boyfriend(s) to leave (I can’t believe I’m making that reference). Score: 5 out of 10

1964 – Stevie at the Beach

 Only thirteen years old, already his musical career is washed up! Luckily my ‘complete’ discography does not include this, so I don’t have to sit through it. I can only imagine the horrors of listening to 13 year Stevie sing beach songs. Let me give you an idea of how obscure this is: on rateyourmusic (a site I’d die for) Innvervisions has 2,729 ratings, this has 6.

 

 

1966 – Up-Tight Everything’s Alright

This is the point where I will stop reviewing the early albums of Stevie Wonder, for two reasons: I can’t think of any more jokes AND this is where the music actually gets good. Yup, you got it, this is his first release to qualify as actual music, as opposed to a radio-friendly parody of such. The sound is classic motown and the whole creepy kid aspect is mostly gone, there’s even a Bob Dylan cover thrown in there to add to the new found maturity. Stevie was only about a week from reaching sixteen years of age when this album was released, so I figure puberty must have occured at some point before it’s recording. My only complaint is that the lyrics are still a bit shallow (save for the Dylan cover), but what can ya do? This is shallow pop music at it’s finest, the musicians sound as if they’re actually trying! Apparently this was Stevie’s first success both financially and artistically (his involvement with the writing is much larger than before), I (surprisingly) recommend this. Score: 8 out of 10

There’s many other albums between Uptight and Music of My Mind (his absolute breakthrough) but I think you get the point. Off the top o’ my head, I can’t think of any other artist who had such a weird and prolonged entry into the history of music. Now piss off and go listen to Innervisions.

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