Stevie Wonder was born on this day in 1950. 'Even in the brief periods when he is nowhere near a keyboard, Wonder frequently seems to be mulling over music,' Giles Smith wrote about the musician, in 1995.
In London in 1981, he arrived at his own lunchtime press conference a striking six hours after it started, by which point the press had eaten all the sandwiches and gone home. He is late with records, too. Deadlines proposed by his record company, Motown Records, frequently fail to capture his imagination.
Wonder, who has four children from three subsequent relationships, has never remarried. But wherever he travels his No. 1 wife is by his side, in the form of a synthesizer that hooks up to a computerized sequencer capable of making and playing back detailed multitrack recordings.
All of which must occasionally enrage the people who work for Wonder—those charged with shuffling his flights, rearranging his meetings, and generally scrapping and rebuilding and rescrapping and re-rebuilding his schedules. Chiefly, they appear to console themselves with the thought that Wonder’s unreliability is both a consequence of and a testament to his genius, one of several signs that Stevie—or Steve, as those close to him call him—is not quite of this world.
At the top of a high, narrow stairwell, Birdsong and Wonder were met by the tour manager, Charlie Collins, who was the man responsible for getting the show in and out on time, and thus the person with the most to fear from Wonder’s lateness. Collins and Wonder immediately went into a tension-dispersing routine that they seem to reserve for moments like this—an abrupt pantomime of mutual fury, involving much shouting at each other in fake Spanish.
The band members now took their places on the stage. Stevie Wonder and For Real stood in the half-light in the wings, and Mick Parish, an equipment technician, handed Wonder a wireless microphone. Since the late eighties, it has been Wonder’s show-opening gimmick to sing a couple of verses before heading out into the spotlight. This has the audience straining to see where the sound of his voice is coming from and seems to intensify the response when he finally appears.
Wonder was born Steveland Morris in Saginaw, Michigan, and when he was three his family moved to Detroit. His stepfather, Paul Hardaway, found work in a bagel factory, and his mother, Lula Mae Hardaway, cleaned houses. Growing up, he developed a neighborhood reputation as the blind boy with an astonishing facility on drums, piano, and harmonica, and at the age of eight he became a solo singer at Whitestone Baptist Church.
Vigoda is sixty-six years old now, and still represents Wonder. There has never been a formal agreement between them. “Stevie is free, and always has been free, to get rid of me,” Vigoda told me. He was speaking on the phone from his home in Lake Tahoe, where it was one in the morning. He talks in a low, easy drawl and goes in for long, ruminative silences.
Wonder’s 1992 deal with Motown is unprecedented, too. Michael Jackson signed a six-album deal with Sony in 1991; the Rolling Stones are under contract with Virgin for as long as it takes to make three albums; U2 signed a six-album, sixty-million-dollar deal with PolyGram. But a whole lifetime? Jheryl Busby said, “I thought that was what the state of things should be for an artist of his rank, considering what he said for the trademark and what his contribution has been to music and society.
In addition to seventeen Grammy awards, Stevie Wonder has been the recipient of a Solidarity Peace Award from Poland; an Award of Peace and Freedom from the people of Bratislava, Czechoslovakia; a People’s Peace and Freedom Award and a Humanitarian Award for Dedication to Children, both given to him by Hungary; andawards from Japan and France.
Harris described carefully a video sequence he’d seen on CNN, taken by a security camera, of an office interior during the quake, its furniture travelling from one wall to another. “There was a person in that picture,” Harris added. “Just at the end, a person slid into the picture.”Harris said, “Yeah, just came flying in. It’s horrendous. There’s huge areas of freeway down, there’s rail tracks down, there’s trains that have fallen off the high-level tracks onto the roads.
A limo was waiting for Wonder at the Los Angeles airport, and as it headed for the city Wonder got right on the car phone. On his lap he held a voice computer, the size of a slim book, in a black case. Wonder pressed keys through the case, and a robotic voice called out phone numbers at, to the untrained ear, baffling speed. Most of the calls that he placed were to hotel rooms where nobody answered.
These days, kids are not necessarily Wonder’s primary target audience. “Conversation Peace” is the first Stevie Wonder album to really soak up rhythms and production details from hip-hop and rap. Yet there are clearly young Wonder fans, and fans in almost every other age group, too. For more than a decade now, the problem facing Motown has been how to translate the breadth of Wonder’s appeal into commercial terms. In 1976, “Songs in the Key of Life” went straight onto the charts at No.
Brasil Últimas Notícias, Brasil Manchetes
Similar News:Você também pode ler notícias semelhantes a esta que coletamos de outras fontes de notícias.
See Video for Daft Punk Rarity That Julian Casablancas Hoped Stevie Wonder Would SingThe video for Daft Punk's “Infinity Repeating (2013 Demo)' shows mankind’s Darwinian evolution from an amoeba to a primate to a man to a robot to an enceinte automaton.
Consulte Mais informação »
The Enduring Role of El Centro in Dallas' Thriving Restaurant SceneFor decades El Centro, now Dallas College, has provided chefs and bakers to the restaurant industry. Now as the scene is on fire, we need them more than ever.
Consulte Mais informação »
Drugged-up Stevie Nicks, feuds with Kurt Cobain: Inside MTV News’ glory daysMTV News is no longer, but staffers remember wild times with drugged-up megastars, Bill Clinton’s underwear, and Kurt Cobain’s death.
Consulte Mais informação »
Halle Bailey & Jonah Hauer-King Interview: The Little MermaidWe chat with TheLittleMermaid stars HalleBailey and Jonah Hauer-King about expanding Eric's role, working with legendary composers, and kids' adorable reactions to seeing Halle as Ariel:
Consulte Mais informação »
Celebrity birthdays: May 13Here are some of the notable people celebrating birthdays today including Stevie Wonder, Harvey Keitel, Gov. John Kasich, Alan Ball, Dennis Rodman, Stephen Colbert, Tom Verica, Darius Rucker, Brian Geraghty, Tom Cotton and Mike Bibby.
Consulte Mais informação »
Is Wonder Woman's New Daughter Lizzie Named After Queen Elizabeth II?Is Lizzie, Wonder Woman's New Daughter, Named After Queen Elizabeth II? Say Hello To Trinity wonderwoman dccomics trinity dawnofdc TomKingTK Sampere tomeu_morey
Consulte Mais informação »