Title:At The Close of a Century By: Wonder, Stevie Released by: Motown Released on: 1999 Rating (out of 10): 9 Date: 06/26/2001
The Wonder of Stevie
To sort of clear the slate right off the bat, I must admit I wasn’t always a Stevie Wonder fan. My knowledge of his music pretty much hinged on the one vastly overplayed, easy-listening radio standard (and supermarket staple), “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” I knew the beginning of the number as well as the chorus. . .and chose to sing both parts in the shower. Loudly. I still do so. Songs just seem to sound better there.
It was my friend Richard, whom I met while in college, that was about as passionate a Stevie groupie as I know. Hailing from Indiana and despite the fact he only owned one of his albums that I knew of (the very magnificent Songs in the Key of Life, no less), Richard could sing any Stevie Wonder song there was with perfect clarity. How ironic, then, that another group performing Stevie’s “Higher Ground” should spawn a tirade of sorts on his part.
I wasn’t there to witness it, but one afternoon while the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ version was playing in our fair campus newsroom, I’m told he walked right in disagreeing loudly with the staff’s choice in music. (This was before he was a writer on our newspaper, no less!)
I’m sorry I missed it, really. I would witness Richard’s public Dennis Miller-like “disagreements” in the future several times over, watching the unsuspecting public's reactions with a sort of glee, their shocked expressions reflecting they may as well have walked by a radio turned up to 9.
Nevertheless, based on Richard’s preaching of all things Stevie, I purchased the first greatest-hits album I could lay my plastic down for: the lovely Song Review: A Greatest Hits Collection—and was instantly converted. Each song on it is testament to the genius he is, fully exposing his ability to hammer out a soul number as eloquently as he does a slow one.
From the toe-tapper of “Part-Time Lover” and the exuberant horn intro on “Sir Duke” to the delicious lyricism of the 10 1/2-minute “Do I Do” (with the repeated question and chorus: “Do I do what you do when I do my love to you?") and the tear-inducing ballad sung around the beat of dripping rain, “Overjoyed,” I got my mileage out of the double album. I have several albums older than that one, but its jewel case is cracked and dirty, showing just how much it’s been handled. There were times when the only CD rotating going on in my car’s CD player were between its first and second.
I felt it’s all I needed. Richard and I graduated, he marrying and I embarking on my newspaper career, he delving deep into the world of rap and R & B and I falling equally hard for jazz. Then the opportunity of a lifetime came to me. Seems the always-illustrious Mr. Wonder was releasing the 4-CD box set At The Close Of A Century and my former music editor wondered if I could review it as part of our year-end issue. I would get to keep it after I was done.
Yeah. I loved my job.
At The Close Of A Century fills in the cracks where the already ample Song Review left off, cramming everything from that collection on it, and then a lot more. More ballads, more politics (the entire version of “Living for the City” is here, a number that focuses largely on poverty and racial inequality) and more outright surprises than the former. For example, this one has a couple of covers Stevie recorded early in his career—Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” and The Beatles’ “We Can Work It Out”—doing them better than their predecessors, if you want my totally biased opinion on things.
The collection is entirely chronological, from the first tune Stevie ever really recorded at 12 years of age, when the world knew him as “Little” Stevie Wonder—the live cut “Fingertips Parts 1 & 2,” which focuses more on his harmonica than piano playing—to one of the last tunes he has recorded, his 1996 duet with Babyface (“How Come, How Long”).
What do draw me are Stevie’s love songs, which literally drip with emotional intensity. Try this excerpt on for size from “Too Shy To Say,” a song about how he loves someone, yet can’t express his feelings for her:
I’m going to fly away with you
Until there’s nothing more for us to do
I want to be more than a friend
Until the end of an endless end
And I can’t go on this way
When it’s stronger every day
But being to shy to say that I really love you
It’s never his lyrics that do it for me as much as how he sings them. This number in particular features just him and the piano, causing the listener to believe he’s exposed in some way. I can’t help but get tears in my eyes. "Lately" has the same effect on me.
Stevie’s too much of a musician for his own good, meaning others can't help but steal from him. Did you know Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” is based upon Stevie’s “Pastime Paradise?” How about Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West,” which used the riff from “I Wish?” Ain’t it just like Hollywood to rehash all the good old ideas?
My only beef about At the Close of a Century lies not in the music but in the liner notes, which don’t tell enough about Stevie Wonder. Comprising 92 miniature pages, the accompanying book does tell a lot about him (even includes his entire discography) but is more apt to give a history of him via photos than words.
It’d also be nice to hear what other recording artists have to say about him, seeing as how he influenced several of them.
Stevie falls into a class of his own, honestly. But if I were to compare him to one artist, I’d choose Ray Charles, solely because he exudes much of the same joy Stevie does when playing his music. Pick up his recently released The Very Best of Ray Charles on the Rhino label for a taste of what he can do with a song. That album includes my favorite Ray Charles song of all time, which I searched for for at least 6 years (the blues tune “(Night Time Is) The Right Time," a song I orignally heard on “The Cosby Show”).
There you have it. Now run out and buy a Stevie Wonder album promptly. But don’t thank me for telling you. Thank Richard for telling me.
