Happy Birthday: Stevie Wonder

In my book, Stevie Wonder is the the greatest songwriter and composer of all time. Penning an extensive catalog of music that incorporates many different styles and genres, topping the U.S. music charts with more than 30 top 10 hits which won him 22 Grammy awards. A social and political activist, Wonder campaigned to get Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's birthday declared a national holiday in 1980, composing "Happy Birthday" from his Hotter Than July album in tribute to Dr. King and was a United Nations Messenger of Peace in 2009. Today we salute this living legend on his date of birth and wish to see him around for many years to come.

Other awards and recognition
1983: inducted to the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
1984: received an Academy Award for Best Song for "I Just Called to Say I Love You" from the movie The Woman in Red.
1989: inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
1999: received the Polar Music Prize and Kennedy Center Honors.
2002: received the George and Ira Gershwin Lifetime Achievement Award at UCLA's Spring Sing. The same year, Wonder received the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
2004: received the Billboard Century Award. Also in 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him #15 on their list of the 100 Greatest Rock and Roll Artists of All Time.
2006: was inducted, as one of the first inductees, into the Michigan Walk of Fame. The same year, Wonder received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.
2008: Ranked at number five on "The Billboard Hot 100 Top All-Time Artists", making him as the third most successful male artist in the history of Billboard Hot 100 chart.
2009: Recipient of the second Gershwin Prize For Popular Song.
2009: Recipient of the Montreal Jazz Festival Spirit Award. This special award underlines a popular artist’s extraordinary contribution to the musical world. The Montreal Jazz Festival Spirit Award is in bronze.
2009: Named a Messenger of Peace by the United Nations.

Happy Birthday: Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder (born May 13, 1950 as Steveland Hardaway Judkins, later changed to Morris) is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist who signed with Motown Records' Tamla label at the age of eleven, after being discovered by Gerald White, brother of Ronnie White of The Miracles.

By age 13, Wonder had a major hit, "Fingertips (Pt. 2)", a 1963 single taken from a live recording of a Motor Town Revue performance, issued on the album Recorded Live: The 12 Year Old Genius. The song, featuring Wonder on vocals, bongos, and harmonica, and a young Marvin Gaye on drums, was a #1 hit on the U.S. pop and R&B charts and launched him into the public consciousness.

Wonder's songs are renowned for being quite difficult to sing. He has a very developed sense of harmony and uses many extended chords utilizing extensions such as 9ths, 11ths, 13ths, b5s, etc. in his compositions. Many of his melodies make abrupt, unpredictable changes. Many of his vocal melodies are also melismatic, meaning that a syllable is sung over several notes. Some of his best known and most frequently covered songs are played in keys which are more often found in jazz than in pop and rock. For example, "Superstition", "Higher Ground" and "I Wish" are in the key of E flat minor, and feature distinctive riffs in the E flat minor pentatonic scale (i.e. largely on the black notes of the keyboard).

Wonder played a large role in bringing synthesizers to the forefront of popular music. He developed many new textures and sounds never heard before. In 1981, Wonder became the first owner of an E-mu Emulator. With the soundtrack album Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants (1979), featured in the film The Secret Life of Plants. Mostly instrumental, the album was composed using the Computer Music Melodian, an early sampler. Wonder toured briefly in support of the album, and used a Fairlight CMI sampler on stage.

Stevie Wonder has recorded more than thirty U.S. top ten hits and received twenty-two Grammy Awards, the most ever awarded to a male solo artist. Wonder is also noted for his work as an activist for political causes, including his 1980 campaign to make Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a holiday in the United States. In 2009, Wonder was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of the Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists to celebrate the US singles chart's fiftieth anniversary, with Wonder at number five. Between 1983 and 2009, Wonder has also won numerous other awards and received recognition.

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