{"id":17494,"date":"2013-02-08T10:00:22","date_gmt":"2013-02-08T15:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=17494"},"modified":"2013-02-08T11:20:55","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T16:20:55","slug":"stevie-wonder-the-missing-link-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/stevie-wonder-the-missing-link-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"Stevie Wonder: The Missing Link Performance?"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TL2PZlkAeCs?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>\n<p>This 1970 performance of &#8220;Signed, Sealed, Delivered I&#8217;m Yours&#8221; by\u00a0<strong>Stevie Wonder\u00a0<\/strong>shocked me on a few levels. First, it never occurred to me that the song was released in 1970. I grew up with that song and all of Stevie&#8217;s big hits, but as a greatest hits\/anthology-type Stevie Wonder fan I&#8217;ve never gotten to know the ins and outs of individual studio albums. I would have pegged that single for a couple of \u00a0years earlier, like 1967 or 1968, the era when <strong>Smokey Robinson &amp; the Miracles<\/strong> were cranking out similarly sleek, driving productions like &#8220;Tears of a Clown.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>What shocked me even more than the release date was how funky this live performance is. It&#8217;s not like the single I grew up digging is whitebread, but it&#8217;s got that &#8217;60s Motown sound. It exhibits the laser-like focus that marked the label&#8217;s releases. (For those cool cats among you who\u00a0<em>tsk-tsk<\/em>\u00a0and grumble that &#8220;all Motown sounds the same&#8221; and, therefore, can&#8217;t appreciate the difference between this live performance and the original studio version,\u00a0<a title=\"Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours 45\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BO8nlZKrVi4\" target=\"_blank\">you can listen to the 45 here<\/a>. It&#8217;s got a smokin&#8217; backbeat, even with the more traditional Motown production that is likely to turn back-dated appreciators of &#8220;authentic&#8221; soul music off.)<\/p>\n<p>This performance struck me as a &#8220;missing link&#8221; to the (Somewhat) Free at Last Genius Stevie who would deliver his mind-blowing &#8217;70s works in the coming years. I always thought that Stevie suddenly shook off the shackles of Berry Gordy, got struck by a bolt of lightning, and grabbed that magical ring from Frodo. It turns out <em>that<\/em> Stevie was already further along in development than I&#8217;d ever guessed. Right off the bat in this Dick Cavett Show performance you can hear inklings of &#8220;Superstition.&#8221; Turn up the sound and focus on Stevie&#8217;s clavinet (?) part at the <strong>30-second mark<\/strong>. It&#8217;s the lick that kicks off &#8220;Superstition.&#8221; That shit was already brewing, man! There&#8217;s no need to cook up some <em>Chariot of the Gods<\/em> explanation.<\/p>\n<p>Really, maybe I&#8217;m a gigantic idiot, but I&#8217;ve been digging both my early Stevie 3-lp Motown Anthology series set and the <em>Musiquarium<\/em>\u00a0collection of mature Stevie hits since they were reeleased (I own some of those landmark albums, but I skip all those cheesy love ballads to Jesus, leaving all but the hits on <em>Musiquarium<\/em>), but this is first example I&#8217;ve noticed of a direct link from the young, Motown-dictated Stevie to his soon-to-be independent, funkier self.<\/p>\n<p>Have you ever noticed this link? Are there other examples of this transition period, either live or on record, that I&#8217;ve overlooked all these years?<\/p>\n<p>As an aside, it was so sad to hear and see the great, empowering Stevie Wonder shill Budweiser during the NFL playoff season as some white-suited Voodoo Priest to the tune of &#8220;Superstition.&#8221; So wrong! What the hell are you thinking, Stevie?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This 1970 performance of &#8220;Signed, Sealed, Delivered I&#8217;m Yours&#8221; by\u00a0Stevie Wonder\u00a0shocked me on a few levels. First, it never occurred to me that the song was released in 1970. I grew up with that song and all of Stevie&#8217;s big hits, but as a greatest hits\/anthology-type Stevie Wonder fan I&#8217;ve never gotten to know the <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/stevie-wonder-the-missing-link-performance\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[195],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17494"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}