The 500 - #90 - Talking Book - Stevie Wonder

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #90

Album Title: Talking Book

Artist: Stevie Wonder

Genre: Progressive Soul, Funk, Soul, Jazz

Recorded: 4 Studios - New York, Hollywood, Los Angeles, London

Released: October, 1972

My age at release: 7

How familiar was I with it before this week: Fairly

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #112 - dropping 21 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Superstition

There are times when sticking to your principles can be a real pain. Case in point, Stevie Wonder recently announced that he and his band are going on tour, and not just any Stevie Wonder tour. He is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Songs in the Key of Life, with dates in New York, Chicago, and Detroit, a city a mere 200 km from my home. As of now, though, there is no Toronto date. No Montreal date. In fact, no Canadian date at all.

Detroit is tantalizingly close and, under normal circumstances, my friend Terry and I would be checking the calendar and figuring out dinner options in Motown. But these are not normal circumstances.

I've decided that until relations between Canada and the United States improve I'm going to avoid travelling to the U.S. and spending my money there. I don't pretend that missing a Stevie Wonder concert will register as the faintest blip on the American economy. My principled boycott won’t make anybody in Washington lose sleep. It's simply something I feel I need to do.

Let me be really clear: This isn't about Americans generally but their current federal government. Over the decades, I have met many wonderful Americans, some of whom I’m honoured to call friends. Additionally, I love visiting the United States where my godmother has lived for many years. I've crossed the border hundreds of times, attending concerts and sporting events, or just sightseeing and shopping. The accumulated memories of these visits have found their way into more than a few of these blog posts. Heck, my wife and I got married in New York City in 2006 and more than 40 members of our family and friends joined us, some extending their visit for a whole week.

Me and my lovely bride - August 18, 2006 in Battery Park, NYC.

My frustration is with the current American administration and, in particular, the way it has insulted and inflicted economic damage on my country, let alone the harm it has wreaked upon its own population.

Donald Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state and mockingly referred to our former prime minister, Justin Trudeau, as a "governor." He has also transferred the slight to our current prime minister, Mark Carney.

More recently, he signed an executive order instructing the American government to refer to Lake Ontario as "Lake America." That one strikes particularly close to home. Ontario isn't merely the name of the province where I live. The name has Indigenous roots and was being used centuries before either Canada or the United States existed.

Lake Ontario Map from 1774, two years before U.S independence.

Then there's the ongoing argument over trade. Trump decided not to renew the USMCA in its current form and has criticized what it sees as shortcomings in the treaty.. How ironic considering the USMCA was negotiated during Trump's first administration and he hailed it as "the best agreement we've ever made."

Trump, flanked by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto
and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, signing
the USMCA agreement in 2018.

Our current prime minister, Mark Carney, recently summed up the problem rather neatly when he said: "We've recognized from the start that America has changed. We recognized that sometimes its signature was written in pencil." When a deal negotiated and celebrated by the same president can suddenly become a deal his administration no longer wants to stand behind, Carney's pencil metaphor seems particularly apt.

So, for now, I'm staying on my side of Lake Ontario and remain hopeful about two things. The first is that relations between our countries thaw, that the anger and insults stop, and that good neighbourly relations are restored to the way they have been for centuries.

At the moment, I'm not terribly optimistic. Yet I wonder whether Stevie’s touring team may look at his schedule and think: “You know what? we haven't scheduled Toronto, Ottawa or Montreal.” Odds are Terry and his wife, Heather, would happily join Angela and me on a road trip if seeing Stevie was in the mix.

And with that, I’ll climb off my political soapbox to reflect on Stevie Wonder’s second record of 1972, Talking Book. The first was Music Of My Mind, which was released earlier that same year.

A second hit record in one calendar year sounds impressive enough. Then I realized that these were his 14th and 15th releases by an artist who was just 22 years old.

Twenty-Two!

When I was 22, I was still living in my parent’s basement. Sure, I was going to University and had a couple part-time jobs, but no one is talking about my creative output and groundbreaking innovations 50 years later…and I have the benefit of sight.

Me at 22, lifeguard by day, Pizza delivery driver by night.

We have actually been here before. Back in December, 2022, when I was still pushing my way through #285 on this decade-long journey through the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, I wrote about Music of My Mind. In that post, I spent some time on Stevie’s remarkable childhood and his emergence as the extravagantly talented “Little Stevie Wonder.” More importantly for what was coming next, I wrote about his discovery of the enormous TONTO synthesizer, created by Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff. Stevie had become fascinated by synthesizers, and Cecil and Margouleff would work with him through some of the most creative years of his career.

Side Note: Margouleff is the guest on the accompanying episode of The 500 Podcast and, while promoting his autobiography, shares his experiences working with Stevie as well as a comprehensive look at that revolutionary technology. For music engineering or synthesizer nerds, it is a rewarding deep dive.

Another mind-blowing realization comes when one remembers that Wonder is not just a singer and piano player. On both of these 1972 records, he wrote the songs, produced the albums and played virtually every instrument himself. The music, the lyrics, the arrangements, the keyboards, the drums, the harmonica and ideas to create those strange new synthesizer sounds were pouring out of a kid.

Wonder in studio recording Talking Book.

There is something almost Mozart-like about him. Not because their processes were necessarily the same, but because I find the idea of all that music existing inside one person's head fascinating. Stevie couldn't sit at a piano with a blank piece of manuscript paper in front of him and casually scribble down an idea in the conventional way. He had to hear it, remember it, build it, play it and communicate it. Melody, harmony, rhythm, words and arrangement could all exist in his imagination before the rest of us ever got to hear them. Thus, the album before Talking Book was aptly named Music Of My Mind.

And, incredibly, Stevie was just getting warmed up.

Music of My Mind and Talking Book kicked off what is now widely referred to as Stevie Wonder's classic period, five critically acclaimed albums released in less than five years.

• Music of My Mind (1972) (#285 on The 500)
• Talking Book (1972) (#90 on The 500)
• Innervisions (1973) (#24 on The 500)
• Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974) (Grammy Award for Album of the year
• Songs in the Key of Life (1976) (#57 on The 500) and Grammy Award for Album of the year
  

That's not merely a good stretch. That's an athlete entering the zone and then somehow staying there for five seasons. Imagine a ballplayer hitting .350, winning the batting title, coming back the next year and doing it again, then looking around and deciding he might as well steal some bases, hit a bunch of home runs and win the league MVP a few times while he's at it. Stevie was on one of those runs, like Gretzky, Woods, Jordan, Williams, Ali or Brady, whose greatness literally became the expectation.

Originally, this was going to be my angle for this blog. I was going to investigate other artists who had enjoyed an incredible run of consecutive releases. In fact, I’ve been researching and mulling it over for a few weeks. Then Stevie announced his tour, without a Canadian date, and my frustration sent me in a different direction. Oh well. I’ll save that topic for either Songs In The Key Of Life or Innervisions, in 2027, which should coincide nicely with the start of the next U.S. presidential primary season. By then, perhaps I’ll have two things to look forward to: Another great Stevie Wonder album to write about and the possibility of a rapprochement in Canada-U.S. relations. And renewed trips across the border.

Help me out if you can?

What is your favourite four- or five-album consecutive run by a musician or band?
It doesn’t need to be critically acclaimed, just your own personal list.