What do you call a performer who stunned the music world at the age of twelve, who had No. 1 hit records before, during, and well after the Beatles were recording, and whose influence has helped shape everything from soul, funk, and hip-hop to disco and smooth jazz? What words do justice to a musical master whose thirty-four top-10 hits and twelve top-10 albums have won a record twenty-two Grammy Awards, and who, after a brilliant fifty-year career, continues to be one of the most dynamic and sought-after performers in the world? Only two words can describe a superstar of that caliber—Stevie Wonder.

Signed, Sealed, and Delivered celebrates Stevie's sixtieth birthday with a full-fledged biography of this living, breathing musical genius and legend. Author Mark Ribowsky explores the life, achievements, and influence of one of America's biggest musical icons set against the history of Motown and the last fifty years of popular music.

Drawing on extensive interviews with Motown producers, music executives, songwriters, and musicians, including founding Temptation Otis Williams, Mickey Stevenson, Kim Weston, surviving Funk Brother Eddie Willis, and many others, Ribowsky sorts through conflicting accounts to reveal the truth behind how Stevie found his way to Motown Records at the tender age of eleven, why the name on his first Motown contract was not the one he was born with, and how he became "Little Stevie Wonder."

Ribowsky digs deep into Stevie's long and often strained relationship with Motown founder and control-freak-in-chief Berry Gordy. He reveals how one of Little Stevie's running pranks would exasperate Gordy and delight fellow Motown performers. He provides detailed and fascinating accounts of Motown's inner workings and how Stevie's role there evolved from wunderkind and enfant terrible to good soldier, top star, and major creative force. He also explains what was so remarkable about Stevie's first hit single "Fingertips (Part 2)," why it took more than two years to come up with his second hit, and why Marvin Gaye was booed off the stage following a performance by Stevie.

You'll also discover what Stevie Wonder loved about the Beatles and what he thought they didn't do very well, how he was influenced by Bob Dylan, how Stevie's friendly rivalry with Gaye turned into an important, though indirect, alliance for both, and much more.

Packed with little-known facts and keen insights into Stevie Wonder's musical growth and creative process, his successful collaboration with and failed marriage to Syreeta Wright, and his long struggle with sexual addiction and suicidal depression, Signed, Sealed, and Delivered is essential reading for all Stevie Wonder fans and anyone interested in the history of Motown and the music of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s . . .


Publishers Weekly

From the rollicking debut of “Fingertips—Part 2” to the funk piano and synthesizers of “Superstition” to the political rap of “Superstition,” Stevie Wonder's brilliant music has managed to capture the hearts of his listeners while at the same time probing the limits of musical styles and moving soul and rhythm and blues to new musical levels. Born in poverty in Saginaw, Mich., Wonder lost his sight soon after he was born. His blindness heightened his sense of hearing, and he soon began to master the toy musical instruments that his absentee father brought him. Very soon, Wonder graduated from toys to the real things: his barber gave him a Hohner chromatic harmonica; his church choir director, as well as his neighbor, allowed him to play for hours on their pianos; and the local Lions Club gave a drum set to Stevie after hearing him play it. Soon Wonder was the hit of Motown, and his career took off like a comet, only to burn out and lose some of its fiery glow in the 1980s and 1990s. Music journalist Ribowsky (The Supremes; He's a Rebel) traces the rapid ascent of Wonder's musical career as well as the tumultuous ups and downs of his personal life in this workmanlike and pedantic book. Ribowsky's exploration of Wonder's music is first-rate, but his tendency to overlook Wonder's faults turns this into one fan's hagiography. (May)

Ribowsky's exploration of Wonder's music is first-rate, but his tendency to overlook Wonder's faults turns this into one fan's hagiography..

I guess I shouldn't expect any objectivity, then.

Suits me just fine though, at this point I'm GLAD somebody took the time to make a bio book about him,,,,lets just hope its the read.

My favourite book on stevie is this one:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/S...280&sr=1-3

If you want a good, indepth analysis and appreciation of his music (which doesn't pry too much into his peronal life), then this is the palce to go.

And I swear to god that I ain't on the publisher's payroll. poeple!

ReddishBrownOne said:

I concur with this

I still wanna smack Berry in the mouth for settling up that Battle of the Bands against his most talented performers - Stevie & Marvin - against each other in the '60s. Stevie was 12 and Marvin was grown, that wasn't right. He KNEW how competitive and stubborn Marvin was but he went on with it until Marvin got booed because Stevie was a kid. That's why he stopped.

I'm sure that wasn't a good thing psychologically for either Marvin or Stevie, both of whom were crowd-pleasing performers.

Timmy84 said:

watchu talkin bout timmy?

Sandino said:

Lemme post the story...

One of Berry Gordy's marketing methods included various "battles of the stars." He had always been intrigued by the long-standing gimmick of a "battle of the bands." The battles were instant sellouts. Some of the match ups included the Temptations vs. the Contours, the Supremes vs. The Velvelettes and Martha and the Vandellas vs. the Marvelettes.

Everyone embraced the concept and fun was had by all until the night Little Stevie Wonder was pitted against Marvin Gaye. Gordy figured Gaye would easily be the crowd favorite simply because of his hits and polish and his immense popularity as a sex symbol with his female fans.

But Stevie, ever competitive wasn't conceding anything. He was up first, unleashing a fervid version of "Workout Stevie, Workout." Gordy watched the house respond with a roar and decided that Gaye might be in for a tougher time than he first believed.

But Gaye answered with a stirring rendition of "Hitch Hike," shimmying like a tornado and driving the ladies wild.

Stevie then countered with his first single, "I Call It Pretty Music," and the crowd swayed along. At song's end, he sent an electrical bolt through the hall with an exultant "Everybody Say Yeah!" Stevie then proceeded to virtually run the table with "Fingertips," leaving the crowd nearly spent with his blue-streak harp play.

Gaye had one more shot left and was determined to carry the day. He sprung back onstage as the band struck up "Stubborn Kind Of Fellow," but amazingly, was greeted not only by the screams he expected from the ladies but also by boos.

Confusion showed on his face but he gamely jumped into the song, determined to turn the tide. Some from the audience yelled, Marvin, you ought to be ashamed, taking advantage of a little blind kid!

Gaye ignored it and pressed on. At the conclusion of the number, the boos rained even harder. Gaye clearly was hurt but motioned for the band to play "Pride and Joy." Still the boos came, and Gordy quickly decided to intervene, taking the stage and mike from Gaye and announcing the show was over.

Source: "Blind Faith," by Dennis Love & Stacy Brown

Harlepolis said:

that's kinda disappointing. but it makes for a good read. even though it's not very objective at all, I loved reading Marc Spitz's recent Bowie biography, because it had the enthusiasm of a fan, which makes you completely connect to it and relate.

Timmy84 said:

Damn, well to be fair who wouldn't think Marvin would win that battle, he's matched up against a blind kid and he's a sex symbol. I'd have put money on him.

Sandino said:

Me too. I would definitely put my money on Marvin. It was easy to see he won but it was really unfair to even do that battle when you pit your TOP star against a child prodigy. Bad mistake.

I'm sure whenever Marvin and Stevie bumped into each other, they laughed and reminisced about that.

ReddishBrownOne said:

Does it discuss Stevie's unreleased material or is it just another "review" book?

Harlepolis said:

It mentions a few unreleased songs,but doesn't really explore his unreleased work.But each album is thoroughly discussed.

Harlepolis said:

I saw it in Barnes and Noble and read a few pages.Some interesting details.I was reading about how Berry Gordy was sooooo impatient,waiting for Stevie to finally finish the 'Songs In The Key Of Life' album Gordy was losing his mind.Stevie spent two years recording that album.Back then,that was unheard of.Labels expected a new album every 8 months or so.

BOOK REVIEW

From The Sunday Times
May 2, 2010
Signed, Sealed, and Delivered: The Soulful Journey of Stevie Wonder by Mark Ribowsky
The Sunday Times review by Robert Sandall
Stevie Wonder

(Rex Features)

It says much about the famously enigmatic Stevie Wonder that Signed, Sealed, and Delivered is the first proper biography of him to be published. As his 60th birthday approaches this month, he remains a hugely charismatic figure, venerated by young Turk ­rappers such as Kanye West, engaged as a duet partner by queen diva Beyoncé and praised as “my hero” by Barack Obama. He has won more Grammys than any other musician and has sold an estimated 150m records. Rock fans love him as much as the R&B crowd: Wonder has just been booked to headline this year’s Glastonbury festival.

But while his musical achievements have passed into legend (with Michael Jackson’s demise Wonder is now the most important living black American pop icon) the man himself has retreated into an impenetrable world of his own. As Mark Ribowsky reveals in this valiantly well-researched account, it’s an insomniac, airless environment peopled by a tight-lipped entourage of more than 100 (mainly relatives), a fluctuating harem of female companions and a clique of studio collaborators. Wonder’s business HQ is located in a mobile recording truck parked behind the strip in LA. “A multi-million recording act is being run like a tattoo parlour on Sunset Boulevard, that’s how crazy his organisation is,” one old associate tells Ribowsky. Wonder chose his manager, Stephanie Andrews, after writing songs with her. “Stevie lives in Oz now,” is the view of another old buddy. “He’s like the boy in the bubble.”

It was ever thus. Like Jackson, Tamla Motown’s other child prodigy, Wonder never really grew up. From an early age, music was his great escape. Born blind due to a retinal problem caused by premature delivery, Steveland Judkins’s precocious ability as a singer and instrumentalist was fiercely ­nurtured by his mother Lula Mae, a former prostitute whose brutish, womanising husband spent little time with his six children. After the family moved to Detroit, eight-year-old Stevie fell in with local heroes Smokey Robinson and the Miracles — “I can sing badder than Smokey,” he confidently assured his friends, and everybody who heard him pretty much agreed.

“Little Stevie Wonder’s” 49-year professional career began when he signed to Berry Gordy’s fledgling Tamla Motown label in 1961 at the age of 11, marking his name with an X because he couldn’t yet write it. Two years later he scored his first No 1 hit, and ­Tamla’s second, with a ­harmonica-heavy improvised live recording of ­Fingertips Part 2, with Marvin Gaye on drums. With that, Wonder was off. At Motown’s Hitsville USA studio an endlessly indulged blind teenager ruled the roost, crashing about the cramped premises, recording fragments of songs at all hours and impersonating the boss as the fancy took him. Named “the 12-year-old genius” in the title of his first album, he was untouchable, Motown’s musically omniscient jewel, co-writer of one of its early classics, The Tears of a Clown.

Working with the producer Clarence Paul (an avid philanderer and drug user who, according to a Tamla workmate “represented everything you wouldn’t want a young boy exposed to”), Wonder was attending school by day and living in pop Babylon at night. “Stevie was a terror man,” Gordy’s henchman Mickey Stevenson admitted. “He wanted hits, he wanted girls, he wanted the world.”

What Stevie wanted, he got — at a price. He transformed the 1970s R&B scene with a sequence of wildly popular ground-breaking albums that embraced synthesiser technology and led him even further into a hermetic world of unbridled imagination. He called his vast Tonto synthesiser “a friend?assisting me expressing myself”. He survived a near-fatal head injury in a road accident in 1973, which seemed only to intensify the power of his masterworks, Inner-visions and Songs in the Key of Life. But by the time he released Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants in 1979 (a musical botanical account of the book of Genesis, no less), Wonder was widely seen as wacko. His many eccentric theories included the view that “the hands can actually see as eyes, connect to the optic nerve”. Then again, he was sane enough two years on to record Happy Birthday, a brilliantly catchy tune that helped establish Martin Luther King’s birthday as a national American holiday.

Beyond the music, his relationships were especially fraught where women were concerned. Ribowsky attributes this to the overbearing protectiveness of his mother, which created “a strange interwoven dynamic of love and dread”, and resulted in Wonder nervously pulling out clumps of hair when he was around her. His fear of intimacy led to an early addiction to promiscuity and group sex (known to his inner circle as “Stevie law”) which regularly filled his dressing room with squads of young groupies, selected after Wonder felt their faces, Braille-style.

On the liner notes of Songs in the Key of Life he justified these sexual shenanigans in terms of African traditions of polygamy. Unsurprisingly, none of his fitful attempts to settle down with Syreeta Wright, Yolanda Simmons and the other mothers of his seven children worked. Wonder’s apparent preference for dismissing them in songs such as Superwoman and Lately, rather than settling ­matters privately, has attracted harsh criticism — “calm condescending cruelty” in the words of the rock critic Robert Christgau. Meanwhile, a number of kiss-and-tell memoirs by absconding mistresses have been bought off. Wonder took fright at the messy revelations that followed the death of his friend Marvin Gaye. His comment — “When I die I’m gonna have my people gagged!” — has been strictly applied within his circle ever since.

Ribowsky’s old-school Motown contacts, members of the Temptations and the rest, are this book’s USP. The picture of a pubescent Wonder lording it over Gordy’s Detroit hothouse has a weird vividness that the author struggles to re-create after the Motown operation (to which Wonder, umbilically connected to its prime mover, is still signed) moved west. The second half of Wonder’s life here occupies a fraction of the first; but that’s no great loss because, for better or worse, you don’t feel that much has changed chez Wonder these past 50 years. He remains pop’s pre-eminent alien genius. “Stevie is on a different wavelength from everyone else,” Temptation Otis Williams concludes simply. “You don’t try to figure him out; you can’t.”

Signed, Sealed, and Delivered by Mark Ribowsky
Wiley £16.99 pp319

Timmy84 said:

Berry was crazy at times but sometimes,"friendly competition" can be a good thing.It's probably one reason why both Stevie and Marvin created such amazing music in the 70s...they were trying to "outdo" each other?

SoulAlive said:

That was on their own merits. But Marvin himself said "who in their right mind would compete with Stevie Wonder?"

Timmy84 said:

I loved the fact that it was never in Marvin's character to be jealous of another person, had it been one of the temptations like ruffin they probably would've resented Stevie's success their whole life, but Marvin never beared any ill will for Stevie and vice versa, Marvin's "Heard it Through the Grapevine" was the song that kept Stevie's "for Once in my Life" version from going number One, and yet that's one of Stevie's favorite songs to cover in concerts.

Sandino said:

Stevie & Marvin were real tight. Remember the news about Stevie doing an album of Marvin joints? Marvin dedicated "Praise" to Stevie.

Timmy84 said:

Man, my only peeve is that those two never joined forces musically circa 72'. WTF was Gordy thinking? Marvin-Wonder>Mavin-Diana.
I also wish Sly/Stevie would've joined forces in 71-72. God I'm just a fantasist.

Ok,I went back to Barnes and Noble and purchased this book

Sandino said:

Diana was Berry's meal ticket, that's why it never happened.

SoulAlive said:

Is it worth getting? Don't really want to get it if it's just a bit of a gossipy book.

Mong said:

I haven't read it yet,but I'll let you know in a few days