Stevie's Number Ones
IS IT EIGHT OR TEN? WITH OR WITHOUT FRIENDS?
He hasn’t released a new album in 18 years, but Stevie Wonder is still actively making music with others. Just in the last couple of months, he’s contributed to fresh tracks by Cher, Narada Michael Walden and the Rolling Stones. In Cher’s case, she recruited Wonder for her revival of a number (“What Christmas Means To Me”) which first appeared on his own seasonal set, 1967’s Someday At Christmas.
The Stevie songbook continues to attract singers and musicians by the score, of course. One such example: the Blind Boys of Alabama’s take on “Heaven Help Us All,” which is in their latest album, Echoes of the South. Previously, the gospel troupe recorded “Higher Ground,” and that’s presently in their concert setlist, too.
This summer, “Superstition” circulated virally in a version by Arkansas singing teacher Lacey Schaffer-Thomas. Then contemporary star Kelly Clarkson (American Idol, The Voice) brought Schaffer-Thomas onto her network talk show a couple of weeks ago for an energetic duet with the song, viewed by millions.
Stevie’s chart-topping Grammy gainer, “Superstition”
Meanwhile, amid all the current Taylor Swift hoopla, Billboard has updated its ranking of recording acts with the most Number Ones on the Hot 100. Having just gained her 11th chart-topper, Swift now ties Whitney Houston – and they both have one more than Wonder, according to Billboard (he himself ties with Janet Jackson on that score).
So it seems like a good moment to be reminded of Stevie’s total of Number Ones, and what some of the people involved had to say about them – plus a few choice words from the man himself. (I should also add that in the long-since-gone Cash Box magazine, there were an additional six of his singles which topped its Top 100: “For Once In My Life,” “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours,” “Higher Ground,” “Boogie On Reggae Woman,” “Master Blaster (Jammin’)” and “That Girl.”)
It’s an accepted maxim that countdowns and lists are online magnets, and West Grand Blog is evidently no different. Motown’s All-Time Top 50: Discuss continues as WGB’s most popular post of the past six years, followed by Motown’s Number Ones. So this tabulation of Stevie’s chart-toppers may as well get in the game – while we wait for his new album, right?
Now, the detail. The countdown below is calculated from the Number One singles accumulated by Wonder from 1963-85 on the Billboard Hot 100. It’s not chronological, but is ranked instead by how long each record spent at the summit, combined with its number of weeks in the Top 10. Thus, the longer a single lingered in those upper echelons, the more “points” it gained for this accounting.
One other qualification: Billboard’s total of 10 Number Ones for Wonder includes “Ebony And Ivory,” for which the billing on the record was “Paul McCartney with vocals by Stevie Wonder.” For West Grand Blog purposes, that hit is excluded from this list, as is another Hot 100 topper spiced by Stevie: Dionne Warwick’s “That’s What Friends Are For,” billed on the record as by “Dionne & Friends, featuring Elton John, Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder.”
If you want those two hits – neither of which was released by Motown – to be counted, then “Ebony And Ivory” (with seven weeks at the summit) would lead the pack, immediately followed by “That’s What Friends Are For” (four weeks). But in the meantime, let’s get going. The date shown alongside each title below is when the single stepped up to Number One (with the English dating methodology, putting the month second), followed in parentheses by the number of weeks at the top. An asterisk denotes a Grammy (or two) gained.
1. “I Just Called To Say I Love You” (Motown 1745) 13/10/84 (3 weeks)
Stevie’s chart-topping Oscar winner
“What happened was basically I had written the melody. I’d never recorded it. I did a demo of it without any words at all. I finished the lyric when I saw the movie. Technically, the song was not done before that. People had heard the melody before and wanted to use it. But I was holding it out for a movie. I even had an idea of doing a movie myself about two deaf people.” – Stevie Wonder.
2. “Fingertips – Pt. 2” (Tamla 54080) 10/8/1963 (3 weeks)
“Man, I’d never heard noise [at Chicago’s Regal Theater] so loud. It scared me. I picked him up and took him off the stage. But them kids were hollering and he wanted back on stage. He jumped right back out there.” – Clarence Paul, co-writer, arranger.
3. “Sir Duke” (Tamla 54281) 21/5/1977 (3 weeks)
“On ‘Sir Duke,’ we would basically sleep at the studio most of the time. I remember falling asleep in the vocal booth, and I knew I had to do my guitar part on the song. I would wake up every few minutes and ask, ‘Is it time yet?’ They would tell me no. Two days went by and it was like 6am and Steve said, ‘It’s time!’ There I was sitting in the booth next to a Marshall amplifier with headphones on and half awake, waiting to play my complicated guitar part.” – Michael Sembello, lead guitar.
4. “Part-Time Lover” (Tamla 1808) 2/11/85 (1 week)
Ruling the roost for three weeks in ‘77
“Sure, a lot of the songs I write are from my own direct experiences. I remember when I was breaking up with this girl and I was like, seeing this other girl. I came home and some guy called up and disguised his voice, tried to sound like one of her girlfriends to see if she was around.” – Stevie Wonder.
5. “Superstition” (Tamla 54226) 27/1/1973 (1 week)**
“If you ever see Stevie Wonder, that’s his closing song. From the very downbeat until he finishes, everybody is up and dancing and having a good time and singing. Berry used to say to us, ‘We got to get them in the first ten seconds.’ So when you hear the first ten seconds of ‘Superstition,’ he’s got you. It’s one of the funkiest tracks that you’re going to hear.” – Smokey Robinson.
6. “I Wish” (Tamla 54274) 22/1/1977 (1 week)*
“ ‘I Wish’ was a song that [Stevie] never rehearsed. He wrote the song in one day. I was there with him the whole day, and we did nothing that day. I was there until one o’clock in the morning, and I told Steve that I was leaving because I was tired. He told me to go ahead and head home. He called me back at 3:30 in the morning and told me to come back to the studio. He said, ‘I got a song and it’s going to be good. You gotta hear it, and you have to play on it.’ ” – Nathan Watts, bass.
7. “You Haven’t Done Nothin’” (Tamla 54252) 2/11/1974 (1 week)
His last Number One (so far) on the Hot 100
“One of our last great memories from our Motown days is of Stevie leading us in chanting to back up his tough, controversial song ‘You Haven’t Done Nothin’.’ Though Stevie and Marvin were still in the Motown camp, they had fought for – and won – the right to make their own records, and even to publish their own songs. Motown hadn’t even budged with us.” – Michael Jackson.
8. “You Are The Sunshine Of My Life” (Tamla 54232) 19/5/1973 (1 week)*
“ ‘You Are The Sunshine Of My Life’ was such an up tune. People would call it ‘the Stevie Wonder song.’ He ended up being on top of the world. We started with the Fender Rhodes part and then the Moog part. But the earlier records were more overdub parts with Stevie playing everything. The more we got into the records, the more the band started playing on the records. It wasn’t a hard record to make because everything just fell together.” – Robert Margouleff, associate producer.
Music notes: this WGB playlist to celebrate Stevie Wonder’s Number Ones is in chronological order, and for maximum enjoyment, it includes all his chart-toppers on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Cash Box Top 100. To round things off, there’s the Blind Boys of Alabama’s remake of “Heaven Help Us All,” albeit that the original didn’t quite reach the summit of either chart. But its sentiments are timeless.
Source notes: the quotes above come mostly from media interviews (Mary Campbell for Associated Press, David Nathan for Pulse, Chris Williams for The Atlantic and Okayplayer) and books (Michael Jackson’s Moon Walk, Ted Hull’s The Wonder Years).