Hey, Peter, what's up?
Today we're talking about Stevie Wonders immortal
Songs in the Key of Life album.
We're talking specifically about the four
singles that were released.
Two of them got to be number one hits on the billboard
Hot 100. Can you name all four singles?
I think so. I mean, definitely.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I Wish. Great
call. Three to go. Oh,
Three to go, Sir Duke.
Well done, Pete. Two to go.
Okay. Two more. Now it's getting a little, oh,
There. Yeah.
Another Star. Great song. You got one more single.
What do you think was one
of the singles, one of the hits that got released? One
Of the hits. So that's gotta be,
You would think.
Isn't she lovely? A million father-daughter dances.
Not a single, not a hit. Really? Yeah. What else
You got? Oh, maybe
Summer Soft. Perhaps the
best song on the album.
Very popular with musicians. Not a single, not a hit. Okay.
Hit. Gotta get back on hits. Okay. So it's gotta be,
If it's magic, unbelievable.
Not a single, not a
Hit. Well, it's a hit for me.
Well,
Let me hit you to some real magic here.
How about this?
Ah, that one's good too. Yeah.
I am Adam Maness. And I'm Peter Martin.
And you're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast. Music
Explored. Explored, brought to
you today by Open Studio.
Go to openstudiojazz.com for all
your jazz lesson needs. Peter.
He's back. He's, no, you never left. Peter.
It's another big day. I know you're shocked to hear that.
It's, you know what? We're just gonna assume
that it's always a, a big day. We're
living a big life. We're
living a big life.
It is seem like it's getting bigger and bigger
and with our guests today.
For sure. It's, it's going to, we're we're gonna top the,
we're gonna top the charts today. I can tell you
That we're gonna try to, because we are listening to,
I mean, one of, I, I'm not even gonna say one of, yeah.
It's our all time favorite album.
Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life. Yes. I dunno.
It's my all time favorite album.
You just set the bar high, Sir.
I don't want to speak for you.
I love This album. Um, not only that,
but we've got a very special guest
from the Hit Parade podcast.
The great Chris Molanphy is here.
Chris, thank you for joining us.
Thank you. We, we are so excited to talk
to you today about Stevie Wonder
and about your expertise with this, which is about
how these things have charted when they've been released,
and how they've done even since.
And, uh, yeah.
I'm stoked to listen to this music
and talk to you guys about it.
Yeah, me too. Yeah. Thanks for being here, Chris.
Yeah. Well, and when you guys gave me the selection
of albums and I saw songs in The Key
of Life was on the list, first of all, it's a great album.
And second of all, it's like a great chart album
because it, there are so many superlatives around it,
the way it charted and what a big hit it was.
So yeah, we can get into all that.
Yeah. And I'm really excited
because, you know, we talk about the singles, we talk about,
you know, the charts and stuff,
but I think we kind of gloss over it a little bit, um, in,
in Pursuit sometimes of like,
which is the track that Herbie played on.
That's my number one.
And we, we throw around like, personal charts
and musicians charts and maybe even jazz pianist charts.
Turns out that's not the same
as the general populations charts.
So I'm really excited to learn more about that
and really even just like what that means, you know,
chart topping billboard we throw around.
Yeah. Uh, these terms.
And in fact, I've been in the Recording Academy
for many years now, and I get a huge,
still get a huge Billboard magazine, uh,
every month or so to my house.
And I'm like, what is this exactly?
And it just sits there awaiting my perusal.
I think Chris might encourage you Touse a little more.
'cause there's some interesting stuff going on. Indeed.
Um, no, If you haven't checked that, I
Mean, you have to, you have to be a nerd for this kind
of thing, you know, cer certain people are wired
for this prereq, and I am one of those people. Well,
Prerequisite, uh, is is done right here.
I can tell you.
Well, before we get into the music,
let's get a little background here.
So, this double album released in 1976 was in
that string of what people often refer to
as Stevie's Classic period.
Mm-hmm. From music of my mind, uh,
through Songs in the Key of Life.
Um, you want to be a little annoyed with something?
Stevie started working on this album
when he was 24 years old.
Mm-hmm. And recorded it when he was god dammit.
I know, right. When he was 25.
What a genius for crying
Out Loud. What a genius. He'd
already recorded like
12 albums before this. I know too.
Right. And it's the last in that string
of five great albums, right? Yeah. I mean,
But we forget how young he was during this time.
He was in his early twenties making all of this music. Yeah.
And now his mid twenties making his masterpiece. Um, I think
When you do start that early, everything, like your,
his mid twenties is like mid thirties for most other,
I mean, really hundred percent in terms of sets
and reps, number of albums, number of compositions, tours,
performances, all that kind of stuff.
And I thought when you said you want to get really annoyed,
I thought you were gonna bring up the fact
that many folks were very annoyed
'cause this album was delayed.
Yes. And was there was a lot of lore around that as well.
Yeah. They actually made, uh, t-shirts
that said it's coming soon. You know, or
I think it was We're almost finished. We're
Almost finished. That's right. Yeah.
It was, it was before it was even coming. It was,
And by the way, way two years, that's all it was.
Nowadays. Two years is normal. Nothing. I know. Yeah.
Complete. You know, Taylor Swift now releases an album a
year, but like during the tens,
Taylor Swift released an album
every two years, like Clockwork.
And nobody thought that was ridiculous Right. Back then.
To wait two years was kind of like,
oh my God, what's taking so long?
Yeah. I mean, especially after the run he was on. Yeah.
He, he rattled off Music of my Mind.
72 Talking Book also 72 Intervision 73,
and Fulfillingness' First Finale, 74.
And then everybody was like, where's our 75?
Where's our masterpiece this year? Yeah.
Well, and shall we repeat the Paul Simon Grammy Quip?
I mean, why did Paul Simon win Album of the Year
for Still Crazy after all these years?
For 1975?
He literally stood up on stage holding the Grammy and said,
and I'd like to thank Stevie Wonder
for not releasing an album this Well,
Right. Wasn't it like the
main thing?
It wasn't like the first or main thing he
said when he stood up too. Yeah. Before he even thank
Everybody. It was like the, it
was like the, the little button on his,
he, he thanked, uh, his producer.
And, and I'd like to thank Stevie Wonder
for not releasing that one this year.
Because for those who'd forget Stevie Wonder,
to this day a record, he still holds.
Taylor Swift hasn't beaten this. Nobody's beaten this.
He had three album of the Year Wins in a Row. Crazy.
Taylor has had more, but Stevie had three in a row.
Nobody's ever pulled that off.
Innervisions Fulfillingness' First Finale.
Songs in the Key of Life back to Back to Back.
Well, and if he would've, if he would've planned
songs a little bit better
and done just two regular albums instead
of one double album, he could have gone four.
Paul wouldn't have won for Still Crazy, right? Yeah.
Paul would be in the gutter somewhere depressed.
You know, his whole trajectory would've changed,
you know? Well, can we just dig
In a little, Paul, Paul was fine.
'cause he won for, he'd won for Bridge Over Trouble Water
with Garfunkel, and he was gonna win
with Graceland a decade later, so he was fine.
Right. Okay. He's doing okay. Can
we just, uh, dig in a little bit into this idea
that you were just mentioning Chris about like two years was
an eternity back then.
Like, why is that, why have things changed?
Because, like, I was thinking,
you're talking about Taylor Swift, Beyonce, um, Kanye,
all these like mega artists now years go in between,
you know, we just lost DeAngelo last week.
I mean, he was an outlier in terms of, uh, decades going
between Yeah.
Right. Um, albums. But I mean, this idea, like
what was in the water in that early seventies, I mean,
even going back to like a lot of the jazz records Yeah.
And stuff in the sixties, they're
Make coltrane's making like three, four
or five albums a year sometimes. Yeah. But
Also, not only are they making albums every year, at least
they're like recording albums in September
and they're coming out in December.
Right. You know what I mean? It's like Right.
Even though the technology is so much better
and so much easier should be today.
But what, what's your thoughts on that first? I,
I think in 1965, the Beatles, uh,
were banging out rubber Soul
in time for the Christmas market.
And like they knocked it out in like two weeks
and it was in stores like a week or two later.
That's what it was like, because I think speaking
of the Beatles, I often do a before
and after with the Beatles.
Yeah. With Sergeant Pepper.
It isn't that Sergeant Pepper was the first concept album.
You have Frank Sinatra albums
before Sergeant Pepper that were concept albums.
It's that Sergeant Pepper changed the record industry's
understanding of the commerce behind albums.
Mm-hmm. Because now for starters, first of all,
Sergeant Pepper had no singles released from it.
That was a new concept that you would release an album
and not put, take any singles off
of it for the American market.
Right. Um, and the album has statement kind
of gains currency, and then it becomes the core unit
of measure of the record industry.
The folks may not remember this,
but you know, in the fifties
and early sixties, the single easily outsold the album.
Right. And the single was kind of like the core unit
of measure of the music business.
It's only when starting around rubber sole
and then gaining traction with Revolver
and Sergeant Pepper, that the music business kind of
re it reorganizes itself around the album.
Yeah. And yeah, in the early sixties,
you might have a band like the Beach Boys
or you know, smokey Robinson
and The Miracles putting out two or even three
or four albums a year
because the album is not necessarily a statement back then.
And then it becomes Pet Sounds
with The Beach Boys is a statement.
Like, and, and the commerce kind of builds around that.
Right. Um, and so by the seventies, an album a year,
maybe two albums a year, if you're Elton John
and his, his prolific period, or Carol King
and her Prolific period, yeah.
That would, you know, you would still have
that album a year cycle.
But for Stevie to take two years coming off
of all those hits to put together an album,
the music business was not set up that way.
Mm-hmm. And I think Stevie, you can even say help change
the perception of how long a cycle a promotional
cycle for an album would be.
I know you guys talked about Fleetwood Max rumors. Yeah.
It took them two years to follow that up with Tusk.
It took the Eagles two years, almost three
to follow up Hotel California with the long run.
So suddenly all these artists are taking
routinely two and three years.
And it, it's kind of like, you can point it as
before Songs in the Key of Life
after Songs in the Key of Life.
Right. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
I, I always, um, it's funny you mention The Beatles
with the, that Sergeant Peppers,
because I, you know, especially starting at Talking Book,
I don't know if this is true,
but to me, I hear Stevie saying, uh, listening to Abbey Road
and saying, I can do that, but better, you know, like,
I can make a better version of that.
And he starts making these albums
that are a little bit more, like less single driven,
a little bit more in that vein using synths
and things like that and, and really takes
what The Beatles did and, and improves on it Yeah.
Through this period, you know, in my opinion. Yeah.
And, and less kind of Motown soul.
I mean, not that he was always really that restricted to
that sort of sounding grooves,
but even less so, more rock stuff, more bluesy, more jet,
like, more cross genre kind of just like, what is that?
Oh, that's a Stevie record.
And then it builds up year after year.
Yeah. You know? Yeah. Music of my mind you.
Exactly. Well, I think, right. I think about Music
of My Mind with Jeff Beck, you know,
playing on that, for example.
For sure. And Think, think about him covering The Beatles.
Uh, we can Work it out.
And I think that was 71 just
before the, the, the run that he did with all the albums.
And frankly, it's, it's probably the one time a cover
of a Beatles song actually improved upon the Beatles song.
That's true. Um, so, so, yeah.
So Stevie is thinking differently at this time. Yeah.
And he's thinking more album and,
and also in terms of the commerce, he had resigned.
He'd, he'd gotten through his little Stevie Wonder period.
Right. His first Motown contract expires.
He demands and gets artistic freedom. Yeah.
And that's part of what you're hearing
during the five album run is Stevie's artistic Freedom.
Frankly, you're hearing it even after the five album run.
'cause after this he does Journey Through The Secret Life
of Plants, which is about as free in album.
Oh. May not be a great Stevie Wonder album,
but it's about as really
As talk about was a chart topper.
That's a chart topper with jazz musicians for sure.
Yeah. Jazz is, Yeah. I, I believe that. Yeah.
Yeah. Super interesting. Well, I mean, speaking of,
of like, uh, playing the music that he wants to, to play,
he starts off his, you know,
this two year wait for this album.
And the first track you get is this.
Good Morning Evening Friends,
here's your friendly announcer.
I have serious news to pass
On to Everybody
what I'm about to
Say.
Couldn't mean the world's disaster
Could Change your joy,
Laughter.
And
I,
I still think that this, in this run,
this is the best sounding of the albums in the run.
Mm. For me, like the sound that's,
That's probably accurate.
I mean, I just think the recording technology, I mean,
you guys were talking about this when you talked about Asia
and, uh, rumors, how by 76, 77,
it's kinda like everybody had figured out the re the
recording technology and the,
those are just clean sounding albums, right.
Clean sounding albums. The low end is incredibly
rich and detailed.
Like, when that bass comes in for the first time,
it just drops your heart into the pit of your stomach.
At least for me, because it just feels
so big all of a sudden.
Um, which we don't get on music of my mind
or Talking Book as much, you know,
it's not as full of a sound.
It's not as rich of a sound. Yeah.
And I mean, this is, this is definitely a little bit more
smoothed out, uh, sound in terms of like,
the way it's eq the way it's mastered, I think.
Mm-hmm. For sure.
The recording technology, I mean, we forget about, we think,
oh, the seventies, it was one thing,
but things were moving pretty quickly then even
before you got into the eighties with, you know, you know,
serious drum machines
and all these kind of things that affected the music.
But I, I also think he's out in the West Coast.
I mean, all, all the music in my mind,
Talking Book, Fulfillingness', I believe those were all recorded
with the same production crew, same studios in New York.
Um, this is an la kind of sound. Yeah.
You know, some of it was recorded at the,
uh, actually at the Rumors.
Good point Studio, right? Mm-hmm. Record Plant.
Um, but it's, you know, it's, you know, Stevie,
his voice, I think is the thing
that's most consistent from the period right before.
Well, it's the same period. I always consider this
as like a mini different period from the
Earlier ones. Partly comes almost,
almost how
there's, there's some kind of, I
Don't think you're wrong. Yeah.
I I I, I do think it,
it stands apart even though it's part of the five album run.
Sonically it stands apart from Son Other Four for sure.
Which is such A huge part of it.
Think about one, just one album previous.
Think about Fulfillingness' First Finale.
Think about a song like Creeping, for example, which I love.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, but like, there's a wooliness
to the sound of that record.
Yeah. It's, it's a, a fuzzy funk sound Yes.
On that album that I love, by the way. Great.
But it very different than the vibe
on songs and the Key of Life.
Yeah. And I might be oversimplifying with this new,
you know, east Coast to West Coast, but it's definitely a
Oh God damn
Great song. This
Is more raw too. This
has like a herbie's head hunter's vibe. Yeah,
Totally. Where,
Where songs has more of a, of a rumors Asia vibe.
Exactly. And this, I believe is Stevie on Drum.
Like, so Yeah, there's definitely Stevie on drums.
Woo. It's so good.
All we gotta do fulfilling this at some point,
I know it's, it's happening. It's gonna happen.
Fulfilling. This is the,
the underrated gem in the run, frankly.
I I Totally agree. My theory is
it's just so hard to say
That people Don't recommend it enough.
Um, yeah. I love the, I love that this is sort of like,
sonically is kind of lives in its own world.
Some, like, some generations have little crossover,
you know, I don't know, like, uh, 77 to like 82
als have a, I don't know if you guys know.
Anyway, uh, moving on.
But the thing too is I, what are those?
I, I think this idea, so I don't,
is there any ste I don't think there's any Stevie drumming
on songs of the Key of Life, actually.
Um, like I think that
Has that's interesting. I've
I never knew that. Yeah.
'cause his drumming is actually one of the appeals
of those first records in the run. Yeah.
I could be totally off and I don't have the, uh,
You keep talking. I'll
Yeah, please keep.
So I could No, but I, I know on that track, it wasn't,
and this is the thing, it's like that contributes to, I,
I don't think it's a better or worse.
It's, it's not about that. It's just different.
Like, the drums are so important, obviously, in any kind
of groove oriented music,
but Stevie's like, concept of playing the drums is
so unique, you know, even though I know, like,
if you look at the live stuff,
especially the live stuff from Europe that's available,
the videos 74, 75 with this man.
Um, and actually Greg Brown is
playing drums on a lot of those videos.
Very young. Greg Brown. And he's influenced
by Stevie's drumming.
'cause you can tell he's checked out Talking Book and,
and fulfilling this and stuff.
And like Stevie's fills and stuff were so unique.
But when we get to this, where we've got
what could be perceived, at least technically in terms of
for drummers, more seasoned drummers, more trained drummers,
it kind of changes this sound a little bit.
It looks like Stevie has a couple of drum credits on this.
He's, uh, according to our research here,
he's the only person playing on knocks me off my
feet. Okay. Oh,
That's Amazing. And he, that's
One of my very favorite
tracks on the album. That's great.
Yeah. He has a drum credit on, uh, isn't she Lovely?
But also Raymond Lee Pounds has a drum credit, so Yeah.
I don't know who's doing what there,
But those, but the earlier records,
it's like he's almost playing everything.
Oh, yeah. Even, even though there's a fair amount
of other credits, there's usually background vocals.
Yeah. Like Sanborn playing. I
Think Super Superstition is all Stevie except
for the horns, if I, if I'm not
Mistaken. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.
Viss that we,
we just talked about a few weeks ago.
Uh, he's all over that on drums. I mean, the whole thing.
And playing a lot of mo bass on that stuff here.
We've got, you know, NA uh,
who's playing bass on here? Nathan,
Nathan Watts. Nathan Watt's. A lot of
Stuff. Yeah. So see,
he's really getting into
the, to the band concept.
And I think it, you, you hear that.
I mean, this is a more polished record.
You can already hear it at the beginning.
So we got you here, Chris,
and we thought maybe we'd listen to some hits.
So next up we have have a Talk With God, which is one
of my favorite songs on the album, village Gito.
I mean, this whole, the entire first, like, you know,
I mean the whole, the whole album
Pretty bad. I know. Where do you,
where do you bad cut it off? Yeah.
Um, but I thought we would, we would actually talk about
some of the chart toppers here.
So the first single that was released was
Sir Duke. Is that right?
No, I wish, I wish, wish.
And by the way, a de an interesting detail,
the album drops in September, 1976.
They don't release a single from this
album for another couple of months.
Why? Um, the, the, the person I would compare Stevie Wonder
to in 1970 six's Prince in 1985,
if you remember when he put out his first album
after Purple Rain around the World in a Day.
Yeah. He claimed he didn't wanna release any singles.
And finally the label kind of forced his hand
and he released his Raspberry Beret.
Stevie did something similar in 1976.
He's kinda like, no, here's the full album.
And eventually, I dunno if it was Barry Gordy,
but Motown prevailed upon him to release a single.
And the first single they release is, I Wish,
and it doesn't top the charts until January of 1977.
Wow. Like more than four months after the album is out. Oh
My gosh. Oh, that's, so
Here's the first single
Was For Christmas.
What would be
My dog?
Even Though we
Sometimes Would not get a bang we
Day with The hang
the outside.
I mean,
It just doesn't get any better than that.
The horns, by the way, are on trumpet.
Uh, Ray Maldonado on trumpet, Steve Meo on saxophone,
Hank Red and on tenor saxophone, Trevor Lawrence. And
Who's playing drums on that one? Raymond
Pounds. Raymond
Pounds on drums.
Yeah. Nathan Watts on the bass
and background vocals by, uh, Renie Linda Hardaway.
But man, that sounds good. Yeah. Talk about Clean.
Oh man. The Drum,
Right from the opening.
Yes. I mean, like that, that op that is one
of the best openings to a single I've, you know, that do,
do do do, do you know, when it comes in, there are rap songs
that came out decades later
that I think are an homage to that opening.
Right. That homage or inter interpolation.
That's always the question. I mean,
Have you ever heard the Song On Fire by Lloyd Banks,
which I think came out in like 2004.
I'm convinced the opening of
that record is like an homage to I Wish.
Right. Um, you know, stuff like that.
Um, nevermind the fact that I Wish also got actually sampled
by the likes of Will Smith.
Sure. Will Smith turned it into a number one hit right.
In, uh, 1999, I think. Wild, wild West and
Like Wild Wild West,
Like every Stevie song,
at some point on the album, he's gonna take you to church.
Yeah. Like, there's gonna be a, some church in the music
and this is break.
Perfect example Of that. Yeah.
And I think too, the idea of, well, one thing
with people using, you know, it's, it's just a
minor one to the four.
Like that's straight up church right
there, you know, one to the four. That's
The baseline, you know, that.
Yeah.
It's so simple, but so effective.
And people can take it pretty much copyright free.
'cause it's a baseline. I mean, you can't totally,
but I mean that's, that's why you hear it a lot, Chris.
It's like they're hiding behind.
They're hiding behind the baselines can't be
copywritten concept.
Yeah. Which doesn't always work.
But I mean, that's the thing too.
Like, it's such an unusual, it's, it wasn't that unusual at
that time, but maybe for it to be a number,
this was number one right on the pop chart, number
One, number one on both the pop RB charts popping
RB January of 77. But to have
Something that's like so well crafted
and starts out with a super melodic baseline, you know,
and then the drums coming in.
I mean, I'm listening on here.
Like, I, I think we can never, with with headphones,
I think we can never understate how,
and I'd love to hear your take on this, Chris, in terms
of like, stuff not just being like musicians geeking out
or big fans geeking out,
but like, how does it cross over into everybody being like,
well, I don't usually listen to Stevie,
but I heard it on the radio and this is a hit all
of a sudden is like the sound quality.
I mean, these drums are mixed so well,
like super hard pan on some of this stuff.
The guitar. Ah, I mean,
just, it's such a beauty.
You know, the plane's great. I mean Stevie,
Stevie was the leading edge of crossing over funk,
you know, and r and b in general Yeah.
To all audiences. Right? Yeah.
So like, I mean, some prior number
one hits by Stevie Wonder.
He, he not only takes Superstition number one,
that's no surprise, but like, you know,
the number one single from Fulfillingness' First Finale
is you haven't Done Nothing.
Yeah. Which is pretty funky for a record
that tops the pop charts. Yeah.
Very Funky. So like, or, you know,
I think Boogie on Reggae Woman peaks at number three
or number five, something like that.
Like, he's getting some pretty
funky stuff on pop radio even
before Songs in the Key of Life.
Right. So like, I Wish is just a, a gi
by the time that shows up.
Right. You know? Right. Because he's Stevie Wonder.
He can, he can sonically
do varsity level stuff.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. That, you know,
nobody else can do. So check out these,
These horns real quick for my wish.
Tight, tight.
It's punctuation, right? Yeah.
Even more than on most RB records for sure.
The way the horns function in that record is just like,
Yeah, no, that's, that's
Putting a button on everything. That's a
Great way to put it. Because you have
a lot of, I mean, there's
so many great horn sections that we're about
to get into Earth wind,
and actually it's already earth, wind,
and fire time with those incredible horns.
Sure. Where, where they really take over
for a while melodically.
And on this track especially, they don't take over.
It is, it's punctuation.
It's, it's like the syncopation
and like that part, ah, we, Dave bang,
it's called Response Cat.
Like that little 16th note accent in there is so slick.
And like most people, they don't know
what that is, but they feel it.
Right. It's that, it's that like Right.
Linking in with the drums and,
but like sonically, I mean,
this must've been such a hard track,
the whole hard album to mix.
'cause there's so many little details
that contribute, I think.
I mean, yeah, he's laying down a
funky groove, all that kind of stuff.
But like the Sonic
and then Stevie singing is like, has so much expansive,
you know, it could just take over the whole thing
with the mix and you could bring everything down
to just this little thing and let Stevie be over it.
But the way this is mixed is like, everything has sort
of has its place and it's, it's a very dynamic range on it.
Yeah. No, I I all, even down to the way Stevie kind
of chops up the vocal, like, he, he, he takes words
that are two syllables and why did those days, eh, ver have
to go ah, you know, like he's, yeah.
He, he, it's like the whole song is punctuation.
It's kind of like, you know, horns Stevie Horns Stevie.
Right. Um, that, that only enhances the,
the groove on the record. Yeah.
So, all right, Chris, what is the next single then
that was is SDU next after? I wish
Sir Duke is next. Sir Duke
is the second single.
So talk about going from strength to strength. Yeah.
Same horn section for My Wish.
Great. Pre chorus coming now
Again. Punctuation.
Start to move.
Swing group. The swing group, I was gonna say is this,
is this Stevie's tribute to Swing,
I just said here. Is
this the Jazziest number one?
It's gotta be Of all
Time. It's a song
about Duke Ellington.
It's very j well, well, it's a but it's a
specific type of jazz, right?
Yeah. It's, it's specifically an homage
to Duke Ellington, hence the title.
Yeah. And, you know,
and the King of all, sir Duke, you know.
Yeah. He's, he's rattling off all those kind
of early jazz pioneers.
He literally calls them pioneers in the lyrics. Yeah.
There are some of music's pioneers.
It's like in the verse lyric.
He's like, I'm about to give you a list of things now.
And then he rattles it
Off. It's a list. It's a list song.
It's a listicle, it's a list song. Yeah.
Right. Pe people think of stuff like, I don't know,
Billy Joel, we didn't start the Fire as a List song,
but there's a, there's a part
of Sir Duke that's a list song.
It's also a listening recommendation.
It's in a number one hit. It's, it's like, go check
Out if you are enjoying this record.
Someone's wants to pick up for a deeper dive.
If you enjoy Stevie Wonder's, uh, Songs in the Key of Life,
you might enjoy Bassy Ella, you know, like
Satchmo. Yeah, yeah. And
The king of all, sir Duke. Sir
Duke. Yeah. But Even that, you know,
that the famous horn interlude here.
Lemme see if I can find it real quick.
Penton After this
Yeah.
Bass is playing as well.
You know, that's, I never thought about it like this,
but that line, I mean, this is like
evocative of the big band.
You know, like the way that, like a trumpet section
with the trombones, like a 2D kind of line. It's
Not quite, But it's not quite Yeah.
Because it's entirely a pentatonic scale. Yeah,
I know. Yeah. It's,
it's a ste it's Stevie's vision
of a big band horn line.
Yeah. Which there's not quite as much
of the chromaticism that you might hear.
Yeah. Or some of the functional harmony
that Duke would put into these things. Right.
Hence it being a number one hit.
'cause he put, if he'd put that stuff in, it
Might not Confirm it.
Right. He get, he get, he gets away with stuff Yeah.
In a number one hit that nobody else does. Yeah.
But this is, I love you guys breaking this down for me,
because I've always wondered, I mean, I,
in my rudimentary knowledge of jazz hear this
and I think, okay, this is Duke Ellington style jazz,
but it really isn't.
Right. It's a hybrid. Yeah.
I mean, it's because it's coming out in the era
of weather Report and return to forever.
Right. It's, it's, it's a different era
of jazz when he is putting this out. Yeah.
It it sounds very much like a line
that Stevie Wonder would sing.
Yes. He loves singing Panatonics. He loves
SS and Panatonics a lot of Melo there.
Um, and, or, or maybe it happened
on the harmonica, I'm not sure.
But it definitely has the, it evokes Duke,
it evokes Count Basey,
you know, like Yeah.
Rhythmically. Like it's actually within the swing group,
Surpris, this all that is there.
But it's, it's a little bit not, not the same.
It's more like if that, if if it were happening
in the seventies, what would it
Sound like? Yeah. Well, and
to your point, Chris, about weather report
and then with this Adam, like that was, you know, Joe,
Joe Zal, Wayne shorter, that whole weather report Jocko.
Right. Like, they were really getting into
Pentatonics type of stuff.
And a lot of that was coming outta the actually
John Coltrane influence.
So not so much the part of jazz Duke,
Arlington Count Bassy Satchmo
and King of also like the list that he was saying.
But like, chick Korea, who Stevie Wonder was a huge fan
of Herbie Hancock, you know?
Sure. Um, they would have McCoy Tyner.
That was a big thing with that pentatonic sound.
So he's kind of filtering through a couple
of different kinds of jazz on, I mean, which is crazy
'cause it's like the more jazz you filter in,
the farther away you're gonna get from a
number one hit normally.
But Stevie pulls it off, you know?
And yet, I mean, I think in my memory, you know, you
and I are roughly the same age, Peter.
Um, I was whatever, five when this album came out,
this is the first Stevie Wonder song.
I think I was cognizant of. Me too.
Not counting either that or Superstition
because of Sesame Street, but it, it, this, this,
that they can feel it.
Oh yeah.
That hook is like, it's like fused to my childhood brain.
Yes. Um, because it's so exuberant.
It's so joyous. Yeah. That's,
Know exactly what, what I was gonna say about this track,
Chris, is that like, I think the best part about it is,
is it is like this, Hey,
you should check out this music from the past.
These are the pioneers, the history lesson.
It's, it's a recommendation.
It's a music lesson,
but it's done in the most joyful way possible.
Yeah. Like, the whole thing feels like a party.
And it's honestly, sometimes the thing
that jazz musicians forget about the music that we make is
that it can be in fact, controversial. Very fun.
It Can be
Very, this is A hot take.
Hot take. We're gonna pull this one out. This is gonna,
We can have Fun. Jazz
Can be fun. It doesn't
have to be an intellectual exercise.
It can be, in fact a very joyful party as proven here. I'm
Doing a great job of like, I'm like,
let's turn it into an intellectual party pan a onic scale.
A pentatonic scale.
No, but I want you to break that down for me,
because this has always fascinated me.
Like, is, is this a jazz record? Is this a pop record?
Is this jazz filtered
through a pop sensibility or a funk sensibility?
This is jazz filtered through. I think
That's through Stevie Wonders sensibility.
Yeah. Is what I, is like,
what Peter was saying is like Stevie will sing in
Pentatonics and you can just imagine him saying like,
you know, I wanna write this sort of,
I got these horns in the studio.
I'm gonna write this big band lined line.
But it still is filtered through his sensibility,
which makes it very special.
Like, it makes it a very, it's not just him
nerding out doing research
and trying to like, put a bunch
of sharp elevens in there and 13.
Right. 'cause that's what Duke would've done. Yeah.
He's just doing his thing on it.
Yeah. And I don't think it's, it's like, it's sort of,
I think jazz is probably,
when you really break down Stevie's music,
especially the harmony of his stuff, it's like the easiest,
um, sort of attractions that he'd had, that he had
and the influences that he has to analyze.
But I don't think jazz is any bigger than say, blues
or gospel or,
or even rock to a certain degree later on,
maybe with Stevie for sure.
Um, but I think in terms
of like really the fundamental things
that you hear in like his keyboard playing
and the way that he sings, there's specific things in jazz.
There's specific things in blues
and for sure specific things.
Like, like for instance, on on the one
before, like that's actually a,
a different version of a pentatonic.
That's all pentatonic.
Oh, interesting. Minor pentatonic.
But then he breaks up the pentatonic on the four court,
which is very much a gospel thing.
You've got like, so he's sort
of combining those, and I'm sure he wasn't like,
let me combine the, you know,
No, he's Just hearing stuff. He's hearing
stuff. But I think like he, um,
was such a student of like a wide range of music.
You can tell, you know, this was not just like, oh,
all this kind of stuff sort of came.
I mean, you could hear I've, I've heard him live a, a bunch
of times, and of course that was later on than this.
But like, he, I saw him one time
and this was probably early nineties or something.
He started out the set and played Chiia Spain.
Like everybody was so hyped. Wow. So hyped up.
It's like Stevie comes out just instrumental, which is like,
first of all, oh, that's another pentatonic.
They, so he likes pentatonic.
Well, there's a lot of pentatonic in there,
but like, he just played it as, it's like a fusion band,
you know, like, like wow.
Just played, it played like a solo,
like the trumpet player played a,
like, that was their warmup tune.
I've heard him do Giant Steps as the warmup tune.
Now it's Stevie Wonder. He knows no one's gonna leave.
'cause he's not playing. I wish as the first tune, like,
people are there, they're settling in, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He can, he can kind
of play whatever he wants on the first tune.
But I mean, it's just to say that like, he understood
a lot of different kind of music.
We talk about funk. He was going to actually,
before this, he was going to New Orleans in 73
and 74 for sure.
Real quietly listening to
and sitting in with the meters down there.
Art Neville, George Porter
and stuff used to tell stories about that.
So like, he had that kind of an influence
with the New Orleans Swamp funk kind of stuff.
Um, so it's, to me, it's so interesting when it comes out
on, on a number one hit, I'm like, damn,
how did he basically pulled off two?
So I wish and Sudu are have heavy jazz sensibilities to him
because this is almost like a walking baseline. Well,
And Like a jazz walking baseline. Yes.
I was gonna say it sounds like a walking baseline.
Yeah. And one of the other singles from this album is
as, which features Herbie Hancock on the
on the Fender Roads.
Yeah. You know, so there's, yeah.
It's, uh, it's all over the place.
I, I wanna get though, before we get too deep,
I wanna get to an honorable mention.
This wasn't a hit, this wasn't a single,
but it produced one later.
And it comes, it's eighth track
of the album. I love this song. You almost
Can't hear it. You almost can't
hear this song anymore without thinking of
what it became 20 years later.
I love Pastime Paradise so much. I love production. Yeah.
I love those synth strings.
Those Aren't syn
strings. Those are real strings. Sorry.
No, synths. Are they synths? Yeah,
They're Yamaha. Yep.
Yeah. No, in fact, that was
what was innovative about this record in 76. Oh,
The GX one. Okay. Yeah.
Nce.
So fast forward 20 years
and you get this from Coolio, 1990 Fives,
gangsters Paradise and Key,
The number one hit of 1995. Yeah.
The number one hit of 1995,
The biggest record of that year.
You know, Michelle Pfeiffer turning around the chair,
sitting down in the video.
And by the way, notice a little something
about that coolio record.
As badass as it is.
What aren't you hearing on that record
that you would normally hear on a nineties rap record?
Oh, let's hear it again. Profanity.
Profanity, right? Yes. Ding. That's right. Is
That true? So the, the,
the story goes that when Coolio
and Julio's label went to Stevie Wonder
to seek approval for the sample.
Yeah. Stevie said no at first.
Then they went back to him and the second time he said, yes.
But he said, but you gotta take the profanity out.
And Stevie did coolio a favor
because that made that record that much bigger.
It could be played all day on the radio.
It didn't have to be censored
or swooped or anything like that.
It was a number one hit on the hot 100.
Yeah. Right. At a time when gangster rap is ascendant.
Yeah. You know, and, and you know, I mean, I love Dr.
Dres the chronic, but like, you know, they had
to record whole different lyrics for nothing
but a g thing to get that on top 40 radio.
Yeah. Right. You didn't have to edit anything on
Julio's Gangster's Paradise.
And as a result, it's the number one hit in the top hit
of the year, by the
Way. That's amazing. It charted
again
after Julio's death in 2022 at number
55, which is interesting.
It went back on the hot 100 after Coolio passed away.
So does that, so that was, I was gonna say, was that same
'cause I knew it was the exact same tempo, same key.
And I couldn't tell if that was interpolation or I
Think it's an interpolation, I think
An interpolation. I don't how it's, I think's interation Okay. If
you listen
to just how the, the strings sound.
Yeah. Plus you're talking about a 19 year
difference in technology.
Right. Improvement, I don't know, call it improvement.
But the synthesizer in 76 that he's using is I guess,
primitive compared to the one that you Well, it is
The JX one.
Yeah. The Yama Jakes one was very,
I was always amazed when I found, like, I could kind
of tell, I was like, I don't think that's real string.
Stevie used a lot of real strings at different times.
And in fact, I heard him do this at the Superdome in New
Orleans in like, at the Ebony Festival.
It must have been mid nineties with a string orchestra.
And it was stunning. You know, it was like,
to hear him do this, I'll bet it
was one o'clock in the morning.
And I mean, the whole thing was, was incredible.
But, um, the, of course he did his version,
not Julio's version, I should just point out.
Sure. But, uh, but I
Mean, that's such a Stevie move in 76 on Pastime Paradise
to kind of like try
to create an orchestra with a synthesizer.
Yeah. That's, that's such a move that he would pull.
Yeah. It sounds great. I think he does something
similar on Village Ghetto Land also on this album.
I think that too has Yeah. Synth strings Exactly. On
It. Yeah. And he had such
a unique take on it.
Right. That's clearly a synthesizer. Yeah.
Great. Another great song and
Almost has a choir, like, like a,
like a Strings with a choir on.
It's just a very unique, like Stevie was
for all his genius stuff
and still, it's still on this record
and I see Greg Filling Gain's name
who pops up on every like, great hit hit that we see somehow
Fall. It's like filling's appreciation
months
around here at You'll hear it podcast.
Yeah, yeah, of course. Seriously. Amazing. Yeah.
I remember when I first heard Village Ghetto Land actually,
and being, this would've been, I would've been 16
or so, so around 1995.
And, um, being a little like you, the strings, you know,
the synth strings sound horrible.
'cause you know, I, I'm rocking my, it sounds
Thin by Modern Amp.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm rocking my ins Sonic Synthesizer. Sampler.
Yeah. Sampler. But, uh,
but I still don't think I'd I I I've ever heard
a song quite like that.
Yeah. From anybody.
Like, it was just such an amazing, amazing concept.
The whole song that,
I mean, I think Stevie and Pastime Paradise
and Black Man, I think are standouts in that regard.
Yeah. But I mean, even like, I, I agree. Yeah.
Even getting to 1976 and synthesizer
and even sampling was, was starting to be happening,
had progressed a lot from like music in my mind, um,
fulfilling this even.
But like Stevie All Along was such kind
of an underrated thing that he did.
He was such a pioneer
and innovator as a taste maker with synthesizers.
Like to be able to get different sounds. Sure.
No, but he had this ability to not just, well,
because you couldn't at that time really strictly
imitate a string sound.
So like he did one better
instead of just trying to get his close.
He tried, he was able
to make it into a new sound, you know what I mean?
Right. He was able to like tailor the sound
and like really dial it
to make it like a personal kind of thing.
And I think that when you hear this stuff,
it actually doesn't sound dated.
Like it should, you know,
It sounds like the 1970s.
Yeah. If it sounds like when you hear an
Asia kick drum, right.
Like you don't kick drum like that anymore.
And it still doesn't make it not beautiful. It's gorgeous.
But you could say some, but it's of
Its time. It's of its time.
Yeah. You could say some of the early, you know,
once we get into the early eighties with Stevie, some
of the synthesizer sound, some
of the program drums possibly sound a little
bit date Uhoh. He's getting mad
At this is your Gen X.
Okay. Sorry. This is your conditioning,
your Gen X conditioning.
You were coming of age
and thought you were too cool
for the DX seven sounds. Just a minute,
Chris, let's talk about 1976.
Something he doesn't know about the kids.
Love when Sir Duke was playing on the radio. Radio
When I was five, but Go on. Exactly.
I was five, I was six.
And but that, but another thing, 70 76,
you're talking about like, you know
how optimistic Sir Duke sounded on the radio and it did.
It was also Absolutely. It was just, that was kind of some
of my earliest memories.
It was like the bicentennial. Yeah. It was like a big deal.
Big deal. Everybody was into it.
It wasn't like today where not everybody be into it.
Like everybody was into it.
Stevie's on the charts, there's a lot of like,
there was just more unifying cultural sort of events,
especially in music, you know?
Um, yeah. That happened in a way
that now, you know, it's different.
Like, you know, whatever. Taylor Swift has all,
what does she have nine things on the charts right now.
And I couldn't sing you any of 'em.
'cause my, it doesn't hit my algorithm.
Nothing against Taylor Swift.
I just, but at this, I mean, in 1976,
could you have avoided Sir Duke, you know, as an American?
Well, I mean, I'll invoke, I'll invoke that word
that gets used in these conversations all the time,
which is monoculture, right?
Yeah. You, when in a world
where you only had three TV networks
and everybody got their music from the radio,
and you had to go buy your music in a record store if you
wanted to play it back in your own home.
Right. You know, there you had somebody like Stevie
who could kind of own everybody Right.
And, and command the charts
and, you know, a number one hit was really,
if not fully universal.
Very universal. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Very universally consumed. Yeah.
Whereas now, you know, you're kind of,
Taylor is legitimately huge.
Um, but, you know, many weeks when it's not Taylor Swift,
you know, it's like the biggest among, you know, a smaller
level of, you know, consumption.
Right. Uh, it wasn't like
that in 76 when Stevie Wonder drop
songs in the K one. Right?
Yeah. We were just talking about this.
We just did Thriller, um, which would probably be out
by now the time, by the time people are listening to this.
But we were talking about that same thing as big
as Taylor is even, you know,
my mom doesn't really know any Taylor Swift songs,
but I remember in 1983
or four when I was, you know,
when Thriller was still on the charts,
my grandma knew Billie Jean, like everybody knew Right.
And heard it and had seen it, knew what, knew
who Michael Jackson was.
Um, knew that music actually. Yeah.
So I, I wanna plan a little flag where,
where this show is going right now,
just for our listeners here.
So if you notice, we're kind of, we're paying attention to
the singles and the things that might have charted
because we've got, uh, Chris Molan on.
And, and so we will eventually do a show on some
of the BSides on this.
We've, we've, we've talked about, uh, songs in the Q Flash
before, but we're gonna have to do Peter, we're gonna have
to do like a three hour show at some point
because it's so hard to skip over things like Summer
Soft and Ordinary Pain. Oh
My God. Somes soft. I
I mean B Size you mean
stuff that the musicians love? That's what we're talking
About. Well, that are like some of the
greatest
songs ever recorded.
One that I don't want to skip that wasn't a single
and I don't know if it ever charted anywhere,
but I just know that as a young musician saving up to move
to New York, I played a lot of weddings
and I never played a wedding that we didn't play this
father daughter dance. Yeah.
Right. That's when you know an album's great when it has
a song that is universally known
and it wasn't even a hit. Wasn't
A hit. That's, I
was shocked when I
saw that this wasn't one of those. We were like, there's
Four. It was not one of
the four singles. That's
Crazy. That's crazy. I Would've,
I would've, which is crazy.
Which means it didn't appear on the Hot 100 back then
for a song to appear on the Hot 100 for it to be eligible,
it had to be released as a retail single.
Isn't She Lovely. Was never released as a single. Amazing.
The two songs from this period, I would compare it
to, there's a weird analogy.
I would compare it to Landslide
by Fleetwood Mac from the self-titled record.
Mm-hmm. Not a single Crazy Now universally known Crazy
and, uh, Vienna by Billy Joel from The
Stranger. No idea. You're kidding.
What? Not A single what? Not a single.
And now it's like particularly among Gen Z. Yeah.
If you ask a Gen Z person name me a Billy Joel
song, they'll name Vienna before
You. Yeah. It might be the most
well known, uh, uh,
Billy Joel song right now.
Yeah. Culturally. Yeah. Certainly from The Stranger. Right?
Wow. So Chris, what, why would this have not, would
that have been a Stevie?
I mean, he had so much control that he just didn't want,
because I mean, the record company Motown would've been like
all over this as a, as a,
as an easy crossover, hit crossover.
I mean, this is some of the most pop stuff on here, right?
I mean, it has to do okay.
In my mind, it has to do with the, the typical
practices in the music business at the time, which is
that you never went more than three
or four singles deep on an album.
Yeah. The what was, you know,
what was normal quote unquote was that you would, you know,
put out maybe a third single
and then you'd say, okay, where's the next album?
Right. But again, Stevie Wonder is
now changing that cadence.
He's changing the pattern such that it's no longer weird
for an album to take two years.
The very next year an album you guys just talked about
Rumors by Fleetwood Mac becomes the first album
to score four top 10 hits.
'cause they released four hits off that album
that had never happened before.
Mm. Pretty soon Michael Jackson becomes the
first soloist to pull that off.
There were four top 10 hits from Off the Wall,
which came out in 79.
Yeah. So like the, the whole cadence of number
of singles you'd release from an album.
I will say it is odd to me that as great
as the other two singles are,
which I think we're gonna talk about in a minute,
um, that you wouldn't pick.
Isn't she lovely, given what a mass appeal record it is.
Yeah. But maybe they just figured, you know, they wanted
to serve all the markets
and maybe they wanted something a little more jazzy
or a little more r and b. I don't know. Well,
Our producer Liz is gonna help us out here.
'cause she has in her researched, it wasn't released
as a single because it's six
and a half minutes long. And Stevie
Refused there is that He refused to shorten it,
to put it on, uh, to put it on a single disc. So, and
Even if he hadn't shortened it, now mind you, there's,
there's precedent for long singles.
Hey, Jude, in 1968 was a seven minute single Wow.
That went to number one and was never cut.
Um, American Pie
by Don McLean in 1972 is a nine minute single.
It, it had to get divided on 45, such
that you heard the first half on the A side
and the second half on the B side.
Wow. But on the radio,
everybody played all nine minutes of American Pie.
Yeah. So it's not as if there were no records
that were six minutes long
that were getting played on the radio,
but I think Stevie probably knew
that there'd be a radio edit within minutes if
they put this out as a single.
Right. And for him, the point of that record is hearing
his daughter taking a bath.
Yeah. You know? Yeah. Late in the, the,
the sound effects are part of the atmosphere of that record.
Right. Yeah. And it's frontload
you probably didn't wanna Yeah.
And it's front loaded with that
and then it comes back later.
And then it comes back. Exactly.
There's a reprise of the, the,
the daughter sounds exactly Aisha and I
Was just thinking before you get to that Adam, uh, years,
well not that many years later on, I guess music aquarium,
that was like 82
or 81, which was, you know, like some hits on there.
I'd probably dis satisfy something with Motown,
but it had, do I do on there?
Yeah. We're talking about jazz influence
and I don't know how big of a hit that was,
but I remember that being on the radio a
sizable hit. Yeah. Um,
Top 40 pop hit num top five r and b hit.
So do I do was pretty big.
Yeah. And so, but that, talk about radio edits.
There's a Dizzy Gil Gillespie solo on there
that got radio edited off.
If you didn't have the single you
or the album, you didn't know anything about that.
'cause that never got played on my record. Yeah.
That never, I mean, I remember firsthand,
'cause I remember arguing with my sister, I was like,
this Gillespie's on his, she's like, no, he is not chicken.
I would come on the radio and then it would
just like fa she's like, I told you.
I was like, no, no. He's about to play a great soul.
Typical. And once we got found
Svia on that record even starts,
he even starts rapping toward the end.
Like he, he makes up a rap on the spot. That's right.
He's just riffing as that record goes on and on.
Oh, that's great. But then again, Stevie Wonder has a
history of kind of seeing how far he can push it.
Uh, trivia. Do you know
what Stevie Wonder's first Hot 100 number one hit was?
My, my Shere. Is It, is it Fingertips part two?
That is correct. Oh.
And I'm glad you included the part two because it's like,
'cause the reason why it's all, all Fingertips.
Part two, which is a great record, by the way. Yeah.
It's Stevie Wonder. Pardon my French.
F*****g around and refusing to get off. Yeah. It's, it's
Like all It is Harmonic. That's what that record
Is. And then him
playing with the crowd, they're
Trying to yank him off, and the band,
you can actually hear the band in the background.
Like, duh.
They're trying to like, okay, that's our final note. Wow.
Time for you to get off the stage.
And he starts playing his armonica again.
He refuses to get off the stage.
Stevie Wonder, he's been pushing it his whole career.
That's kind what he does. That's so great.
Chris, while we got here, I want
to go down a little side path here.
You mentioned, Hey, Jude by The Beatles.
So hey, Jude, not part of an album, right.
Released as a single only. Right.
Released as a single. Just before
The White album. Yeah, just
Before the White album. But
I, I remember growing up thinking it was either part
of Sergeant Pepper's of the
White album, but it's not part of either. It's
Not part of either It's something, and
Now you get it on a compilation. You
get it either on Pass Masters
or you get it on one, their collection
of number one hits or something like that.
But again, pass. And Oh,
and they built, they built an album.
Alan Klein built a whole album around,
Hey Jude called Hey Jude, that came out in like early 1970
that collected a bunch of their leftover singles,
but never on a formal album.
You might know, but how, how, how common was that
to have just like this?
Because that sounds very common.
That's a huge hit for The Beatles.
I think one of the first five songs you might think
of when you think of The Beatles for most people,
I mean, many of the Beatles hits,
um, were not on an album.
We Can Work It Out, was not on an album.
It wasn't America and America. They kind of reorganized.
I think it's the American version of Rubber Soul
to include, we can work it out.
But, you know, day Tripper was not, you know,
that was the B side of We Can Work It Out.
Um, she Loves You, not On Please, please Me.
Ah, that, that was quite common. Crazy.
The British record industry had a,
a very different ethic than the American, where
they actively did not want singles to be on the album.
They thought they were fleecing the record buying public.
If they put a single on an album,
they thought the singles were supposed to stand alone
and the albums were supposed to be separate.
Whereas the American system was more, oh,
we'll sell more albums if there's a hit on the album.
Yeah. So it was almost like a different philosophy
between the British and the
American Recordation. So all
these, all these like British invasion bands probably
have huge hits that were never
on an album over there for this.
Never on an album. Yeah.
That was quite common. Yeah. Yeah.
So speaking of that, like how, how would this, uh, songs
of the Key of Life, if at all, been treated differently
for the UK market?
Because I know a lot of times we talk about the US
and then we'll talk about the, the UK
and then maybe like France, Germany, Spain or something.
But then it's kind of like rest of the world, maybe Japan.
And I know Stevie's always been huge in the Japanese market,
but specifically for, for UK or anywhere else in the world.
Like, how would this have been treated differently
with these signals, uh, uh, singles
and with just radio airplay at that time?
Like how it was different?
I mean, what's different about the UK charts compared
to the US charts is that the UK charts for most
of their history have been exclusively sales,
no radio airplay.
Mm-hmm. Especially in England, where they have the BBC.
And so the, the BBC is kind of a public trust.
It would be weird for the BBC
to be factored into their charts.
So the charts were always, you know, just, uh, sales.
And now they are mostly streaming Yeah. These days.
Um, but no, I mean, by the seventies, both the US
and the UK were, you know,
generally pulling singles from albums.
It's just that in the uk sometimes you'd pick a different
single from the album.
Um, I, I haven't checked, actually, if you gimme a minute,
I can, I can check my British Chart book
and see if they picked different singles.
I don't know if they did. Yeah.
Honestly, uh, it looks like there were only three
singles from Songs in the Key of Life.
I wish went to number five, sir Duke went to number two.
UK and another star went to number 29 uk.
And then we jumped to Send One Your Love,
which is from Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants.
Yeah. So, so unless they went back
and re-released as later, what's interesting
to me about them not releasing as, um, in Britain,
uh, back in 76, 77 is that,
that was later a big hit in a cover by George Michael
and Mary j Blige in the late nineties.
Yeah. And that version was probably one
of the first versions to be a British hit. Um,
So interesting.
As had a Renaissance in the late nineties there,
I think it was a part of a, of a movie soundtrack.
I'm gonna forget which one. Mm-hmm. Um, the Best Man Maybe.
Do you remember that movie? Yeah.
Could have been something like that. Um,
before we get to the next couple singles though, guys, I,
I do want to just give a little bit of a shout out to one
of the songs on this album that, again,
wasn't released as a single.
I don't, of course it wasn't a hit then.
Um, but is sort
of become the jazz musician's standard off this
album, and it's this song
If it's Then why can't
it be everlasting?
Like the Sun that always shines,
like the poet,
like the Galaxies
Stevie and Dorothy Ashby.
Yeah. Um, you know, it's funny. I was
Gonna say, that's gotta be a real harp there.
Yes. That's, that's Dorothy Ashby who has an incredible
Legend.
This is called, uh,
soul Variations from her Afro Harp album of 1970, I think.
69. Amazing.
She has an amazing string of soul harp albums.
I knew none of this. This is,
you're educating me on this. This is cool.
Is that a, uh, Is there a billboard
Section for the Afro Harp? I don't chart.
No. Pretty sure there has never been such a chart.
Well, no. So He would be at the top
The last time we talked About
every Should be at the top.
Yeah. The last time we, I just wanna shout out our,
our dear listeners here.
You'll hear podcast because the last time we talked about if
it's Magic, I said, I don't
know, I'm not sure who's on the harp.
And we got a ton of comments like,
Dorothy Ashby, go look her up.
And they were not wrong.
Everybody should go spend an evening
or two with got the Ashby's catalog.
'cause it is so funky and so soulful
and she's an incredible player.
Yeah. Um, but if it's magic is an interesting one.
You were playing a little bit of it.
Well, I've just realized I never thought about this
pentatonic again, that whole melody,
the whole melody is a major
pentatonic this time instead of minor. But the
Form of it, the chord changes
and everything feel very much like a
modern jazz composition.
Like it feel, I think this is why jazz musicians have
interpreted it in a bunch of different ways.
Yeah. Not just as like a ballad.
Like you might think of just a pianist
or a guitarist playing it, which we've heard who's
Played with it. I, I wasn't aware
of that. That's really cool. And, and
It's basically, it's, it's kind of jazz.
Like not what we were talking about
before in terms of like the rhythm or the walking baseline.
This is almost like American, great American songbook type
of melody and chord changes
where jazz players take it and then stretch it up.
Got that two dominant singer songwriter
To the five, you know, it's very, very rich for us.
Yeah. It's, it's just,
it's everything we love about Stevie's Harmonic geniuses in,
if it's magic and
All the things that kept it from being a single, that's,
You're probably right. So I, I mean,
That would've, even for
Stevie, that would've been a tough song.
It Would've been a Tough song Radio in
1977. I guess
He technically with his great, like, you know, the,
the greatest artist driven contract ever
signed with for control.
He probably could have done it, but yeah, he
Probably could have. But yeah, even
he's not gonna try that.
So, Chris, correct me if I'm wrong,
but I believe the next single
that was released in the US was another star. Oh, sorry.
Before we move on, after, sorry. Look at him.
He's he's catching a wave again. He's catching a away.
No, I just, before we leave, if it's magic,
I wanna fill this in there because I got a chance to see,
so Stevie did a tour about eight
or nine years ago that went on
for like a year Worldwide tour, kind of on
and off again called songs in The Key
of Life in which he performed this entire
album without intermission.
I saw that tour. Yeah. Oh, you saw it?
When did you see it? Yeah, I saw it in the mid
tens, like 2014. I wanna say something
Like that. I think so. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Um, I saw it here.
I saw that tour. I saw it at Madison Square Garden.
I saw it here at the Enterprise Center.
And it was incredible. But I remember when it got to,
if it's magic, that was,
although obviously one of the lesser known things except
for the Seven Jazz musicians in the audience, that was one
of the, like, that's when I realized, so there was,
there was more than seven people at that show
that loved this entire album.
And when it got to that track, that was one
of the most stunning moments, at least of this show.
I mean, Stevie just killed it.
I mean, it was, well, like two thirds of the way in.
'cause he was doing it in the order of the, the record.
But emotionally, it was one of the most moving parts.
And people were like on, I mean,
people were on their feet, the whole show.
But I remember that was kind of an apex moment of the show.
So just to show that, like,
this was not people coming out. I forget,
Did he, did he bring out a harpist for that?
He didn't. Here, I've seen him do it with Harp
before when he had the whole orchestra here, he did it Wiki.
Okay. He actually accompanied himself at it on it.
Very Cool. Wow. That's amazing.
Um, so the next single released
after I wish would be another star. Is that correct?
Or, or after Sudu, because I wish
After Sudu Sudu
and then, yeah, then Summer of 77, it's another star,
which doesn't chart as high,
but, um, cracks the top 40,
makes the top 20 on the RB chart.
I think it got as high as number 18 on the RB chart.
Um, just such a funky groove. It's
An interesting track. Right.
It's almost a Latin track as far as I'm concerned.
You know, like it's, it's Stevie doing something akin to
what he's doing on Innervisions
with Don't You Worry about a thing?
Yes. Uh, but in a but in a different
Vibe. Yeah. The mood, the mood is
different. Yep.
I mean, yeah, listen to that piano Tuo
That
Okay. I think I'm
finally understanding why,
because I was like, why would this have been one out
of all the songs on here, one of the singles, I'm,
I'm thinking 1977, you know, variety shows on a, B,
c like this.
Totally. Like this is such, this is probably the closest
to the sound of 1977.
It's, couldn't you see it on a TV show? Yeah, yeah.
The opening credits of a TV
Show, the Osmond's Introduction,
the share show share. Exactly.
Yeah. Um, just a shout out here
to George Benson playing guitar and bvs on this track.
Yep. Which I did not realize. Yeah. Incredible.
I didn't, I didn't realize that was George Benson.
That's but it, but appropriate, right? Yeah.
I mean, it makes sense. Makes sense. Totally adds up.
Um, when I think of another star, uh,
I don't know if you guys saw in,
I guess it was 2014 when Daft Punk won the album
of the year Grammy with random access memories.
And they, uh, did a medley of, uh, get Lucky.
They included Stevie's, another star.
Stevie was on stage with Daft Punk and Pharrell
and Nile Rogers.
And they, they actually threw another star in there
and it sounded amazing.
Wow. Uh, yeah. So that, that's something to go back
To. You know what, I
wouldn't put it together,
but there are some similarities.
Yeah. Right. The sort of feel of the chord progression.
Obviously the tempo,
The, the chord progression on Get Lucky is one
of my favorite chord progressions in the last 20 years.
Just, it's so irresistible.
When are we gonna do the ra Random
Access Memories Pod Pete?
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Let's go. It's coming man.
Alright. The final single that was released in the US is,
um, the best
One as, Sorry. It's,
it's an incredible, it's an incredible word for
I agree. I
actually agree. God, there are days when,
as is my favorite Stevie Wonder song of all
Time, 100% Chris, which is saying saying a lot.
Saying a lot. Yeah. But it's true.
It is, it is an incredible song.
Uh, features, uh, friend of the show,
Herbie Hancock, is he a friend of the show?
Well, we're trying, if I'm talk about, if I'm not trying
to manifest it, Pete, he's
Yeah. Um,
what the show is a friend of Herbie. Right.
Should be. I mean, if there's any two people
that this show is the, oh,
I'm actually, I'm gonna say three.
Uh, well now Chris, we gotta add Chris to the list,
but Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, Greg Filling Gates.
Yeah. And those, that's becoming like the Trinity
because they're like the one
of those is connected to almost everyth
DeAngelo DeAngelo for
Sure. Yeah. But as
is is, again,
I don't even know how to describe it.
Let's just listen to it. Yeah.
Like, what I love about this song is the way
that it starts is not how it ends.
Right. Right. It's like the, the the hook
and the verse are so different.
This is some,
Do you know what reminds me of a little bit?
When we get to the Big Build in a few seconds, another song
that was a number one hit in 1977, um,
don't Leave Me This Way by Thelma Houston in a similar way,
the way it's basically using gospel,
but in an r and b context.
Yeah, yeah. Different, different records.
Because I mean, as is not a disco record,
whereas Don't Leave Me This way, is
but similar idea, like how, what can we do with gospel?
How can we raise the roof right at this inspiring moment?
Mm.
Should we go right to the bridge? Wait outta nowhere,
Man. First of all,
one of the greatest.
The second, the second verse. Tritone substitutions ever
laid down in music, Pete, holy
S**t. If we're gonna, if we're
gonna nerd out
And you're gonna please nerd out on that,
because that moment at the start
of the second verse is almost
my favorite moment on the whole record. Oh, it's
So great. If you're gonna, if you're
gonna call out the tritone
sub Pete, you gotta explain.
I think it's Tri It is.
And oh, another thing, Chris,
you've probably come across this before.
Stevie Wonder famously writes everything in
the very hardest keys.
This is in B major. Um, Jesus.
Um, I wish isn't bad. Um,
I wish this an E flat minor. This
is a lot of E flat minor
B, major lot B Major.
I mean, these are some of the hardest,
uh, keys for any instrument.
You are the sunshine as B major as well. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
So explain the tritone sub.
So it's basically, he goes down to the four,
which is like somewhat common to start the second verse.
Is that the second verse Is that transition?
It's like a bridge's the second verse.
It's the start of the second verse.
Start of the second verse. And so like the one chord
you could, it could become the five, which kind of leads to,
to where we're going here.
But he goes, but he's got, well play it again.
Let figure out the exact voicing.
This is stuff we normally do when we prepared,
but we're unprepared, but
Okay. Wait, pause
right there. So this is another thing.
This kind of bridges some things together
that he's no pun intended, um, that he's doing on I wish.
So we've got, we're going from the major
to the relative minor.
And it's like going up to the for kind of like
Yeah. It's very similar to
the Irish
Very church. Right.
Interesting. From a stand.
I never noticed that before. Yeah.
The groove on this, this is like probably the most R
and bish kind of, of, of, of, of anything on this record.
But, but like gospel and then like very much blues
and church
keep playing it.
Oh, this is the third verse.
Yeah, I think that's later. That's the third verse.
My bad. I,
So yeah, he's going.
So it's like an F seven sharp nine going go E major
going to the E major.
It's a very like
To the for court, Right?
Oh. But it's just like, yeah.
'cause the typical thing would've been just,
Just before we even get into the tritone substitution.
Yeah. Which is the nerdiest bit of this,
the typical thing would've been to go back
to the actual verse chord progression.
Right. Which is be major. Oh,
That's true. Yeah. He goes to the for,
So this is almost like form wise,
this is almost a little bridge that happens
where he goes to the for chord
To bring him back to The melody's different.
And so hitting that,
The melody's different and the cadence is different.
Right. Because what's the first line of the first verses as
around the sun, the earth knows she's revolving.
Right. And then all of a sudden when he comes back, he goes,
you know, did you know the true love asks for nothing?
Yeah. He's not doing the same
cadence he did on the first verse.
Yeah. That's what blows my mind. It's
A, it's an, it's a middle eight.
It's a bridge that happens after the first chorus
and then after this happens.
You're
Right, it's a bridge four.
It's a bridge that is functioning as wi. That's
It. The two.
Now Back to the verse.
Now at the one. Oh,
we got Peter Hancock here.
Nice. Herbie's playing his
ass off through all this, by the way. Oh, I know.
And he's busy. Is af I'm, I love that.
Like Stevie or some producer or something.
Well, Stevie was produ. It's like, is insane.
Like, I don't know. Wait till later you'll get your soul.
Like, like Herbie starts out this track soloing,
like he establishes himself with that boot booo thing.
Like that's the way the thing starts.
And like, you know, just studying.
Yeah. Yeah.
So that's Herbie with those first few notes. Yeah.
Yeah. Herbie's all over that electric piano sound there.
Look, he's already, he's already doodling. Noodling.
I mean, the noodling is
part of what makes the record great.
Yeah, exactly. And Rose robots know the blooming me.
It's this hate knows, love the cure.
And that's very her kind of stuff to play.
Can you guys hear the difference between Herbie's style
of play versus what Stevie's doing on the rest of the album?
For sure. It's isn't, it's more noodling.
Yeah. And it's more like,
like it's kind of like, it's
More jazzy. It's
More jazzy. It's more obvious
About like
that's a real Herbie doing those octas.
Yeah. The thing nowadays, you hear like every pianist,
Robert Glassberg, Adam Manis, everybody imitates that now.
This little thing, there's a bunch of Herbies
Herbies. Yeah.
True. That's Herbie. That's
A Herbie. It's
Just his language all over this.
Yeah.
See, this is why I'm glad I'm here.
You guys are explaining this to me.
I didn't, I never noticed this. And then if
We went to your point earlier about like starting
to raise the roof this first time, this is it. Yeah.
This lift, I call this the liftoff. Yes.
Ah, this is why I'm comparing it
to Don't leave me this way by Thelma Houston.
Yeah. You know, like, Aw baby, my love is Phil.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Deza you,
it's a similar then till the day suddenly it's like
the, the roof is raised. That's right.
And the way he does It, it achieves
escape velocity. Yeah.
And going into that to the,
this is almost like foreshadowing to the big roof raising,
which is the whole ending part when they're vamping
and they really go.
Yes. So like with the for,
and then he pulls it back to this sort
of bridge thing and the Yeah.
Here. Oh, snap up. Yeah.
We're bring everybody back in there
Onic.
That's pentatonic there.
Ah. Just the most joyous track on.
And if we go long enough, I believe you get growly
Stevie voice before you do. That's right. He comes back in
For like another little mini verse, right?
Yeah. Yeah. He gives you like the same voice he gives you
on, uh, living from the city.
City. Yeah.
Yeah.
By the way, this is a seven minute record.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was released as a single,
but I guess Stevie was less bothered by the idea of
that record being thus cut down.
Stevie violated himself, cared
More about his daughter's bathtub sound in
Herbie's solo. That's fine.
Hey, that's his Right.
When you have artistic freedom, you do what you want.
Herbie gets into something gray here.
I mean, all of it's good. That good
Never To be played on a radio, but Right.
You're, you're not gonna hear maybe a OR Right. Yeah.
That's another thing we haven't talked
about in the seventies.
This is the peak of album oriented rock radio. Right.
And although a OR is primarily bluntly a white rock format.
Yeah. They would play the likes of Stevie Wonder on a r.
Like it was not unheard of interest.
Seven double if
God knew exactly where he wanted you to be playing.
So make sure when
Not You
Not having to make it to the place.
You know what else came out in 1976? Peter? What Secrets?
Secrets. Right. Secrets.
My favorite Herbie Hancock album from his head Hunters era,
which actually almost mirrors this two
Albums after Headhunters.
'cause Head Hunters is what, 73? 74.
Yeah. Yeah. It, it almost mirrors Stevie's
Great era, actually.
So it starts with headhunters. Right.
And then you've got Manchild, uh, right. Uh, uh, thrust.
Thrust and, uh, secrets. Secrets, yeah.
Um, and Secrets came out in 76. Yeah. Yeah.
Man, that's stuff that, uh,
that Herbie's playing on there.
And I think that, um, I mean,
and this would, this would totally make sense.
I believe that that was one take of Herbie, uh, everything
that he played on there
and that, like, almost everything was
put together on this already.
So, but that would totally make sense.
Like, having heard him live a lot in like different rec,
like he could totally come in
and like, that sounds like he's just
playing where like, he listens
To That's why you hire a pro. Exactly.
Well, he's like, they play in the beginning
and he is like, okay, I think I got it.
Let's go, you know, and like, and do a do do a run through.
And then Stevie was probably like, yes.
And her, you know, they were like, all right, cool.
So why not Other things that don't happen anymore,
Guys, let's, let's go into,
'cause I think that's, that's all the sort of big hits
that happened For sure.
And I mean there's, we
Didn't even talk about the greatest tune on the
album. That's okay. We're talking about
Hits. No, we're gonna, we're gonna,
we're gonna do,
eventually we're gonna do a song Three Hours Spectacular.
Where we go on a deep dive on every single track,
because it never feels fair to skip over anything. Well, I
Want to, I want to figure this out too.
And since we have the expert on this here, Chris,
you mentioned before that like having, this was like,
we're joking around that there's many more singles
available, but you said having four singles off one album,
this was like kind
of groundbreaking in a way at this time, right?
It was, yeah. Like you normally
didn't go that many singles deep.
And this is just before Rumors, right?
So Rumors comes literally, I dunno,
six months after this album.
And Rumors actually generates four top 10 hits.
But this has four singles on it, which in
and of itself is kind of pushing it by
76, 77 standards. So Yeah.
So would those, they Weren't as big a hits as,
as the rumors hits, but they were, the fact
that they all made the top 40 is significant.
So would that, are those connected at all,
or was that just kind of random?
In other words, did like, did the success of this
and putting out four singles, would
that have effect? Fleetwood? It
Probably, it, I I have
to guess that it's off in the ground.
Like the labels all watch each other's Yeah.
You know, patterns. And if they see, oh wow.
They, you know, because l Let Let's Talk Turkey,
especially in the age of Payola.
Yeah. Like, getting a song on the radio was
an expensive proposition.
Part of the reason why the labels would cut it off after two
or three singles was that they're like, look, we've,
we've sold what we're gonna sell on this,
and we're not gonna commit another, whatever, $200,000
to get another single up the charts,
which is gonna require us paying promoters
to get it on radio stations.
Yeah. So the, you know, eventually you gotta cut your losses
or, you know, not throw good money after bad.
But when you have Songs in the Key of Life,
which is a blockbuster success out of the box.
By the way, we should talk about
how it debuted on the charts.
'cause that's significant. Yeah, please.
Um, well, so songs, the Key
of Life is only the third album in chart history
to debut at number one.
Uh, two albums by Elton John did this previously in 1975.
Um, captain Fantastic.
And the Brown Jerk Cowboy and Rock
of the Westie Captain Fantastic.
Is still remembered as a great Elton John album.
Frankly, rock of the Westie is not, but
because Elton John was at the very zenith
of his Imperial period, he could get away with that.
Stevie Wonder is the first American to pull this off,
the first American artist
to debut at number one on the billboard charts.
And then I looked this up, the album,
this is a shocker album charts.
The the album chart. Yes.
The, what is now called the Billboard 200.
Back then it was called Top
LPs. So, so in the first week,
it de it debuts,
it enters the charts at number one. Right.
And let, yeah, I'm sorry, a little context for this. Yeah.
Before the charts were computerized in the 1990s,
this was mostly impossible.
It, it, it was very difficult to get the old system
where you were relying on contacting retailers by phone
or later facts Yeah.
To tell them, okay, give us your top records for them
to all line up and say, yeah,
my top record is this one record.
There are literally only six albums prior to 1991.
That debut at number one, the, the three I just mentioned,
the two Elton John albums, Songs in the Key of Life.
And then in the eighties, there's Bruce Springsteen
Live the Box set.
There's Whitney, Houston's Whitney,
and there's Michael Jackson's Bad.
That's it. Wow. Those six records are the only ones
that debut at number one.
So not Thriller and The Not Thriller. Not Off the Wall.
Off the wall. Not that, not rumors. None of them.
That makes sense. Just with the, what you were saying,
like from the technology standpoint,
there's just gonna be a lag between when it's released,
there's a lag and they can collect the data
because it's all analog collecting the data. Right.
It's hard. And, and some people will point to corruption
and say, oh, it was the bad
old days when everything was corrupt.
No, it wa it was, yeah.
There was Paola and there was corruption.
It was also just technology. Yeah.
You just, you literally did not have the data
to make it possible for things to debut at number one.
What we then discovered
after they switched to the sound scan system, where,
you know, they're scanning barcodes at record stores in 1991
is, oh, actually more albums than not
are gonna debut at number one.
Now, in a typical year, you know, anywhere from 25
to 40 albums will debut at number one.
It's very, it's totally commonplace
and it's not special anymore.
Yeah. But prior to 1991, only six albums did it.
And I mean, I, I ticked off Elton John, Stevie Wonder,
Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, and Whitney Houston.
All mega Stars, right? Yeah.
That, that you had to be a megastar to pull this off. Right.
And the other record that the,
that Songs in the Key of Life still holds.
It not only debuted at number one, it stayed there
for 13 weeks.
And that is a record that even today, it still holds.
There are plenty of albums that debut at number one.
We just had a Taylor Swift album debuted number one last
week, obviously, but they routinely fall out
of number one in a couple weeks.
Maybe if you're Taylor,
you might stay number one for eight or nine weeks.
But Stevie Wonder stayed number one
for 13 weeks, 14 in total.
It went back for one additional week in early 77.
No album has stayed number one number, uh, for as many
as 13 weeks after debuting it.
That's crazy. So that's how exceptional
this album was. That's
So interesting. And
I'm wondering, and this is entire, so for the albums at
that time, that would be entirely on, is
that entirely computed on record sales?
Nothing with Airplay?
Yeah. I mean, in the seventies, it's, you know,
retailers reporting their weekly sales right.
Back to Billboard and saying,
these are our top 30 records this week.
Yeah. And then Billboard, you know, compiles that data.
You know, they, um, now it's, it's actual piece counts.
Now they're actually, you know, scanning barcodes
or now nowadays Streams. Streams. Right.
Yeah. But so I know that, that this record was kind of a,
a zeitgeist moment.
Absolutely. Songs of the Key Life for specifically kind
of like black middle class, well, just
black record buyers in general obviously crossed over
way into the White Web.
But I'm wondering if those first weeks,
like this was such a big deal
and it was a double album, so it was more expensive.
What was it like 50% more?
I think, as I recall, like a double album, by
The way, we haven't even talked about this.
It's technically a two and a half album. Oh, that's right.
'cause it comes with a, it comes with with
45 5. Yes.
I've that four additional songs. Uh, Ebony Eyes, um,
Sa No, wait, Do I have this
All day Saturn? Sorry. I
do.
Yeah. Uh, uh, the Something Extra. Yes.
Saturn, Ebony Eyes All Day, sucker
and Easygoing Evening Yep.
Uh, are all on the bonus album.
So it's like, it's like a double album plus, yes. Crazy.
But in a way, promotionally my understanding, again,
I was five when this album came out,
so I've, I've read up on this.
I don't remember this firsthand,
but the two year delay kind of worked in its favor
because, you know what we just saw
with this Taylor Swift album where like,
the whole country was momentarily obsessed with Oh,
when's Taylor's new album coming out?
Yeah. It was like that for 1976.
Everybody was like, hyped up. Yeah.
Like Stevie Wonder had gone the longest he had ever gone
without an album, and he was coming off
of Visions and Fulfillingness.
Yeah. Both of which won the Grammy. Yeah.
So everybody was waiting Yes.
The black community overwhelmingly,
but like white fans too,
everybody wanted to hear this record.
Right? Right. This, this was an event. Yeah.
And it was promoted as an event.
Yeah, absolutely. Actually, I've seen some too.
There was, they, they put in a lot of like, um,
they had a whole campaign, a print campaign
with like entire, I mean, definitely like in Billboard,
but I believe even in like some newspapers
and stuff placed with a whole, like
with the lyrics to some of the songs.
I'm trying to remember which one it was on Song of the Well,
And if you look at the vinyl package,
it came with a booklet.
Yes. Which was quite unusual.
Where you a stapled booklet with all the lyrics. Yes.
That, so the, the pa and I mean, just the gatefold.
It's a beautiful package. So, great.
Well, you, you were buying an JE
to Art when you were buying the set. Yes.
That, that sounds like in Accoutrement.
Which makes me think of our categories.
And I think let's get to our categories now.
'cause Chris, you were so generous to
13 weeks. Take
some time. I know, it's crazy. Yeah.
You were so generous to take some time
and fill out our silly categories.
Let's start with Desert Island
tracks. Peter, what do you think?
Um, I mean, I'm gonna say Summer Soft,
partly because we didn't listen.
I mean, I probably would've said if it's magic,
but Summer Soft is the one.
Thank you.
Great. Track. The definition of a good album
Cut Off.
It's got the Harmony, Right?
Like, this is never gonna be a radio hit on the album.
It just enriches the album.
But it's like, fast forward 10 years,
or maybe no less than 10 years, this could have been like,
um, what, what was it?
Uh, uh, quiet Storm. Like this could have been Yes. True.
In the Quiet Storm format.
It would've, it it might've
been played at two o'clock in the morning.
It's romantic. It's got the Stevie
like that, his whole mm-hmm.
I mean, his range of voices. We talked about the Grow.
I mean, it's almost like he's an actor
with all these different roles he can play as a vocalist.
Uh, and I just, I love that track. Sue me.
Chris, what do you got for your desert island?
I mean, I've already said it's as like, I mean,
that's just, it's such a perfect record.
I mean, but I guess a close second might be. I wish.
'cause I just love, I wish so much. Mm-hmm.
And there are days when like, I need to hear. I wish.
'cause it's stuck in my head. Yeah. But as is, I don't know.
It's just so moving. Mm-hmm.
It's like the lyric and the performance
and everything gels on that record.
It's, it's like a perfect Stevie Wonder record.
Chris, was there any chance
that your Desert Alley Track was gonna be any of not one
of the four singles given your pedigree and expertise?
Yes. Actually, I would say my,
probably my third place pick is, uh, knocks me off my feet.
That's great. I love knocks me off my feet.
It's so good. Yeah. Um, that, that's very close
to a desert island pick for
Me. Yeah. That would be my
wife. Kelly's for sure.
I already know. That would be her Desert Island pick.
Well, I mean, you mentioned like Perfect album cuts.
This is another perfect album. Cut. Oh. Isn't
Another kind of quiet storm. But
Again, this is almost radio worthy.
I feel like you could play this on the radio.
Yeah. I, I would say there's probably another three, four,
maybe five that could have been a, a single.
Yeah. This is one of them from another,
from another album. What
Was the thing? Actually, I'm
remembering back on this.
Do I remember on the, I barely remember.
I know for sure like Off the Wall, like radio airplay
of songs that weren't singles.
That was definitely a thing on like, in St.
Louis, on the RB stations, that used to happen a lot.
I mean, there's a, there's a track on Off the Wall,
is that I can't help it.
Yeah. That's, uh, the one written by Stevie Wonder. Yes.
That I think is a black radio staple.
Absolutely. I mean, it's, that was played on the
Yeah. That's
a quiet storm record for all intents and
Purposes. Exactly. Yeah.
I I I've always said it's like,
it's half, not half.
It's like a combination of a disco record and quiet storm.
People are like, think I'm putting it down.
I'm like, that's one of my favorite record.
It's actually my favorite Michael. That's Michael Jack.
Exactly. It's absolutely a compliment
I had as Gen X rising. You hear?
Okay. I hear you. I hear you. I had as, as well.
But I'm also gonna put in my second spot here if it's magic.
Just because it's so beautiful.
It's such a beautiful written, beautiful song. And
It's, wait, it's so Desert Island tracks.
We get to pick two. Is that what you think?
Well, I'm sorry, Chris.
Chris already got as I Cheated, I cheat.
But then he also, Chris Is the guest. He's allowed,
So he's allowed to, that's he's the guest.
Okay. Apex moments. What do you got, Peter?
Come back to me. Let's go to
Chris. Chris. Chris, what do you got?
I mean, I already, I just mentioned knocks me off my feet.
The, the segue from I wish into knocks me off my feet when
you're coming out of I Wish
and going into it's, it's almost seamless.
Um, I, I would need to go back to a vinyl pressing
to hear just how close they come.
But on this, this my cd it,
it's like one flows into the other
and it's, it's just such a beautiful moment.
Let's try to catch that a little bit.
We'll listen to the last few seconds of I Wish.
And This is on Oh, right. Coming out of the, this
Is on Spotify, so it might not work out great.
Oh, That might be Stevie on drums.
Actually, that sounded like
I, Oh, it's fading out.
I think that might be, ah, that
Just, there's something about that combination that
So good. Like,
knocks me out every time. No pun intended. Knocks
You off your feet.
Knocks me out my feet. Uh, that's a great,
great apex moment.
Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go with, can
We just talk real quick about Stevie being the ma?
No, come on. You catching away, bro. No.
Can we talk about Stevie being the master
of the segue between song?
Like I think this is something that he was album
Flow. Oh my God.
Album flow. Like he had
to So much Intention Talking
Book has a lot of, that Talking Book has moments
where the songs just kind of Oh, are perfectly sequenced.
I I know. It's something he thought about in, I mean,
'cause you don't get lucky that many times with
that great sequencing. Go ahead. Sorry, Adam,
For My Impacts moment, I'm gonna go with, go ahead.
Just making sure. I'm gonna go with, uh, Herbie on
as I'm gonna go with that entire last section when,
when Stevie gets the growl
going. And it's, while you really,
You packed that, that that fastball outta the park way
to go 86 mile an hour fastball you and you hit it.
I'm a simple man. You started
on third, you ran home with a
Simple brain way to go. You
gimme Stevie Growling.
You gimme Herbie Hancock shredding on a
beautiful sounding fender. Rhodes, I'm
Gonna, there's a moment in Layton as
where like he does this tinkly thing.
This that I just love.
Yeah. I mean the Herbie there, the Herbies.
Uh, okay. Peter, do you have one? So,
So I got, can I talk now?
My gosh. You know, I had originally put down contusion.
I this shouldn't this, I I
Was surprised we didn't talk about contusion as jazz guys.
I would think you guys would be interested. We always hear
From jazz musicians that we don't talk about
contusion enough.
Yeah.
Talk about a fusion track. A
Straight up. Yeah. It sounds like Chick
Korea. Yeah.
It's the only instrumental on the record.
It could be on Secrets Un,
unless I'm forgetting something. It could
Be on secrets. It could be on heavy
weather. Yeah. Heavy
Weather. Yeah.
Um, but that's actually not my Apex moment. Um,
Sorry. Confusion
fans. I I I just,
I'm glad you brought it up. Yeah,
I'm glad you mentioned it in passing.
Weird because that's interesting track. It's a weird,
Um, that was probably played on
jazz, uh, radio in the set.
I'm almost for sure that was played.
Um, no, I think the Transpositions, uh, on Summer Soft,
there's like three of 'em.
They're like beyond just your typical lift ones.
They're so genius. This whole tune is super hard.
It's in a hard key. The harmony.
It's constantly changing. It's now, it's an E major kind of
A, It's actually in B
It's weird.
And it's like, wait, what? Oh, it's back to G Flat.
So these aren't transpositions
necessarily, but they're like,
Ah,
Just the harmonic movement On this. That's beautiful.
Yeah, we'll allow that. We'll allow that.
And then actually, I was even talking about later when it
Actually goes, when it starts changes case.
We don't have to get into it. To me, this whole thing,
It's so good.
So good. Guys. We could just listen to the whole album.
Yeah. If we don't have to just do the hits.
No, it's so incredible. Okay. And
I'm a little surprised some Summers Soft now
that I'm li thinking about it again.
Now, isn't she love, I was gonna say,
what was the most likely to be the next single?
If there was a fifth single, it
would've been, isn't she? It's got, if
It had to have been, but, uh, soft is good.
Bespoke Spotify playlist.
If this album were on a playlist,
which I'm sure it's on many,
what would be a good bespoke playlist name for this?
Chris, do you have a good one?
I, I was gonna call it more is more albums. Yeah.
Um, because like, okay, I, one thing I went back when you,
when I knew I was doing with this, you guys, I went to, um,
my friend Alan Light wrote the review
of this album for Pitchfork.
Mm. And um, he gave it a 10. I or Pitchfork gave it a 10.
And he said something really smart.
He said, uh, almost everyone understood the magnitude
of Wonder's Achievement, but there were some objections
mostly having to do with the length
and sprawl of the record.
Mm. And then he quotes several people
who were quibbling about how long the record was.
But to complain about the Excess was to miss the point.
Any great double album, like the White album
or exile on Main Street could easily be edited into
something tighter and more consistent.
But the all-encompassing aspiration is the whole idea,
the desire to contain multitudes
and to cover as much ground as possible
during a revved up creative groove.
Sometimes more is more. Well, and
What, go ahead.
That was the truest thing I think I've ever read about.
Yeah. Because frankly,
among my favorite Stevie Wonder albums, we'll get to this.
I'm more of an Innervisions guy.
I play that record more often. Mm-hmm.
But like the whole point
of this album is the, the muchness of it. Yes. It's
Too much. It's it's depth. It's
so long and there's so much to it.
But by the way, as we've been discussing here, very,
very little filler.
There's very few tracks that you are skippable, if any.
No, all of them. There's nothing to throw.
Well, of course there's nothing throw
All of them are worthy of a listen.
And many of them, as we've been talking about,
are masterpieces that, you know, uh, behind Masterpieces.
I like that. I have for my bespoke Spotify playlist, two
and a half albums, I didn't have anything.
But when you mentioned that there were two
and a half discs in the original, I thought that was great.
And I, as I recall, the 45, I don't think
that they really advertised that.
That was like a little bit of, I mean,
obviously Word got out,
but it was a little bit of like, kind
of an extra Easter egg.
It was a bonus. Yeah, it was a bonus in book.
They called it a Somethings Extra.
Oh. Oh, that was Stevie's name something.
Apostrophe s Extra
Man. This was an event album.
You know, Peter, what do
You got? He really was,
Um, that's what I should have done.
Bespoke Spotify plays.
But that doesn't make sense on Spotify.
'cause Spotify somehow kills everything
and makes them not events
with their damn fade ins and fade outs.
Sorry, but I digress.
Um, here, here, uh, I'm calling this,
this is really clinical,
but four plus singles jams.
So, but I'm adding a Z to jam
to make it doesn't sound too nerdy. Fun.
Make a fun. Well,
In all seriousness, you could compile a Spotify playlist
of albums that generated four or more singles.
And the singles are all great. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Once you get to the eighties, then it's commonplace.
It's right. You know, thriller, it's born in the USA. Yeah.
It's Faith by George Michael.
It's, you know, hysteria by Def Leppard.
It's, it's, you know, Madonna's True Blue, like lots
of people did multiple hits off an album.
Right. But this is one of the earliest that's pulling
that many singles off an
Album. All right. You heard it, folks
create the playlist.
You got it. Uh, okay, up next,
what other albums pair with this?
What, what are you playing right after this?
Peter, you wanna go first on this one? Well, I'm playing
Rumors because like, oh, interesting.
I think, you know, sometimes I go into like, I mean,
I could be like any Stevie I would listen to,
but I think, uh, you know, to Chris's point of more is more,
uh, like you listen to this whole thing.
And that's why I always take this.
Like, if I would've listened to this whole album, first
of all, I'm gonna smoke a cigarette
after I, I listen to this whole album.
I'm gonna drink a bottle of wine.
I probably drink a bottle of wine
while I'm listening to you.
Don't it to Smoke Bud. Whatcha about? I don't smoke.
It'd be a good time to start. But I think, uh, uh, you know,
the reward you get from listening to a album at this length,
but where the sequencing is so good, it's such a,
it's like an epic movie or something.
What would you actually listen to next?
Uh, actually Rumors would be bad
because that's another kind of epic album,
but it's different enough, you
Know, it's different enough. It would be fun,
But it's from the same, same
period. So I'm gonna go with Rumors.
Chris, what do you got? I'm gonna go
with a Donna Summer album,
and I think the Obvious Pick is Bad Girls,
because I think it has a similar ambition.
It's a double album.
It's kind of her and Giorgio Moroder
and Pete Otti kind of doing this kind
of ambition across two platters.
Um, it's in an r and b context, but also a pop context.
I don't know. Logically I feel like you have
to have Songs in the Key of Life first for bad girls
to make sense and be the blockbuster that it was.
This is a great, this is a great pick, man. Yeah.
Out next, this would flow, right? Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's two years later
and it sounds like two years later, three years later.
Yeah. But it makes sense.
I love this track too, man.
It's such a reminder we talked about earlier from like the
early seventies to the mid seventies,
which would take us right to songs of Key
to Life technologically with music
and instruments being such a rapid expansion
and recording technology.
But from 75 to 78
and 79, then you get into Off the Wall, huge jump.
I mean, the seventies was huge jump, big, big jumps in there
For mine. I'm gonna go,
I'm gonna do a first here on this podcast.
Yes. I've never actually done an up Next
and recommended a podcast,
but I'm gonna recommend The Wonder
of Stevie Brilliant podcast that was released last year
covering this period that was great of Stevie's career.
If you haven't checked out the
Wonder of Stevie, go listen to it.
I will also throw in there posted
By my friend Wesley Morris. Wesley Morris
Grace. Amazing.
And, uh, if you want some music that you might pair
with this for me, we mentioned Secrets released in the same
year from Herbie Hancock, who is
of course playing Rhodes on As,
but I think Secrets would pair nicely with this.
Okay, so two. You got two again.
Okay. Sorry. I'm good to know.
I'm, I'm, I'm spoiled here. Uh, who's
The guest? Who's the guest?
Quibble Bits. Quibble bits.
Chris, why don't you start it off?
What are your quibble bits?
My quibble bit is joy inside my Tears,
which I love the groove on that track,
but it goes on for six and a half minutes,
and I sort of feel like it doesn't modulate enough.
That's, I wouldn't say I ever skipped that track.
I don't, yeah. But it could have been four minutes
and it would've been fine with me.
That's my cripple bit.
I love the bass on this track.
I, I do too. I've
Always come to,
This is another Stevie Voice. Totally different voice.
Yes. Yeah.
Uh, my quibble bit is actually, we mentioned
how long this is, but not long enough.
I'm say that Stevie Lazy,
This Is like when you do a job interview
and you say, oh, my greatest flaw is not, I'm too much of a
Yeah, yeah. My greatest flaw
is I care too much.
I care too much. I help others too
Much. No, you know what it is. It's
so brilliant.
I could honestly live in this album for it three hours.
Yeah, I really could. Um,
So I'm trying to remember when we did Innervisions
or, um, any of the others.
They, I, I, I don't remember ever being able to really,
I always want to come up with a quibble bit
and I don't wanna be such a fan.
The only thing I can say is maybe,
I'm sorry, did you finish with your
I'm done. Ridiculousness. I'm done. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Because
You usually have two. Um,
no, it would be, I mean, this is such a minor thing.
I think the mix on this record is incredible.
I think the mastering of it, careful, I think the sound,
the drums are so, like hearing it in headphones again,
which I haven't done in a while.
The, the drums are, are panned so heavy right
and left certain parts of them that it, I, it's, it's,
it's just a particular way of doing it, you know,
but I think that it almost is a little distracting.
But I mean, we are talking the quibb list
of the bits right here,
because I think it's genius level mix.
You mean compared to the drum sound
on like Innervisions or Music
Mind or something like that? Sure, for sure on
there. But even compared to,
and then this was a little bit of a stylistic thing in the
mid seventies is to do that.
It's like, and I mentioned earlier about in terms
of placement within the mix, so important,
so many different things happening.
Um, Stevie's range in terms of vocals,
possibly taking over everything,
but then having, you know, nothing is flat on this record.
Everything is, but like the drums are
so much wider than everything.
They pushed them so far to the right, right. And left minor
Quibble bit. So Stevie is Stevie
producer of this album.
So I hope, I hope he's listening
right now and took your note.
Peter, thanks to the note. Uh, okay. Remix. Remix, please.
Stevie, uh, is this project locked? Stevie,
Uh, okay.
S speedometer. Chris, what do you have?
This is on a scale of one to 10, right?
Correct. First of all, let warn you
Chris, I'm, I'm, I'm new to this concept.
Explain what it's, no
One understands it. Nobody understand.
No one understands it.
So the idea is that I'm, go ahead.
One is a very accessible, a very courage.
An example, a very commercial,
he viable album thriller would be a number one.
Okay. A 10 would be like a Cecil Taylor album.
That is a very snobby album that is not for the masses,
that is for music snobs. Yeah.
Yeah. I think I understood it
and when I thought about this, I gave it a four mm.
Because I feel like there's a lot here for music snobs
and the muchness of the album is a lot to digest,
and yet it's very accessible, right?
Mm-hmm. So it's making a lot of concepts
that would be inaccessible accessible to a pop audience.
Yes. What do you have? I think that
No, I, that's honestly the best
snb oter rating we've ever had. Oh
No. I say stuff like that all
the time
and you're like, you don't, why
don't we throw away this stuff up?
Peter, you've been a five on the thermometer
every episode this season.
Well, that's not true. Not
what do you got right now? Lemme guess. Lemme guess,
Guess what you have? I'm gonna go,
Chris, we got Chris has a four. I like it.
I respect it. I'm not gonna
go exactly there, but you, you go
First. I have a three. Of
Course you do.
Explain that. What is
That? So a three
is just a little bit more on the commercial side
of things than I think what, where Chris is on it.
I think it's very accessible.
I think it's got a ton of tracks that you play at weddings
that are number one hits.
I think if you're on now, especially with the context
of this show, Peter, where we talk about people like
Felonious Monk and Art Tatum,
like this is incredibly accessible. What do you got?
I got five. I knew it.
No, the reason being similar to Chris,
but I would say it's almost down like to me, like
how can you call, you know, you know, the, the first,
the only records is to debut
debuts on the billboard top pop charts.
Yes. Top top albums number one and stays there for 13 weeks.
So how is that any snobby at all
that would make it a one on the thermometer?
That's like, that's like universal appeal out the gate
and yet, and yet,
and yet then we, all these things
that we picked out here would make it a 10 in terms
of like the panatonics
and he's going to the tritone sub and all this, the
Complexity. Yeah,
The complexity of it, like the nuances of it, the range
of it is kind of crazy in terms of stylistic range.
So that would make it 10. Okay.
So if you average 10 and one you come to five.
Okay. I'm not gonna shame your Sonometer score. Uh,
I also think there's something about the length,
and this may have something to do with the difference
between Peter's three, or excuse me, Adam's three
and my four, which is
that you think the album could be even
longer than it's I do.
Yeah. I have my, I have always been closer to the camp
that thinks it's over long,
particularly when you include the bonus 45.
Yeah. And there's probably a tighter version of this album,
but what would you throw out?
Like, I, I can't think of what you would throw out. Yeah.
So, um, something about the length also has something to do
with the snob Oter, I think.
Absolutely. Is it better than kind of blue?
Is it better than Miles Davis's?
1959 Masterpiece kind of blue. Peter, what do you have?
I got maybe on this also
What you've had the last every episode this
Season. No, I haven't. That's not
true. La a couple times you,
A couple times you have even, yeah,
Actually I'm gonna say probably not, but closer.
Clo closer than one would think.
Chris, what do you have? Uh,
it is not better than kind of blue.
I'm only judging this on how much I play those two albums.
I am the quintessential pop guy who plays kind of blue.
Sure. A lot. I'm not a jazz guy,
but kind of blue is perfect.
Yeah. I can put it on anytime.
When you're in the mood, kind of blue is the thing
that scratches a itch that only kind
of blue s you know, satisfies.
Um, I don't play this in full
as much as I play kind of blue.
I, I dip in and out of this album a lot, so Yeah.
I love that. We should probably adopt,
think about adopting this.
I love that Chris is like, we always, I think we started
to overthink the better than ki kind of, I mean, like
what I'm hearing from you, Chris, is you took this
as literally, the proof is in the pudding in terms of
how you react, not what you think you should be doing, not
what you think people should think of you.
I hear what you're saying. I'm, I'm trying
to be a little objective as well
because like, what, what is kind of blue?
It's the most perfect album in its genre, right? Yeah.
So I'm not sure that you can say that songs The Key
of Life is the most perfect album in its genre, right?
And it's, and it's quite long. So, well we've
Talked, it might not even be the most
perfect Stevie album.
We've talked about this 'cause often
To be like, it's not as Innervisions
as his most perfect album, in my opinion, but that's me.
But the question is, is it better?
Which implies it's a personal taste, right?
It's your personal taste and the proof is in the pudding.
It's like, which one do you put on more?
For me, I put on songs in the Key
of Life more than I put on kind of blue.
Oh, snap. I've listened
to it more in my life respect
than I've probably listened to kind of blue.
So I'm gonna say yes, it is better than kind of blue. Okay.
I like that. I like the flag that you've planted. I
Like the firmness of that. Thank
You very much. Oh, it's
not a firm flag. I can kick that thing over.
Very don't, don't worry.
Uh, Kuman, uh, Peter, why
Don't you go first, Chris? I mean, this
is 10. 10 outta 10. 10 outta 10. Perfect.
Like the art, the, it like, it speaks
to the time the booklet.
Thanks for the reminder on that, Chris.
I still remember what that feels like. I still have it.
The 45 Genius.
That wasn't the first time that was done,
but I think this is kind of the most, the way that
that was done, probably one
of the most famous times, the double album.
I mean, even like the, the, what is it?
Tamala, Motown, you know, on the lp the,
the, the label on that is
Beautiful. Oh, Tamala
had a, had a beautiful Yeah. Label.
Yeah. I also have a 10 Outta 10.
I, I just can't imagine it getting much better than this.
Chris, what do you got?
I was gonna give it an eight. I I may go up to a nine.
Uh, I wish the sleeves
that held the LPs were a little prettier.
Wow. They were a little plain.
That's a quibble that I like that. That's a
And also Deep cut.
And also Stevie Wonder album Art as beautiful
as the cover of this album is.
And it is beautiful. I don't know, I I kind
of love Innervisions
and maybe even fulfilling this a little bit more.
Mm-hmm. Um, but the, these are minor quibbles.
It's, it's at least a nine if not a 10.
I wouldn't argue with y'all's 10.
Well, and then maybe you're bringing in
and we probably are in a certain, like the two year weight,
it's like now everybody's demanding perfection for every,
like, like you say, you gotta go to the sleeves
of the actual lp and I think you delivered on the music
and hey, you gotta come on Stevie.
Are you listening? You gotta get the drum mix together
and get your sleeves together.
Then you'll have the perfect album.
It's like we have some nerve even bringing this.
I know, right? I know.
That's the fun of it. That's fun.
It is the fun of it. And, uh, yeah.
Chris Mefi of, uh, the Hit Parade podcast.
Thank you so much for being here with us today. Thank
You. This was so much fun. It
Was really a blast.
Everybody go check out Hip Parade.
We're gonna link to the show so
that you can check Chris's podcast out.
It's fantastic. All of the, the chart talk
that you guys do over there is just fantastic
and appreciate your time with us.
And if any of our listeners want an antidote to us, like,
you know, bluing through
and messing up the charts as we talk about it, go over
to Hip Parade where they get the s**t right.
You know what I'm saying?
Because I, because I know one thing.
I've listened to Hip. They're talking about tritone
substitutions and screwing those up.
They are not. We, we gotta get our,
our chart game together. We, we are not
Really, you should be listening to both.
They compliment that. There
You go. That's
what they just listened to.
Till next time You'll Hear It.
Yeah.