Fwd: Stevie Wonder @ Spah

["Winslow Yerxa" <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

I've never tried to reach Stevie Wonder. It would certainly be 
interesting to interview him.

There's a PBS documentary that I've seen in hotel rooms in Los 
Angeles but which nevers seems to play PBS stations up here in the 
fog belt. It revisits the making of Stevie's "The Music of Your Mind" 
album in the 1970s and follows Stevie and several of the backing 
musicians around as they reminisce and tell stories. At one point 
Stevie is at a mixing console and plays back a little snatch of his 
harmonica solo from "Isn't She Lovely." He chuckles and says 
something like "I never did bother to fix that mistake." The mistake 
he's referring to is where he plays a C-natural over an A major chord 
(C# would have been the "correct" note). I know that note very well, 
but I always thought it worked - like he was doing a bebop-influenced 
gesture where you melodically imply a chord that isn't there, in this 
case an A Minor chord to follow the A Major. If a genius makes a 
mistake and it sounds good, who's to know unless he says so?

The one SW interview I remember reading (published in a keyboard 
magazine 7 or 8 years ago) was conducted as part of the album 
promotion process, and it was plain from the introduction to the 
article that SW had been hard to pin down and seemed exhausted by the 
process. Promotion time for a new CD is the time an artist is most 
likely to be available, and least likely to be fresh and engaged.

One interesting fact that emerged from the backgrounder to the 
interview was that SW played in a harmonica band as a kid. The name 
of the man who conducted the band was unfamiliar to me. It would be 
interesting to see if he's still around and interview him as well.

Winslow

- --- In harp-l-archives@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, jazmaan <dmf273@xxxx> wrote:

<snip>
Instead of asking him to make a personal appearance, it might be even 
more valuable to
request an interview.   I would nominate (no that's too weak a word, 
I would INSIST)
that Winslow Yerxa conduct this hypothetical interview.   Winslow has 
the knowledge and
experience to ask all the right questions.   The knowledge we could 
glean from such an
interview might far surpass the benefits of a brief concert 
appearance.   If Stevie
would agree to be video'd or audiotaped while playing examples during 
the interview
that would be even better, but I would start out just trying to 
arrange a print
interview.

I don't know if Winslow has already tried and failed to arrange such 
an interview.  But
it might be worth trying again.  You never know!


- --- End forwarded message ---


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