Re: [Harp-L] Stevie Wonder's Influences

[Philharpn@xxxxxxx]

I read somewhere that Stevie studied classical piano at the Michigan School 
for the Blind. He also was an early and constant listener to the radio (at a 
time when the AM band was full of a wide variety of music, rock, country, blues, 
gospel, pop standards, even classical -- unlike today where the play list is 
the same 10 songs all day long from one genre.)

I seriously doubt whether Stevie listened to any harmonica players. I think 
he listened to musicians other than harmonica players for musical ideas. To my 
ears, he doesn't sound like anybody else. And while Little Walter was aware of 
people like Sonny Boy I who paved the way before him, Walter probably spent 
more time listening to horn players in jump bands than harmonica players, which 
is what separated Walter from the rest of the crowd.

Stevie also sang in choirs when he was young and his mother reportedly 
indulged him with drums, piano and harmonica at a young age. He was born in 1950 -- 
AM was still king in the Detroit area and FM was coming in, but often 
broadcast the same signal as AM. There was not too much rock-pop on FM, mostly adult 
contemporary -- or whatever they called the Sinatra band singers. By the time 
Stevie was making records, FM had started to change and rock and soul stations 
started to appear. 

Somewhere, there may be a "Roots of Stevie Wonder" album lurking, similar to 
the ones on 
Robert Johnson (the tunes he based his on), and just recently, Roots of Bob 
Dylan (based on what Dylan claimed he based his on in Chronicles.) 

The problem with trying to trace SW influences is that you end up with a list 
of people who were influenced by HIM.

Phil Lloyd


 



In a message dated 10/12/06 1:30:32 AM, winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx writes:


> Two things come to mind.
> 
> It's been little reported, but I remember reading an article a few
> years back that stated that Stevie had a music teacher as a child who,
> if I remember correctly, had him playing in some sort of harmonica
> group. The teacher was named in the article. I don't know if he's still
> alive, but it would be interesting to follow up.
> 
> The other thing is that if you listen to his very earliest instrumental
> recordings, like "Square" and "Paulsby", you can hear very clearly the
> beginning of his style of jabbing the slide in to get the blue notes of
> the C scale on the draw. I can't help wondering whether one of the
> studio arrangers at the time sussed out this happy accident of
> harmonica tuning  and realized how easy it made a C blues scale come
> out of a chromatic or whether Stevie somehow at the age of 11 or so
> perfectly figured this out, but it became the nucleus of his approach
> to the harmonica, at least in terms of note and action patterns. The
> tone, phrasing, and all that other stuff I think it totally his.
> 
> Winslow
> 
> --- "jazmaan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <dmf273@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > I've been listening to some very early Little Stevie recently and
> > wondering (no pun intended) who
> > did Stevie listen to?  His style isn't really much like Little Walter
> > or Toots Theilsman or Larry
> > Adler is it?  Was anybody playing pop chromatic in the late 50's or
> > early 60's with anything like
> > Little Stevie's approach?

> > _______________________________________________
> > Harp-L is sponsored by SPAH, http://www.spah.org
> > Harp-L@xxxxxxxxxx
> > http://harp-l.org/mailman/listinfo/harp-l
> >
> 
> 
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Harp-L is sponsored by SPAH, http://www.spah.org
> Harp-L@xxxxxxxxxx
> http://harp-l.org/mailman/listinfo/harp-l
> 
>