Facing Facts

When Steveland Morris (a.k.a Stevie Wonder) celebrated his twenty-first birthday in Detroit he received one of the most exciting gifts a young man could ask for. The blind child prodigy, having signed to Motown eight years earlier, was contractually due back residuals of one million dollars. 

While he loved Berry Gordy and the Detroit hitmaker, he intuitively knew that he needed to follow his gut. Relocating to New York City with his young wife in 1971, he set about finding a new family of collaborators to realize the music within him.

He would find the answer within the musical talents of Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, whose LP On Zero Time had captured the attention of the Detroit native. Or more specifically T.O.N.T.O (The Original New Timbral Orchestra) a huge circular mass of synthesizers that contributed to the underlying sound of their debut album and would play an integral role on Wonder’s first few solo records. 

The trio would spend much of the next few years at Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios, with Wonder investing over a quarter million dollars of his residual payout into recording fees alone. 

This period of rampant creativity — releasing four albums (Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions and Fulfillingness’ First Finale) within two years — would come to mark the young musician as one of the most innovative producers of the nineteen-seventies. 

When we learn to follow our inner compass we increase our ability to tap into a well of riches we never knew imaginable.

Xo