Stevie Wonder Gives Up on America — Moving to Ghana…Permanently
In 1976, after finally winning his first Grammy for “Best Album,” folk songster Paul Simon gave one of the most astounding acceptance speeches of all time. After thanking his fans, his producers, fellow musicians and singers, musical engineers… and even his parents, he then said:
“But most of all I want to thank Stevie Wonder for not making an album this year.”
You see, Simon thanked Stevie because for the previous two years running, Stevie Wonder had won successive Album of the Year Grammies, and indeed, after skipping ‘76, he won again in 1977.
For Baby Boomers like yours truly, beginning in the mid-’60s, “Little Stevie Wonder,” and then just “Stevie Wonder” (and Motown generally), provided the soundtrack for our adolescence and on into our early adulthood. I will dispense with listing Stevie’s too-many-to-name, back-to-back-to-back yearly, and sometimes semi-annual super-hits, ranging from sensitive, soul-searching love songs and ballads, to hard-driving, black consciousness-raising, black power-demanding renditions, to can’t-sit-still party pieces and jams. Stevie Wonder was “The Man” for our times and for our too often perilous circumstances.
