Stevie Wonder – The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie LP NEW
Stevie Wonder – The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie LP
NEW. SEALED.
Recent reissue.
Rumble Records
Stevie Wonder’s debut album, released when he was 11, is still an amazing musical document, showcasing his skills as a percussionist (drums and bongos), chromatic harmonica player, keyboardist (piano and organ), and composer — and he was prodigious in all four categories. All of these skills are highlighted throughout this record, and Wonder’s youthful, exuberant voice had a maturity suggesting that greatness was around the corner. Perhaps most surprising to contemporary listeners will be the emphasis on instrumentals, which made this a fairly unusual album by Motown standards to begin with — apart from a few shouts in the background in some of the more free-form tracks, there’s not a vocal to be heard on this album, yet the sounds are rich and diverse enough that one never misses them. What’s more, a lot of what’s here is extremely sophisticated instrumental music for its time, and the “jazz” reference in the title is not a matter of optimistic convenience or self-aggrandizement — a lot of this is legitimate jazz.
