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Parent Issue
Day
3
Month
September
Year
1975
OCR Text

Some Wonders Never Cease

by Ken Kelley

He nods anciently, sizing up the situation with a hypnotic lilt of the head, like the lulling fluidity of a cat's tail. His sonic osmosis detects the subtlest thread of activity around him. His pebble-brown pupils are gauzed with a magic curtain. He rolls them back into an inner landscape, then back out, twinkling; the wide mouth expands, the lips go flat against the white ellipse of teeth, and a sly curl etches itself on either side. Stevie Wonder takes a deep breath, summons his best Philly-d.j.-cum-Chicago-cop brogue.

"This is a bussstt!" He clips off the final consonant with a bemused sneer.

"All you n------ get back against the wall--spread those legs. Now where's the dope? C'mon, where is it--don't none of you act like you never been in a bust before. Move it, n-----." Stevie lurches tor the nearest body, and begins pushing and pulling with Vaudevillian ostentation. He leaves the dressing room clowning.

Two hours later, having just left 16,000 Texans screaming for more, he sways on the arm of one of his singers--The Wonderloves--and heads back to his car.

"Hey, Chris," he cackles gleefully.

"What is it, boy," counters his road-manager, Chris Jonz.

" 'Sss a buhhssstt!"

Back at his Holiday Inn suite, his fingers nimbly streak up and down the unplugged keyboard, the resonant tones from his larynx ably filling in for the absent electricity. There's another party tonight for a few friends and assorted hangers-on--quite an assortment at that. Several Pointer Sisters have dropped by to rub noses.

Scattered in the corner is a pile of maybe 20 records. Gladys Knight. Barry White. Marvin Gaye. Frank Sinatra.

Frank Sinatra? Side two, band four, is "You Are the Sunshine of My Life." Ol' Blue Eyes is Hip.

"Man, outasite, outasite. I'm so glad he did that--I've always wanted Frank Sinatra to record one of my songs." Stevie switches into his Las Vegas neo-supperclub oom-pah.

"You aaarre the sun-shiiinne of maaaah laaahve. . . ."

* * *

I first saw Little Stevie Wonder on Dave Prince's Club 1270 on a Channel 7 New Year's Eve Party in 1963. This 12-year-old-kid--my age--sporting these oversized sunglasses, writhing and shaking to his smash hit, "Fingertips, Part Two," lip-synching the words and the harmonica melody. Three-fourths through the song, Disc Jockey Prince rushed over, put his hands on the kid's shoulders, and the record stopped while he cut to a commercial. But Little Stevie kept right on grooving back and forth, snapping his fingers, a smile on his face the size of his goggles.

Not yet a teenager, Stevie was already a Motown star of the Smokey Robinson-Marvin Gaye calibre, with the release of only his fourth single. He reminisces about those days. continued on page 15