Search - Stevie Wonder :: Greatest Hits

Greatest Hits, yes, but things were only beginning

D.V. Lindner | King George, VA, USA | 03/15/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In its original vinyl incarnation (as Tamla LP 282) this appeared in April 1968. It carried a good overview of Wonder's singles output from "Contract On Love" (12/26/62) through "I'm Wondering" (9/14/67). Everything that's here is great, and shows Stevie's child voice maturing into the assured masculine adult one we've come to know since. And the hits are solid, a heaping helping of the kind Motown turned out on all its' artists in the production line days. By the time of "Uptight" and especially "I Was Made To Love Her" Wonder was another full-fledged confident star, the same one he is today.Not everything, however, from this maturation period was included in these 12 tracks. There were some commercially failed but interesting singles that didn't make the cut: "I Call It Pretty Music But The Old People Call It The Blues," a two-part single (Tamla 54061) from May 1962, "Happy Street" (Tamla 54103, September 1964), "Kiss Me Baby" (Tamla 54114, May 1965) and "High Heel Sneakers" (Tamla 54119, 7/23/65). Hard-core Wonder fans have their work cut out for them seeking these even on vinyl, let alone CD. One could carp too, that "Fingertips" isn't in its full seven-minute length here; after all, Part 1 was no slouch, either. ("Someday At Christmas" was a 45 too, Tamla 54142, in time for the '66 season.) And by the by, the last Wonder single to feature "Little" in front of his name was "Castles In The Sand" (Tamla 54090, 1/16/64); "Hey Harmonica Man" (Tamla 54096, 5/21/64) was the first without it.What's to be hoped for is that Stevie and Motown would consider re-issuing, in CD form, his 3-LP set from 1977, "Looking Back." It was essentially Stevie's entry in Motown's superb (and first) Anthology series on all the company's major artists. Ideally, a CD version would carry all 40 tracks that the three records did plus the missing nuggets mentioned above. (And, please, don't forget "Purple Rains Drops" this time around, either.) I'm glad I grabbed the vinyl version when I did; I've read elsewhere that Wonder had it quickly withdrawn. We'll see."