Blind from infancy, Wonder signed to Motown at eleven
Born Stevland Hardaway Judkins in Saginaw on 13 May 1950, he lost sight to retinopathy of prematurity after arriving six weeks early. Motown’s Tamla roster billed him Little Stevie Wonder by age eleven—prelude to twenty-five Grammys and more than a hundred million records sold.
Stevland Hardaway Judkins was born in Saginaw, Michigan, on 13 May 1950, six weeks early; prematurity plus the oxygen-rich incubator caused retinopathy of prematurity, which left him blind. When he was four his mother left his father and took her children to Detroit. He sang solos in a Baptist church choir by eight, picked up piano, harmonica, and drums, and busked on street corners with a friend as Stevie and John.
In 1961, aged 11, he sang his song Lonely Boy for Ronnie White of the Miracles, who brought him to Motown. Berry Gordy signed him to Tamla, producer Clarence Paul named him Little Stevie Wonder, and his surname legally became Morris. Royalties were held in trust until he turned 21, leaving him an allowance of $2.50 a week. His first singles and two 1962 albums flopped, but a live recording of Fingertips, cut at Chicago’s Regal Theater, topped the Hot 100 in 1963 when he was 13, the youngest artist ever to do so.
When his voice broke and executives considered dropping him, songwriter Sylvia Moy persuaded Gordy to keep him, and they wrote Uptight. Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours was his first self-produced hit. At 21 he let his Motown contract lapse, took up the custom TONTO synthesizer with Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, and won a new deal with a 14% royalty.
The synthesizer-led albums that followed, from Talking Book to Songs in the Key of Life, made him the first Black winner of the Album of the Year Grammy, three times in a row. In the 1980s he campaigned for Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday to become a federal holiday and topped the Hot 100 in a third decade.
Source: Stevie Wonder
