Stevie Wonder is one of our favorite artists here at the Merry Go Round. The practice of manipulating a musical instrument in order to produce sounds with heartfelt intelligence and joy is refered to as “playing”, and no musician seems to be more adept at this type of “play” than Mr. Wonder. When Stevie plays all by himself (man!), adding layer after layer of melody, rhythm, harmony, texture and joy, he transmits innervisions so comprehensive as to become worlds of their own!
1987 was a very special year for me personally. Truth be told, I was probably still wearing “Transformers” underwear! I remember that year very fondly because my father went on a business trip to Liberia, West Africa in that year, his first trip to that country since leaving it with my family in April of 1980, one week before the Coup d’etat that left that country unstable for twenty plus years. That summer, I can remember dad making numerous cassette recordings of local Bay Area radio stations to take with him for his old friends in Liberia, a country that had a deep vestigal and present day connection to African Americans and consequently, was mad for American soul music. He told me later on that he would play these tapes he made, of stations like KSOL, KMEL and KDIA (remember them Bay Area listeners?) at beach front night/day clubs in Liberia, and the music got so good to folks when he was ready to leave, they’d tell him he could do so….but leave those beats with them!
We view 1987-88 as a period where funk had a strong rennasaince for a brief moment. On those tapes that went to Liberia were songs like “Housequake”, “Bad”, “The Way You Make Me Feel”, “Word Up”, “System of Survival”, “Sign of the Times”, “Rocksteady”, and many other jams that had that old school feeling with the modern synth and drum machines pounding out the incessant marching sound of the 1980s.
Stevie in particular seemed to hit a sweet groove with his Characters (Motown 1987) LP. While the album was well received on the R&B charts and radio, it missed the high visibility on the pop charts Stevie had enjoyed for the majority of his storied career. Commercial concerns aside however, we feel it is one of his most varied and diverse works, with a wide variety of grooves (Skeletons, My Eyes Don’t Cry, Come Let me Make Your Love Come Down), expiriments in sound (With Each Beat of My Heart), social message songs (Dark N Lovely, Skeletons), and songs of spiritual encouragement (You Will Know, and the magnificent Free) that place it totally within the spirit of the classic ’70s LP’s. It might be hard for some to hear, due to a less than favorable mix on the original album and the ’80s sound, but let it spin you a few times, it’s THERE.
This particular song was always one of the ultimate dance floor burners in my little too young to even dream about getting into a club, head, at that time. Stevie layers all sorts of funky, interesting keyboard sounds around a vibrant, rousing chant. This remix was done by the then ascendant rhythm king, the future of the funk, Mr. Teddy Riley. Teddy, who has a penchant for Bernie Worrell style keyboard parts, emphasizes that side of Stevie’s playing, pulling the keys out of the mix as Larry Levan did in his remixes ( a la Gwen Guthrie’s Seventh Heaven, or Central Line’s Walking Into Sunshine) This is backed up by a huge cracking, clashing, clapping drum beat that provides the lean meat without the additives, and a subsonic, grinding, funky, nasty bass tone that was probably the source of my enthusiasm for this track as a young tike.
So if you will, let Mr. Wonder drive your Merry Go Round for a time today, we promise you with all the troubles in the world, the only tears in your eyes will be from the smashing of the bunions on your feet…..
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