5. Stevie WonderFor Once In My Life
I think this was an album that a lot of people missed. It had singles on it, but it’s so deep this album. We were playing it the other day. Obviously the big hit singles were ‘For Once In My Life’ and ‘Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day’ [laughs] those were the two big singles. But on this record it happens to be the Funk Brothers’, the Motown band, peak for me and my friends. This is the band who nobody knew who they were and who played on every track that was ever released from Motown Detroit up until and including the very first Jacksons, that’s when the change happened. But there is some playing on this record that is just absolutely phenomenal. ‘You Met Your Match’ is an incredible track, as are all of them here. One of my all time favourite Stevie Wonder performances is ‘I Don’t Know Why’, which is a highly emotional track. I don’t think that a lot of people remember or even know of these tracks, it’s very interesting. He does an incredible version of Bobby Hebb’s ‘Sunny’. Just the bass playing alone by James Jamerson is, well, it’s off the charts, it’s just phenomenal, and it’s so unique. He was really reinventing the bass guitar at this point. If you speak to any musician and say James Jamerson they just go, “Oh my God”, because he really did bring the technique of the stand-up bass, which he was incredible on and played on the early Motown hits, to the electric bass. He really brought something to bass guitar that set the standard for where to go from here. Everybody tries to play like him occasionally! He was just one of those incredibly unique and gifted players that we are so lucky to have on so many records.
