The amaz­ing Ste­vie Won­der turns 64 today, and in hon­or of the singer’s long illus­tri­ous career, we present some of his ear­li­est moments in the spot­light. In 1963, Lit­tle Ste­vie Wonder—as he was then known—had his first num­ber one hit with a song called “Fin­ger­tips.” He was 12 years old. Not only did he top the charts, but he did so with the first ever live record­ing to hit num­ber one, and the first ever sin­gle to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly top the Bill­board Hot 100 and the R&B charts at once. See the young star per­form “Fin­ger­tips” above, fol­low­ing Mar­vin Gaye at the Motown Revue Live, and below one year lat­er on The Ed Sul­li­van Show.

“Fin­ger­tips” came from the album Record­ed Live: The 12 Year Old Genius, which was, you guessed it, record­ed live, at the Regal The­ater in Chica­go. Despite his ten­der years, this was hard­ly Lit­tle Stevie’s first rodeo. At this point, he was vir­tu­al­ly a vet­er­an of the busi­ness, hav­ing signed to Motown at age 11, toured the so-called “chitlin’ cir­cuit” and released two pre­vi­ous albums—The Jazz Soul of Lit­tle Ste­vie and Trib­ute to Uncle Ray—both of which failed to chart.

Already a mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist, Wonder’s first big sin­gle was not a stir­ring piano bal­lad or rous­ing funk soul anthem; it was more or less an extend­ed har­mon­i­ca solo, punc­tu­at­ed by exu­ber­ant call-and-response shouts to the crowd. But peo­ple loved it, and the musi­cal prodi­gy seemed well on his way to super-star­dom. Just above, see him play anoth­er har­mon­i­ca sin­gle, “Kiss Me Baby,” in 1965 on the British music show Ready Steady Go!

Though his star seemed to be on the rise after “Fin­ger­tips,” Lit­tle Stevie’s career hit a few snags after his big break, and Berry Gordy almost dropped him from the Motown ros­ter when his voice changed. But he was not, as we know, des­tined to be a one-hit-won­der (par­don the pun). Though puber­ty cut short the child prodi­gy act, Won­der sol­diered on, drop­ping the “Lit­tle” and becom­ing a seri­ous vocal­ist. He scored hits in the mid-six­ties with the super-catchy “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” and the beau­ti­ful “A Place in the Sun.” See him do both songs above on the Mike Dou­glass show in 1966. In-between songs, Dou­glass asks the six­teen year-old some pret­ty dopey ques­tions about his blind­ness, the result of a birth defect. Won­der responds with the same good-natured humor and grace we’ve come to expect from him. In these ear­ly appear­ances, you can plain­ly see all the qual­i­ties that have made Ste­vie Won­der so uni­ver­sal­ly beloved. The man’s still got it, as he proved in his Gram­my per­for­mance of “Get Lucky” this year with Daft Punk and Phar­rell. We wish Ste­vie the hap­pi­est of birth­days. If you’re lucky enough to be in Europe this sum­mer, do your­self a favor and catch him on one of his sev­en tour dates. He might even break out the har­mon­i­ca.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Ste­vie Won­der Play “Super­sti­tion” and Ban­ter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973

Mar­vin Gaye’s Clas­sic Vocals on ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine’: The A Cap­pel­la Ver­sion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

The great Duke Elling­ton and his long­time musi­cal part­ner Bil­ly Stray­horn per­formed such musi­cal feats of strength togeth­er over the course of near­ly three decades that they can seem to dwarf many of their con­tem­po­raries. The two co-com­posers had a knack for turn­ing pop­u­lar music—jazz, rag­time, the blues—into high art, then trans­mut­ing it right back into pop again, via three-minute blasts of swing like their most famous tune “Take the A Train.” In some respects, Elling­ton and Stray­horn’s com­po­si­tions are like that of writ­ers who har­mo­nize hip ver­nac­u­lar, pop­u­lar idiom, and The Great Tra­di­tion into works that feel thrilling­ly fresh and time­less all at once. And so it makes per­fect sense that Elling­ton and Stray­horn would com­pose a suite of songs based on scenes from William Shake­speare, that most skill­ful of lit­er­ary alchemists, and that it would turn out to be, in the words of poet and music crit­ic A.B. Spell­man, “one of the most remark­able orches­tral pieces in all of Amer­i­can music.”

That piece, Such Sweet Thun­der, found its impe­tus in Shakespeare’s most mag­i­cal play, A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, notably in a line that so well cap­tures the har­mo­nious clash­ing of styles and lan­guages in both the Duke and the Bard: “I nev­er heard so musi­cal a dis­cord, such sweet thun­der.” Dan­ger­ous Minds quotes Elling­ton, who called the piece his “attempt to par­al­lel the vignettes of some of the Shake­speare­an char­ac­ters in miniature—sometimes to the point of car­i­ca­ture.” The suite of songs pre­miered at New York’s Town Hall in April, 1957, at a con­cert called “Music for Mod­erns.” Its final num­ber had yet to be writ­ten. Soon after, at the Ravinia Music Fes­ti­val out­side Chica­go, Elling­ton intro­duced the first broad­cast per­for­mance, which you can hear in full above. See below for the titles of each song and list of soloists.

1:48 Son­net For Sis­ter Kate [solo: Quentin Jack­son]
4:53 Up And Down. Up And Down [solo: Clark Ter­ry]
8:04 Star-Crossed Lovers [solo: John­ny Hodges]
12:38 Mad­ness In Great Ones [solo: Cat Ander­son]
16:25 Half The Fun [solo: John­ny Hodges]
20:42 Cir­cle Of Fourths [solo: Paul Gon­salves]
23:23 Jam With Sam [solos: Willie Cook, Paul Gon­salves, Britt Wood­man, Rus­sell Pro­cope, Cat Ander­son]

Elling­ton, the CBS radio announc­er at the begin­ning informs us, was first spurred by his atten­dance at the Strat­ford Ontario Shake­speare Fes­ti­val in 1956. But he had been a devo­tee of the­ater, and of Shake­speare, for many years. Stray­horn, it seems, was even more so. Spell­man tells us that Stray­horn “was deep into Shake­speare […] could quote whole sec­tions of plays [….], vast num­bers of son­nets from mem­o­ry, at the drop of a hat.” Immersed not only in the­ater, but in clas­si­cal music, Strayhorn’s first ambi­tion was to become a clas­si­cal com­pos­er. While the col­or bar­ri­er sti­fled that dream, his move into jazz was cer­tain­ly no com­pro­mise. Stray­horn and Elling­ton “were so attuned to one anoth­er musi­cal­ly,” writes a biog­ra­phy com­pan­ion to Ken Burn’s Jazz, “that it is now impos­si­ble to estab­lish the exact extent of the former’s con­tri­bu­tion to Ellington’s oeu­vre.” (Elling­ton called Stray­horn “my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head.”) Giv­en Strayhorn’s deep knowl­edge of Shakespeare’s work, it’s prob­a­bly fair to assume that his con­tri­bu­tion to Such Sweet Thun­der was sig­nif­i­cant. Above, see selec­tions from a 1959 per­for­mance in Switzer­land, and just below, see a 1960 avant-garde bal­let chore­o­graphed to Elling­ton and Strayhorn’s Shake­speare suite by Mau­rice Béjart, anoth­er artist with a par­tic­u­lar tal­ent for bring­ing high art themes and styles to pop­u­lar audi­ences.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Duke Ellington’s Sym­pho­ny in Black, Star­ring a 19-Year-old Bil­lie Hol­i­day

Duke Elling­ton Plays for Joan Miró in the South of France, 1966: Bassist John Lamb Looks Back on the Day

Thelo­nious Monk Plays Duke Elling­ton: Solo Piano, Berlin 1969

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Bach wrote 1080 com­po­si­tions dur­ing his life­time. And now thanks to the new and cer­tain­ly ambi­tious All of Bach web site, you can even­tu­al­ly watch the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety (found­ed in 1921) per­form each and every one of those com­po­si­tions. The site fea­tures 13 per­for­mances so far (see below), which means there’s only anoth­er 1067 to go. A new Bach record­ing will go live every Fri­day. So you mark your cal­en­dars and check in week­ly for the next 20 years. Thanks to Erik for send­ing this our way!

First record­ings:

• Nun Komm, der Hei­den Hei­land — Can­ta­ta, BWV 61
• Toc­ca­ta and Fugue in D minor — Organ work, BWV 565
• Herr Gott, Dich loben alle wir — Can­ta­ta, BWV 130
• Herr Gott, nun schleuss den Him­mel auf Herr Gott, nun schleuss den Him­mel auf Organ work — BWV 617
• Organ con­cer­to in A minor (after Vival­di) — BWV 593
• Ich habe genung — Can­ta­ta — BWV 82
• The Well-Tem­pered Clavier I Pre­lude and Fugue in F sharp major — BWV 858
• The Well-Tem­pered Clavier I no. 6 in D minor Key­board work — BWV 851
• The Well-Tem­pered Clavier I no. 12 in F minor Key­board work — BWV 857
• Fan­ta­sia and Fuge in G Minor — Organ Work BWV 542
• Schwingt freudig euch empor Schwingt freudig euch empor Can­ta­ta — BWV 36
• Wir müssen durch viel Trüb­sal in das Reich Gottes einge­hen Wir müssen durch viel Trüb­sal in das Reich Gottes einge­hen Can­ta­ta — BWV 146
• Vater unser im Him­mel­re­ich Vater unser im Him­mel­re­ich Organ work — BWV 682

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Big Bach Down­load: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Video: Glenn Gould Plays the Gold­berg Vari­a­tions by J.S. Bach

We’ve brought you Talk­ing Heads shows from New York’s CBGB in 1975, Dort­mund, Ger­many in 1980, and Rome that same year. Now we’ve got one more valu­able live find from that for­ma­tive, busy era for the David Byrne-led, Rhode Island School of Design-forged new-wave band: their Novem­ber 1978 per­for­mance in Syra­cuse. The exact venue? Per­haps some­where at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty, per­haps not, though a col­lege per­for­mance space would make sense, giv­en how many insti­tu­tions of high­er edu­ca­tion they played in 1978. The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert His­to­ry blog has a com­plete list, and the total num­ber of shows in that year alone comes in, aston­ish­ing­ly, at over 130, a fair few of them at schools like NYU, Brown, Berklee, Berke­ley, UCLA, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona. “It was real­ly an edu­ca­tion for us,” the page quotes drum­mer Chris Frantz as say­ing of the 1978 tour. “I’m afraid we bit off more than we could chew. We thought that we could play every night, and we found that after four months we were feel­ing pret­ty unin­spired.”

Yet this Syra­cuse gig, which came ten months in, sounds pret­ty inspired to me. It looks it, too, at least from what I can dis­cern from the lo-fi footage. What the image lacks in crisp­ness, though, it makes up for in tech­no­log­i­cal inter­est; it has the sig­na­ture look of the Sony Por­ta­pak, one of the very ear­ly portable con­sumer video record­ing sys­tems beloved of the 1970s’ video ama­teurs and video artists alike. Who­ev­er manned the Por­ta­pak for these 92 min­utes in Syra­cuse cap­tured a valu­able chap­ter in the Talk­ing Heads sto­ry, one the band spent work­ing as hard as pos­si­ble — which, of course, meant play­ing as hard, and as often, as pos­si­ble — and refin­ing their inim­itable sound and sen­si­bil­i­ty in con­cert spaces that, while often low-pro­file, nev­er­the­less pro­vid­ed them with excit­ed and appre­cia­tive audi­ences. Col­lege stu­dents and oth­er­wise, came eager to hear some­thing new — and giv­en that the 70s, that decade of slick dis­co and smooth rock, had almost come to a close, some­thing a bit askew. The Talk­ing Heads, as we see them here, could glad­ly deliv­er.

Set list:

1. The Big Coun­try
2. Warn­ing Sign
3. The Book I Read
4. Stay Hun­gry
5. Artists Only
6. The Girls Want to Be with the Girls
7. The Good Thing
8. Love Goes to Build­ings on Fire
9. Elec­tric­i­ty
10. Found a Job
11. Take Me to the Riv­er
12. I’m Not in Love
13. No Com­pas­sion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play Live in Dort­mund, Ger­many Dur­ing Their Hey­day (1980)

Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Live in Rome, 1980: The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.