After his first album was released, The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie (1962), he enrolled in Michigan School for the Blind in Lansing, Michigan. Īs a child, Wonder attended Fitzgerald Elementary School in Detroit. He formed a singing partnership with a friend calling themselves Stevie and John, they played on street corners and occasionally at parties and dances. He began playing instruments at an early age, including piano, harmonica, and drums.
Berry Gordy was responsible for creating the stage name of "Little Stevie Wonder". When Stevie was signed by Motown in 1961, his surname was legally changed to Morris, which (according to Lula Mae Hardaway's authorized biography) was an old family name.
She later rekindled her relationship with her first child's father (whose surname was also coincidentally Hardaway) and changed her own name back to Lula Hardaway, going on to have two more children. When Wonder was four, his mother divorced his father and moved with her three children to Detroit, Michigan, where Wonder sang as a child in a choir at the Whitestone Baptist Church. He was born six weeks premature which, along with the oxygen-rich atmosphere in the hospital incubator, resulted in retinopathy of prematurity, a condition in which the growth of the eyes is aborted and causes the retinas to detach, so he became blind. Wonder was born Stevland Hardaway Judkins in Saginaw, Michigan, on May 13, 1950, the third of five children born to Lula Mae Hardaway, and the second of Hardaway's two children with Calvin Judkins. In 2009, he was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace, and in 2014, he was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He is also noted for his work as an activist for political causes, including his 1980 campaign to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a federal holiday in the U.S. Wonder has been inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame. He has won 25 Grammy Awards (the most by a solo artist) and one Academy Award ( Best Original Song, for the 1984 film The Woman in Red). Wonder is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with sales of over 100 million records worldwide. Wonder has continued to remain active in music and political causes. Wonder began his "commercial period" in the 1980s he achieved his biggest hits and highest level of fame, had increased album sales, charity participation, high-profile collaborations (including Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson), political impact, and television appearances. He is also the only artist to have won the award with three consecutive album releases. His works Innervisions (1973), Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974) and Songs in the Key of Life (1976) all won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, making him the tied-record holder for the most Album of the Year wins, with three. His "classic period" began in 1972 with the releases of Music of My Mind and Talking Book, the latter featuring " Superstition", which is one of the most distinctive and famous examples of the sound of the Hohner Clavinet keyboard. Wonder's critical success was at its peak in the 1970s. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1963, at the age of 13, making him the youngest artist ever to top the chart.
#Words of wonder level 83 professional#
Blind since shortly after his birth, Wonder was a child prodigy who signed with Motown's Tamla label at the age of 11, where he was given the professional name Little Stevie Wonder. He also helped drive such genres into the album era, crafting his LPs as cohesive and consistent, in addition to socially conscious statements with complex compositions. A virtual one-man band, Wonder's use of synthesizers and other electronic musical instruments during the 1970s reshaped the conventions of R&B. He is credited as a pioneer and influence by musicians across a range of genres that include rhythm and blues, pop, soul, gospel, funk, and jazz.
#Words of wonder level 83 series#
I Wonder is a six-level series that teaches English alongside other school subjects and brings all the wonderful elements of the real world into the language classroom.Stevland Hardaway Morris ( né Judkins May 13, 1950), known professionally as Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter.
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