This Record Has a Groove

Dat kid blows a mean harmonica

When I was a kid entering my early teens, a friend of mine sort of took me under his wing and showed me the world of music that I wasn't so hip to yet. Rob had two older sisters who likely influenced some of his musical tastes, and I know he had another circle of friends who probably listened to stuff that fell outside my realm of knowledge. I was just beginning to creep out of 60's music like the Monkees and Beatles and was entering the modern era slowly and tentatively... but the newer tunes I found were more along the lines of Kiss. 

Anyway, my buddy often took me to the record shop he frequented and urged me to buy some singles. That was how I discovered BeeGee's and KC and the Sunshine Band, among other things. One 45-rpm single I picked up sight unseen (or unheard) was Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder. Back then in 1977, I don't think I even knew who Stevie even was. But the funky, horn-driven song caught my attention and I did come to like it a lot. The track first appeared on the '76 album Songs in the Key of Life, then in '77 it was released as a single. And that was when I hesitantly forked over my dollar fifty or whatever it cost back then. Apparently the song hit number one on the U.S. Billboard chart. 

Wonder wrote the song as a tribute to jazz great Duke Ellington, who was a big influence on little Stevie. Pretty cool. And there are references in Sir Duke to other music legends, including Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. 

That little record was among the first to open up a new world of music to me, one that went well beyond basic quartets armed with only guitars and drums. And I guess it goes without saying that Stevie's Sir Duke was the first record I ever bought by a black artist.... today I have plenty of such artists in my collection, from The Jackson Five and Tempations to LL Cool J and Public Enemy. And I even got myself a good CD compilation of Stevie's musical career called Song Review. But it's sure nice to have that old Motown record hanging around for nostalgia.