“Stevie Wonder could write almost any kind of song,” music critic and documentary filmmaker Nelson George tells the BBC. “And as part of his mix of songs and melodies, he was always able to create songs about social injustice, particularly happy, major chord melodies that were easy to sing to,” he adds. George compares Happy Birthday – a big, cheerful song – to another of Wonder’s, Isn’t She Lovely. “For a whole group of people who grew up in the past 40 years, Happy Birthday has become the standard birthday song,” he says. “It’s amazing that someone could just write something that becomes a standard part of life as well as have political significance, but he was able to do that.”
Soundtracking a movement
Wonder’s quest to create a Martin Luther King Day holiday also followed the tradition of US musicians and popular artists who joined movements for social change throughout the 20th Century, according to Kevin Gaines, the Julian Bond professor of civil rights and social justice at the University of Virginia.
“He’s right in line with Woody Guthrie in the 1930s and 40s, whose songs reflected the social issues of the time,” Gaines tells the BBC. “And African-American opera singer, Marian Anderson, who sang in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC to protest the Daughters of the American Revolution’s refusal to let her sing in their meeting hall,” he adds. “And also Billie Holiday, who recorded the anti-lynching anthem, Strange Fruit, and was harassed in the South when she sang it live.”
Stevie Wonder’s career closely tracked the mid-century civil rights movement, starting from his first number one hit, Fingertips, in 1963, Gaines says. Wonder was just 13 years old when Fingertips hit the charts in the summer of 1963 – released in the wake of King’s campaign to desegregate public accommodations in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Ostensibly a party song, Fingertips isn’t overtly political like Wonder’s later songs. But the live recording is symbolic, with the 13-year-old’s call and response to African-American teens to follow him in his celebration of black American rhythm and blues and soul beats. “The Birmingham protests made world headlines,” Gaines says, “with photos and footage of police attacking children with dogs and high-pressure water hoses.” Fingertips was a harbinger for how young people were going to be involved in the civil rights movement and youth protests of the 1960s. “It becomes kind of a soundtrack to that movement,” says Gaines.
