Zero to 180 – Three Minute Magic

Discoveries of a Pop Music Archaeologist

Tag: Stevie Wonder

50s/60s rockabilly bop +/- boogie
Zeroto180

Summer Beach Read – Fun Fluff

Breezy, offbeat, trashy, yet intermittently illuminating – and just in time! Zero to 180’s curated highlights from 1983’s Rolling Stone Rock Almanac humbly serves as your Summer Beach Read!  These carefully selected bits of humor and offbeat information have been lavished with picture sleeves from around the world, streaming audio,

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"Untamed World Theme"
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“Untamed World”: Top TV Theme

Unless you were a nature nerd in the late 1960s to mid-1970s, chances are you have never heard Mort Garson‘s mysterious and exotic instrumental theme for the CTV television series, Untamed World. “Untamed World Theme”     Mort Garson     196? Uncanny emulation of steel drums that is/are undergirded by a

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"Purple Rain Drops"
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“Purple Rain Drops” of Late ’65

The first “purple rain” musical reference, researchers at Zero to 180 assert, comes from Stevie Wonder — though to be fair, from the pen of Ted Hull.  Upon closer examination, “Purple Rain Drops,” after its conception in 1965, would go on to spend its entire adult life as a B-side,

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"Jamaican Boy"
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“Jamaican Boy”: Jazz Fusion Reggae Instrumental

Three musicians – Stanley Clarke, Jeff Beck, and Steve Gadd – with keyboard embellishments from a fourth, Bayeté Todd Cochran: “Jamaican Boy“ Stanley Clarke (1979) * “Jamaican Boy” was a 45 release from 1979’s I Wanna Play for You studio/live hybrid LP and one of Record World‘s “Single Picks” for

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"Heaven Help Us All"
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“Heaven Help Us All”: God Pop’s Soulful Side

“Heaven Help Us All” – a soulful spiritual Ray Charles recorded for his 1972 album, Message from the People – is actually a Ron Miller composition that was first performed by Stevie Wonder as both a single release and album track on 1970’s Signed, Sealed & Delivered LP. From Mike

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"Dr. Robert"
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“Dr. Robert”: Cover Version Hall of Fame?

It is the mark of a true artist when he or she can take someone else’s song and transform it into something else entirely, to the point of making the new version almost unrecognizable.  Stevie Wonder‘s 1971 version of “We Can Work It Out,” for example, begins with a funky

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"Love Can Run Faster"
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“Love Can Run Faster”: B-Side of Mystery

In 1978 Robert Palmer traveled to Lee Perry‘s recording compound in Kingston, Jamaica to get a little piece of that magic Black Ark sound.  “Love Can Run Faster” (B-side of Robert Palmer’s big 1978 hit, “Bad Case of Lovin’ You“) is the only song Palmer released from that recording session

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