Tag: Stevie Wonder

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Sundance in Memphis: A Soul Explosion and All Light, Everywhere

Sly Stone performs at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival in Summer of Soul.

For me, day 3 of Sundance was a more indoor affair.

The drive-in is great, except in the wind and rain. So when the weather decided not to cooperate, my wife and I decided to stick to streaming. It turned into a pretty epic binge day that resembled the analog festival experience’s rush from screening to screening.
We started off with the film that was, for many, the most anticipated of the festival. Summer of Soul (… or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), which opened the live-premiere streaming offerings on Thursday, is a music documentary directed by Amir “Questlove” Thompson, better known as the drummer for The Roots and bandleader on 

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Questlove and his producers found out 12 years ago about a forgotten stash of footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. In the months before Woodstock, the free music festival ran for several weekends in a New York park, attracting some of the greatest Black musicians of the time, including Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, The Fifth Dimension, and Gladys Knight and The Pips. The Memphis area was very well represented, with B.B. King, Mississippi’s Chambers Brothers, and The Staple Singers. Hundreds of thousands of people attended the concert series and the show was professionally recorded and taped by a four-camera crew with the intent to make a television special out of it. But the TV show never materialized, and the 45 hours of footage sat in a producer’s basement for 50 years. Thompson and his team transferred and restored the tapes, and secured interviews with many of the surviving musicians and audience members, for whom the forgotten show seemed like a distant dream.

Thompson was introduced by festival director Tabitha Jackson as a first time filmmaker, which is true enough. Breaking new talent is what the film festival is all about. But Thompson had an advantage over the normal first time director, in that he is a relentlessly omnivorous music scholar and author, which gave him the intellectual discipline to do the research and make Summer of Soul more than just a concert film. But most importantly, Questlove is a DJ who grew up obsessively making mix tapes. Those are the skills which served him best in the editing room, as he chose the best musical moments from the concert series and put them the right order.

The performances captured on the moldering tapes are spectacular. The film opens with Stevie Wonder abandoning his keyboards and taking to the drums. Did you know Stevie was a kickass drummer? Neither did I. B.B. King is captured at the top of his game. The Chambers Brothers reveal a deep, jammy groove beyond their hit “Time Has Come Today.” Thompson puts each performance in context, such as when Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr. tell the story of how they came to record “Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In” from Hair, as their younger selves sing and dance up a storm onscreen.

The highlight of a film full of highlights is an emotional, impromptu duet between Mavis Staples and her idol Mahalia Jackson of “Take My Hand Precious Lord.” Jesse Jackson introduces the song, telling the story of how he was on the balcony at the Lorraine Motel when Martin Luther King, Jr. asked bandleader Ben Branch to play the song for him moments before the civil rights leader was assassinated. As the band swells, an emotional Mahalia Jackson pulled Mavis Staples from her seat and put the microphone in her hand. Stunned at the anointment by the gospel legend, Staples takes center stage and lifts off in what she called the most memorable performance of her life. Then, Jackson takes the second verse and turns it into a wail of mourning and declaration of Black power.

Summer of Soul is an instant classic that delivers both goosebump-filled musical moments and a clear and well-organized history of a pivotal cultural moment that was almost lost to time.

‘LATA’

Short film programs are always my favorite part of any festival experience, and the 50 or so shorts strung across seven programs feature some real gems, proving that the pandemic couldn’t hold back the creativity. Andrew Norman Wilson’s “In The Air Tonight” uses altered stock footage and killer sound design to retell the urban legend behind Phil Collins’ 1980 hit song. He put it together in his apartment during quarantine. Alisha Tejpal’s excellent and moving “LATA” is a naturalistic examination of the life of a domestic worker in India that bears the meditative stamp of Chantal Akerman’s Hotel Monterey. Joe Campa’s animated short “Ghost Dogs,” in which the new family pet can see the apparitions of all the dogs who have lived in the house, veers between funny and unexpectedly poignant.

Looking for love in ‘Searchers’

The second feature documentary of the day was Pacha Velez’s Searchers, an intimate and often hilarious look at dating online. Velez films dozens of different people as they swipe through their choices on dating apps, and interviews them about their experiences. In a couple of cases, his subjects turn the tables on their interviewer, and Velez reveals his motivations stem from his own experiences as a single guy who just turned 40. Shades of Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March appear as Velez takes his own dating app test with his mother at his side. The innovative and insightful documentary starts off unassuming, then subtly worms its way into your brain. With subjects ranging from ages 19 to 88, Searchers reveals dating apps as the great equalizer of our age.

All Light, Everywhere

Tonight, the weather outlook at the Malco Summer Drive-In is much improved. The first show is Theo Anthony’s All Light, Everywhere. Using quantum theory’s spooky observer effect as its jumping off point, this essay film travels the blurred line between what we call “objective reality” and the often flawed assumptions that undergird our understanding of it.
The second show is the sci-fi feature Mayday by Karen Cinorre. Grace Van Patten stars as Ana, a woman from our reality who is transported into another dimension where a group of women soldiers are fighting an endless war whose origins they barely understand. The fascinating-looking Mayday is billed as the first feminist war film.

Sundance in Memphis: A Soul Explosion and All Light, Everywhere

You can buy tickets for the Malco Summer Drive-in screenings of Sundance films at the Indie Memphis website. 

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Film Features Film/TV

From Netflix to Criterion: All You Need to Know About What’s Streaming

Those of us who are not doctors, nurses, or EMTs or others on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19 are faced with some time on our hands. The only silver lining to the situation is that our new reality of soft quarantine comes just as streaming video services are proliferating. There are many choices, but which ones are right for you? Here’s a rundown on the major streaming services and a recommendation of something good to watch on each channel.

Stevie Wonder plays “Superstition” on Sesame Street.

YouTube

The granddaddy of them all. There was crude streaming video on the web before 2005, but YouTube was the first company to perfect the technology and capture the popular imagination. More than 500 hours of new video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

Cost: Free with ads. YouTube Premium costs $11.99/month for ad-free viewing and the YouTube Music app.

What to Watch: The variety of content available on YouTube is unfathomable. Basically, if you can film it, it’s on there somewhere. If I have to recommend one video out of the billions available, it’s a 6:47 clip of Stevie Wonder playing “Superstition” on Sesame Street. In 1973, a 22-year-old Wonder took time to drop in on the PBS kids’ show. He and his band of road-hard Motown gunslingers delivered one of the most intense live music performances ever captured on film to an audience of slack-jawed kids. It’s possibly the most life-affirming thing on the internet.

From Netflix to Criterion: All You Need to Know About What’s Streaming

Dolemite Is My Name

Netflix

When the DVD-by-mail service started pivoting to streaming video in 2012, it set the template for the revolution that followed. Once, Netflix had almost everything, but recently they have concentrated on spending billions creating original programming that ranges from the excellent, like Roma, to the not-so excellent.

Cost: Prices range from $8.99/month for SD video on one screen, to $15.99/month, which gets you 4K video on up to four screens simultaneously.

What to Watch: Memphian Craig Brewer’s 2019 film Dolemite Is My Name is the perfect example of what Netflix is doing right. Eddie Murphy stars as Rudy Ray Moore, the chitlin’ circuit comedian who reinvented himself as the kung-fu kicking, super pimp Dolemite and became an independent film legend. From the screenplay by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski to Wesley Snipes as a drunken director, everyone is at the top of their game.

Future Man

Hulu

Founded as a joint venture by a mixture of old-guard media businesses and dot coms to compete with Netflix, Hulu is now controlled by Disney, thanks to their 2019 purchase of Fox. It features a mix of movies and shows that don’t quite fit under the family-friendly Disney banner. The streamer’s secret weapon is Hulu with Live TV.

Cost: $5.99/month for shows with commercials, $11.99 for no commercials; Hulu with Live TV, $54.99/month.

What to Watch: Hulu doesn’t make as many originals as Netflix, but they knocked it out of the park with Future Man. Josh Futturman (Josh Hutcherson) is a nerd who works as a janitor at a biotech company by day and spends his nights mastering a video game called Biotic Wars. A pair of time travelers appear and tell him his video game skills reveal him as the chosen one who will save humanity from a coming catastrophe. The third and final season of Future Man premieres April 3rd.

Logan Lucky


Amazon Prime Video

You may already subscribe to Amazon Prime Video. The streaming service is an add-on to Amazon Prime membership and features the largest selection of legacy content on the web, plus films and shows produced by Amazon Studios.

Cost: Included with the $99/year Amazon Prime membership.

What to Watch: You can always find something in Amazon’s huge selection, but if you missed Steven Soderbergh’s redneck heist comedy Logan Lucky when it premiered in 2017, now’s the perfect time to catch up. Channing Tatum and Adam Driver star as the Logan brothers, who plot to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Inside Out

Disney+

The newcomer to the streaming wars is also the elephant in the room. Disney flexes its economic hegemony by undercutting the other streaming services in cost while delivering the most popular films of the last decade. Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars flicks are all here, along with the enormous Disney vault dating back to 1940. So if you want to watch The Avengers, you gotta pay the mouse.

Cost: $6.99/month or $69.99/year.

What to Watch: These are difficult times to be a kid, and no film has a better grasp of children’s psychology than Pixar’s Inside Out. Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) is an 11-year-old Minnesotan whose parents’ move to San Francisco doesn’t quite go as planned.

Cleo from 5 to 7

The Criterion Channel

Since 1984, The Criterion Collection has been keeping classics, art films, and the best of experimental video in circulation through the finest home video releases in the industry. They pioneered both commentary tracks and letterboxing, which allows films to be shown in their original widescreen aspect ratio. Their streaming service features a rotating selection of Criterion films, with the best curated recommendations around. You’ll find everything from Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 silent epic The Passion of Joan of Arc to Ray Harryhausen’s seminal special effects extravaganza Jason and the Argonauts.

Cost: $99.99/year or $10.99/month.

What to Watch: One of the legendary directors whose body of work makes the Criterion Channel worth it is Agnès Varda. In the Godmother of French New Wave’s 1962 film, Cleo from 5 to 7, Corinne Marchand stars as a singer whose glamorous life in swinging Paris is interrupted by an ominous visit to the doctor. As she waits the fateful two hours to get the results of a cancer test, she reflects on her existence and the perils of being a woman in a man’s world.

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Music Music Blog

David Porter and Friends: Bringing Memphis to the World, and the World to Memphis

CREDIT: Focht

Focht

David Porter

David Porter, who worked with Isaac Hayes to craft some of Stax Records’ most compelling songs, is a busy man. Though he’s not often seen onstage, this Saturday he will host a one-of-a-kind evening of conversation and performances, featuring a diverse sampling of his friends from over five decades in the record business. Here, he talks a bit about the star-studded event, and the community cause he’s hoping it will benefit.

Memphis Flyer: Tell me a little about the show you’ll be hosting. It’s a rather unique format.

David Porter: This is the second David Porter and Friends show that I’ve done at the Horseshoe Casino. The first one was a sellout. And I had Samuel L. Jackson, the actor, I had Julius Irving, the athlete. I had Isaac Hayes, and J. Blackfoot. And the casino had been actively wanting me to do this show again for several years. I just agreed to do it for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted to create a bit more attention for a nonprofit that I was the founder of, the Consortium MMT. But the primary focus of it was me putting some friends of mine together. Included in that, I will have Stevie Wonder, who was the first recipient of the Epitome of Soul Award, present the award on this show to William Bell.

Alex Burden

William Bell

It’s a great opportunity to present the Epitome of Soul award to William. We were going to present the award a year ago, and we were working with Shelby Farms but we were not able. There was a storm that happened and kinda messed it up. It was flooded and all, and so we decided not to opt on that. And so because we did have the award, and had named William Bell as a recipient even before he won a Grammy, we wanted to be sure and not let another year go by. So this show was a great opportunity to do that.

But the show’s structure is akin to The Tonight Show, a talk show with entertainment. I have friends of mine that I sit on a couch with, on the stage, talk about their careers, we have videos of their lives, we have a fun discussion that’s in-depth. I’ll be doing that with Stevie Wonder. I’ll be doing that with William Bell as well. With Ray Parker, Jr. as well. With Richard Roundtree, the star of Shaft. It is that kind of event. The reason I call it “and Friends” is because I create a personal kind of connection for the audience, with people that they’ve certainly heard about and seen, but never had this kind of view of them, with them talking about their lives in such a candid way. Involved with that are performances by these artists as well.

I suppose you’ve assembled a select house band for the event?

Yes. Gary Goin, who has been associated with me for more than 20 years, who is a known musician here, and has bands of his own that tour to casinos in other parts of the country, is the house band for this show. It’s the Gary Goin Band. There’ll be a ten piece band on that stage.

Will you be performing as well?

I’m not gonna be performing. I’m the host of the event. I interview people, though I talk about my career, certainly. Some of my material is performed and showcased. But I’m just like Jimmy Fallon, except a lot of this involves friends of mine. For instance, Stevie Wonder is going to sing a tribute to William Bell. I’m gonna refresh people on the success and the magnitude of success that Ray Parker, Jr. has had in his career. People don’t know. People don’t know that one of the most accomplished songs in the songbook of America is “Ghostbusters”. They don’t know that. They have no idea how well this man lives. Conversationally, it becomes extremely entertaining and informative for an audience to experience that. But then also to see that he’s still performing is also special.

William Bell… very few people in this area know the magnitude of William Bell’s success. They don’t know that he had a record company in the 2000’s that had a number one major record on the label that he started. And then he just won a Grammy this year. To be able to see a guy talk about his life and career and go through all that and get up on a stage and be able to perform in a quality way is a special thing. And then, how many people can see Stevie just sit on a couch and talk?

It has that personal dimension because you’ve known all these folks for years now.

Yes. Exactly. And see I’ll also be showing them some information on a nonprofit that I started in 2012, and why I started it and why I wanted to give something back. And what it all means and why it’s impacting lives and that whole thing. And so it’s gonna be an entertaining show, I can tell you that.

Well darn, I was hoping to hear you perform something off [1974 Stax album] Victim of the Joke?

Porcelan

Ha ha! Well, I still could do that but no, this is not me performing. This is me just showcasing and talking about other talents. And also I have an artist who’s on my new record label, Made In Memphis Entertainment (MIME): Porcelan, who is doing very well right now. She’ll be performing. And she’s a knockout. I mean she’s a tremendous talent. She’s a local Memphis talent who was performing with some of the booking agencies around here that have bands playing in the circuit for colleges and private parties and the like. And I heard about her and I wanted to hear her. Then I met her and was blown away. She’s 26 years old, just a beautiful young lady and extremely talented. And so we created an artist development with her and now we’ve got a record, “The Real Thing Don’t Change,” that’s getting noticed nationally. She’s a Memphis kid, born here in Memphis, went to Westwood High School in Memphis.
 

David Porter and Friends: Bringing Memphis to the World, and the World to Memphis


So MIME is quite distinct from the Consortium MMT?

Without a doubt. MIME has a 16,000 square foot building at 400 Union. We have three recording studios, state of the art. We have a roster right now of four artists, we’re gonna have as many as ten artists on our label. We just released the first record on Porcelan in September, we’re getting ready to release her album, as well as two others, the first quarter of 2018. I’m very excited about this company. 

MIME headquarters

Additionally I’m just really really pleased about being able to do something as a give back with the Consortium. What we wanted to do, and I wanted to do, was give a significant give-back that could carry on well into the future. So I developed a nonprofit that dealt with giving aspiring songwriters, record producers and recording artists an opportunity to learn from many of us that have had success doing it, whereby they can incorporate whatever their natural instincts are into what they do with this additional knowledge, and use that part of it that complements what they’re looking for. And so I started the program with a clearly focused emphasis on three areas: songwriting, recording and performing. And inside of that I developed a curriculum, for lack of a better word, that follows processes from A to Z with that.

It was not a profit center for me, I make no salary from it. Matter of fact, I started it with my own money. I got many of my friends who knew that I wanted to do this for the right reasons, and they were comfortable with giving their time to participate. So what I got them to do, I have 135 plus videos of some of the biggest names out there, talking about the steps they use in their various processes. For instance, Valerie Simpson, her and her husband, Nick Ashford, of Ashford and Simpson, in addition to being great artists they were great songwriters. So Valerie is on film in our catalog, talking about her creative steps as a songwriter. Jimmy Jam, who produced Janet Jackson, is another example. I have him on video talking about his steps in producing records. And what he does in order to make that effective. I have Philip Bailey, of Earth, Wind and Fire, talking about what artists need to do not only to preserve their voices, but to reinforce their voices in a more credible way to last through a long career in this business.

And the talents in the program, they have to do independent studies to show what they’ve learned. And then I sit down and talk with them individually about how their progress has gone, and if we feel that they could be a credible reflection of the talent pool that’s coming out of our area, we then lobby other record companies and music publishers to come look at these talents. We don’t sign any artists, they’re free to do whatever they wanna do with their music, and who they associate with. But we just try to better prepare them to be more effective. And the program is really impactful on young folks. In a really emotional way. I don’t wanna sound like people crying and that kinda thing, but it’s really like that because it’s really impacting people.

David Porter and Friends takes place on Saturday, November 11, 2017, at Horseshoe Tunica’s Bluesville Showcase Nightclub in Tunica, 8:00 pm.

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Sing All Kinds We Recommend

Stevie Wonder Honored at Epitome of Soul Awards

With literally thousands of songwriting credits, dozens of Grammys, and decades of musical experience assembled in one venue it’s hard to imagine that any single person would dominate the room with their mere presence, but despite his humble demeanor Stevie Wonder managed to do just that Saturday night at the inaugural Epitome of Soul Awards.

Held at the Cannon Center for the Preforming Arts and hosted by the Consortium MMT, a local nonprofit devoted to cultivating the Bluff City’s music industry, the event featured a lineup of celebrity singers performing lyrical tributes to Wonder while occasionally mixing in a few of their own songs that lead up to a performance by Wonder himself that brought the crowd to a thunderous roar at the intimate yet raucous venue.

“[We’re] recognizing the one who is the personification of the greatness that all artists inspire to be,” Consortium MMT founder and Songwriters Hall of Famer, David Porter said while presenting the award. “His lyrics and his messages are so powerful and profound that it is something not only to live by, but to love by.”

Close friend and 10 time Grammy winner, “Queen of Funk” Chaka Kahn was also on hand to present the award.
“He has been like a brother to me since I first started singing,” Kahn said. “I love him so much he’s like a guardian angel to me. He’s one of the few people in the world that can make me actually blush.”

But it was Wonder who, upon receiving the award, summed up the night in manner that only he could have.
“When we think about soul, we have these various categories,” Wonder said. “When they say R&B soul it normally means black, when you hear pop it normally means white, and it’s all funny to me because I’m not looking at either one of them.”
The first artist to preform was former “American Idol” winner and R&B singer, Jordin Sparks who opened with Wonder’s “Superstition.” The house band, which remained stationary during the flux of artists was anchored by former “The Tonight Show” bandleader, Rickey Minor.

Sharon Jones of Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings, was next up and preformed “Signed, Sealed Delivered, I’m Yours” and “Isn’t She Lovely.” Jones, who recently battled with pancreatic cancer, expressed her gratitude to be able to perform at the show cancer-free.

Ledisi had the crowd singing along to “All I Do,” and Eddie Levert of the O’Jays brought everyone to their feet when he performed his song “Backstabbers.” Next was BeBe Winans who sang “I Wish.”

The last act to perform before Wonder was Kahn, who at one point responded to an audience member’s profession of love with a coy “You don’t want none of this, honey” that reminded the crowd of her status as a preeminent diva. The atmosphere was electrifying during her rendition of “Tell Me Something Good,” which was actually penned by Wonder.
However, it was Wonder’s finale that truly demonstrated why he was chosen as the pioneer recipient of the award. The 64-year-old, 22-time Grammy winner captivated the crowd while seamlessly transitioning between different keyboards and harmonicas and performing hits like the crowd favorite “My Cherie Amor” before being joined on stage by several of the other artists to sing the Porter-penned tune “Soul Man,” and finally ending with the uplifting “Higer Ground.” 

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Sing All Kinds We Recommend

Stevie Wonder at the Cannon Center Saturday

“We have to be proud and start acting on that pride,” songwriter and performer David Porter says of Memphis and its soul music. “This music, and the brand value that soul music has for this city should be embraced and acted upon. I’m happy to see that many in this community are doing just that. That’s what I’m doing here.”

Porter, a fundamental Stax luminary whose songwriting with Isaac Hayes created the Memphis sound, founded Consortium MMT, a developmental effort to foster Memphis soul talent locally and to create connections with industry operators and performers at the national level. Porter partnered with the Memphis Chamber of Commerce and other sponsors to create the Consortium as a bridge between Memphis and big-time talent. There have been similar efforts. Where those lacked credibility, this effort is on another level. Witness the Consortium’s inaugural Epitome of Soul award ceremony honoring Stevie Wonder at the Cannon Center on Saturday, October 11th. Wonder will perform, along with Chaka Khan, Jordan Sparks, Sharon Jones, and others. The band will be led by Rickey Minor, bandleader for the Tonight Show and American Idol.

People may associate Wonder with Detroit and L.A. But he is an example of how Memphis soul reaches beyond the borders of Shelby County.

“Stevie loves what was being done at Stax Records,” Porter says. “About six years ago, when Stevie was in Memphis, he wanted to do a tour of the museum. Everybody knows who Stevie Wonder is. So the museum was closed down for a minute, and Isaac Hayes and I personally took Stevie Wonder through a tour of that museum. We explained to him everything that he was not able to see in such a way that it was an emotional experience for all of us.”

[jump]

Wonder will be the first recipient of the Epitome of Soul Award, an annual award to honor those who shaped soul music.

“The Epitome of Soul will be an award that we will present every year to someone of high credibility,” Porter says. “There is no greater example to launch this than Stevie Wonder. The fact that Stevie Wonder is the first recipient of this award sets the bar quite high. It also sets the bar for credibility of soul associated with Memphis. The award is the Epitome of Soul. Why not take it to Soulsville U.S.A.? Hi Records, Stax Records, American Studios, and all the great music that has out of this city, why not take it here?”

Memphis music once employed thousands of Memphians, and not just musicians, but recording, warehousing, pressing, and promotion folks as well. Industry consolidation and the Internet did a number on the music business. But Memphis’ identity is inextricably linked to music and influenced many musicians. Even Stevie Wonder.

Stevie Wonder at the Cannon Center Saturday

“We talk about what [ideas] we get from each other,” Porter says of Wonder. “He said, ‘Listen to ‘We Can Work It Out’ [from 1970s Signed Sealed & Delivered]. The bass pattern and the pattern of that was motivated from what I was listening to you guys do on Sam & Dave.’ He has a tremendous love for people. Anyone who knows Stevie knows that. Additionally, he loved the concept that I was putting together here in Memphis. So much so that he agreed to come here to support this. In order to appreciate that, you have to understand that Stevie Wonder does not work in 1800-seat venues. That’s not what he does.”

Well, he’s doing that for the Consortium MMT. And a Motowner isn’t the only counter-intuitive force behind Porter’s effort. The infamously private Southeastern Asset Management signed on as title sponsor of the Epitome of Soul Award. The Memphis Chamber of Commerce allocated office space in its building at 22 North Front to host the Consortium’s production and artist development tools. Those tools include audio-production equipment and another essential element: mentoring from those who have succeeded in the past. We are losing those eminences all too quickly, and the Consortium is working to preserve their insights and legacies with video interviews.

“Valerie Simpson, writer of ‘I’m Every Woman,’  and ‘Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing.’ She’s just one person who deals with the songwriting. Jimmy Jam, producer of Janet Jackson, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey … The list goes on and on. Recording artists: Earth, Wind & Fire, Phillip Bailey, Verdine White, Ralph Johnson, and Eric Benét. Bobby Womack. These are individuals we have on film. Even when Bobby was not well, he wanted to do this, and he filmed this. He gave some of his thoughts and ideas that we can use for as long as this program exists. So that is an example. We have 130-plus video vignettes of artists talking about the creative processes in songwriting, recording, and record production.”

Porter is aware of the earlier efforts to accomplish this and says he’d be on the golf course if he wasn’t convinced it would work.

“The thing that needs to be expressed is that there are a lot of wonderful people who want to support the arts. And I’m talking about private citizens, just people. They want there to be meaningful outcomes when they do support it. What I wanted to see happen was not just to come up with an organization that would encourage young folks and all of that, but also to come up with some deliverables at the end for all of their hard work. A component of what we are doing is putting together a pool of credible talents in songwriting, record producing, and recording and having that focused. So when we go talk to industry assets that are serious about looking for talent, we have at least one place that they can go to and hear and see a pool of vetted talent by credible industry professionals. That way, there is credibility in Memphis that they can easily see.”

Porter had a pivotal role in shaping Memphis’ musical legacy. But he is focused on the role he can play in shaping the future.

“You can’t keep living in the past,” he says. “You’ve got to deal with the future. My answer to that is that, one day, the future will be the past. If you are wise, you will take advantage of all that was in the past to set an even more solid foundation for your future. Having the energies that caused success to happen in years past, integrating that with young people who have ambitions was something that could be done. I felt that I could be one of the facilitators for that.” 

Stevie Wonder at the Cannon Center Saturday (2)

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Music Music Features

Master Blaster

Despite being blind since infancy and surviving the duel depredations of a hardscrabble east Detroit upbringing and child stardom to become one of the most celebrated pop musicians in recorded history, Steveland Judkins “Stevie Wonder” Morris doesn’t have a biography that can match the torment or weirdness of Ray Charles, James Brown, Al Green, Prince, or Michael Jackson. And, right, he missed out on the mythologizing that early death provided to Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, and Marvin Gaye.

Like his onetime Motown elder Smokey Robinson, he’s a relative normal (no, I haven’t forgotten about Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants) and a lifer whose music suggests those rather unexciting qualities. And also, right, a genius.

These days, Wonder is too often thought of — when thought of at all — as the Grammy-certified embodiment of middlebrow respectability: neither a hip-hop/neo-soul touchstone (like Gaye) nor a totem of crossover hip (like Brown).

But who else in soul/R&B has produced a deeper, more wide-ranging catalog? And how many can match his longevity? No other R&B artist who was making notable pop music when Wonder debuted, at age 12, with 1963’s “Fingertips (Part 2)” was still much of a factor well into the ’80s, much less 2005. That was when Wonder released the unexpectedly solid A Time To Love, his first proper studio album in a decade and an album that, aside from its few nods to hip-hop, could have been released in 1977 without sounding terribly out of place.

Wonder’s embrace of the middlebrow genteel — and its even more fervent returning affection — made him an institution during his fecund adult prime in the ’70s and well into an ’80s now best remembered for his soupy but somewhat underrated soundtrack smash “I Just Called To Say I Love You.” But that reputation overshadows how much of a politically tough-minded, musically idiosyncratic groove machine he was at his peak. And, perhaps just as much as the larger social forces coming to bear, he was the primal force that changed Motown, musically and in a business sense, in the incredibly fertile five-year period (1971-1976) after he turned 21 and seized control of his career, culminating with the overreaching but often brilliant double-record-and-then-some Songs in the Key of Life.

Some highlights of a discography ripe for rediscovery:

Love songs: Pre-emancipation Motown singles “I Was Made To Love Her” and “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” are well-oiled vehicles for Wonder’s irrepressible and — by Motown’s early standards — nearly chaotic vocal performance. But Wonder’s best love songs might be those that bookend what is, despite the elevated reputations of Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life, his best album, 1972’s Talking Book. The opening “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” its synth-and-bongos intro the unlikely sound of a waking epiphany, might be the most wholly beautifully record he ever made. The closing “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)” is a romantic hymn hypnotic in its repetitions.

Political songs: Aside from an early, Motown-mold-breaking Dylan cover (“Blowin’ in the Wind”), the then-19-year-old Wonder made his first foray into political pop with 1970’s “Heaven Help Us All,” singing someone else’s words over too-intrusive gospel-styled backing vocals and making them sound a lot tougher and smarter than they really were. On his own after that, Wonder proved a more astute commentator. Innervisions‘ “Living for the City” is an epic, personalized allegory for the civil rights movement that makes pained acknowledgement of its lost momentum. Wonder then devoted the second strongest synth riff of his career to the Nixon-era admonishment “You Haven’t Done Nothin’,” a fed-up lament that’s lost little bite or relevance in subsequent decades.

Groove records: With the possible exception of Wonder-inheritor Prince, there may not be a modern R&B musician who so fully absorbed the variety of the black music canon. With its sassy, swinging horn fanfare, shout-outs to the greats (adding Glenn Miller to Ellington, Basie, and Armstrong), and joyful interjections from Wonder himself, “Sir Duke” captures this better than anything, though Wonder would extend his jazz tribute across 10 minutes of “Do I Do” with Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet. “Boogie On Reggae Woman” was a fruitful nod to the Jamaican contribution to the black pop diaspora, but Wonder topped it with 1980’s “Master Blaster (Jammin’),” still probably the best non-Jamaican reggae record ever. “Higher Ground” is a funk workout not even the Red Hot Chili Peppers could ruin. And on Talking Book‘s “Maybe Your Baby,” Wonder multi-tracks his own vocal into a trance-like rhythmic abstraction.

Devotional songs: Vocally, musically, and philosophically, Wonder may have been soul music’s least gospel-influenced star, at least through his own prime years. Songs in the Key of Life opens like Sunday morning, with the one-man-backing-choir of “Love’s in Need of Love Today” and the personal devotional “Have a Talk With God.” But, more often, Wonder found the spiritual in the form of others: Martin Luther King Jr. on the joyous “Happy Birthday,” a special someone who spurs contentment on the lovely “For Once in My Life,” and, most of all, a newborn daughter on “Isn’t She Lovely?”

Visionary, mystical, or otherwise beyond classification: “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” probably rivals latter Motown discovery Michael Jackson’s (and the Jackson Five’s) “I Want You Back” as the greatest kid-pop ever recorded. A 15-year-old Wonder runs roughshod over a locomotive Motown groove, yelping, “Got empty pockets, you see, I’m a poor man’s son!” at the climax of a conventional poor-boy-rich-girl love story turned into something more. “Visions” is Wonder’s ultimate testament of faith in this world, more affecting for how matter-of-fact it is, a blind man’s meditation on the certainty of leaves changing from green to brown. And “Superstition” is probably one of the greatest pop records: such a tough, gritty, and synthesized groove paired with an equally tough, questioning lyric about religion (“You believe in things you don’t understand, then you suffer”) that it would take more than a decade for another black pop musician to take up.