Stevie Wonder - The Jazz Soul Of Little Stevie! (Remastered) (2019) [Hi-Res]

The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie is the debut studio album by Stevie Wonder (then billed as Little Stevie Wonder) released in September 1962 on the Tamla Motown label.

The album showcases the 12-year-old Wonder's talents as a composer and instrumentalist, and it's one of two Wonder studio albums on which he doesn't sing (the other being Eivets Rednow); he is featured on percussion, the keyboard, and the harmonica. Wonder's mentors Clarence Paul and Henry Cosby wrote and produced the material on The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie Wonder, with the young Wonder himself also co-writing two of the compositions. The original studio version of "Fingertips" is included on the album; a live version would become Wonder's first hit single.

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AllMusic Review by Bruce Eder
Stevie Wonder's debut album, released when he was 11, is still an amazing musical document, showcasing his skills as a percussionist (drums and bongos), chromatic harmonica player, keyboardist (piano and organ), and composer -- and he was prodigious in all four categories. All of these skills are highlighted throughout this record, and Wonder's youthful, exuberant voice had a maturity suggesting that greatness was around the corner. Perhaps most surprising to contemporary listeners will be the emphasis on instrumentals, which made this a fairly unusual album by Motown standards to begin with. Apart from a few shouts in the background in some of the more free-form tracks, there's not a vocal to be heard here, yet the sounds are rich and diverse enough that one never misses them. What's more, a lot of what's here is extremely sophisticated instrumental music for its time, and the "jazz" reference in the title is not a matter of optimistic convenience or self-aggrandizement -- a lot of this is legitimate jazz.

Tracklist:
01. Stevie Wonder - Fingertips (Remastered) (3:00)
02. Stevie Wonder - The Square (Remastered) (3:04)
03. Stevie Wonder - Soul Bongo (Remastered) (2:22)
04. Stevie Wonder - Manhattan At Six (Remastered) (3:48)
05. Stevie Wonder - Paulsby (Remastered) (2:48)
06. Stevie Wonder - Some Other Time (Remastered) (5:11)
07. Stevie Wonder - Wondering (Remastered) (2:53)
08. Stevie Wonder - Session Number 112 (Remastered) (3:18)
09. Stevie Wonder - Bam (Remastered) (3:34)
10. Stevie Wonder - I Call It Pretty Music But The Old People Call It The Blues, Pt. 1 (Remastered) (2:32)
11. Stevie Wonder - I Call It Pretty Music But The Old People Call It The Blues, Pt. 2 (Remastered) (2:50)
12. Stevie Wonder - Little Water Boy [Promo Version] (Remastered) (2:36)
13. Stevie Wonder - La La La La La (Remastered) (2:19)
14. Stevie Wonder - Contract On Love (Remastered) (2:14)