“Amazing”: The moment Stevie Wonder finally got to sing with Tony Bennett
Consistency is a double-edged sword within the musical realm; a sustained level of quality is nothing to be sniffed at, but at the same time, you have to have some kind of diversity in your offerings if you want to move forward. Luckily, for the listeners of the world, Motown hero and songwriting genius Stevie Wonder has been consistently able to balance those two qualities.
Going right back to his teenage years at Motown, when the rather patronising adjective ‘Little’ preceded his name, Wonder has always refused to remain in one avenue of inspiration for too long. Particularly, in fact, when his contract negotiations began to afford him more creative freedom during the early 1970s, his innovative, trailblazing output seemed to know no bounds, putting him on a well-deserved pedestal as one of the most consistently inventive soul artists to grace the airwaves.
With that spectacular kind of output, of course, Wonder also began to earn the adoration and respect of his fellow artists, including some of his ultimate heroes. Not only did the R&B forefather, Ray Charles, give Wonder his much-coveted seal of approval, but one of the songwriter’s all-time favourite performers, Tony Bennett, was also an avid supporter of the Motown superstar.
By the time that Wonder started pushing his way into the pop charts, Bennett was already among the most lauded performers in America, having established himself as one of its premier jazz crooners back in the 1950s. Unlike some of his contemporaries, though, he never seemed to resent the shifting sands of the music industry or the emerging scenes that brought forth performers like Stevie Wonder.
Bennett had such an appreciation for Wonder, in fact, that the pair ended up recording a duet together back in 2006, reimagining one of the most beloved shared songs in their respective repertoires, ‘For Once in My Life’. Despite Wonder’s 1968 version being undoubtedly the most famous version of the track, it was Bennett’s version the year prior that was the first to break into the pop charts, having been written for Motown a few years before.
Talking to a beaming Larry King about the song during a 2013 interview, Wonder recalled, “The song was always a great song, number one. I heard it [for the first time] I think when I was 14-years-old.”
Inevitably, though, the legendary track has followed Wonder through his life and career: “The amazing thing was that years would go by, and time would move and things would happen in life, and then for me to do it again with the great Tony Bennett.”
Not only did that 2006 recording, featured on Bennett’s Duets: An American Classic album, give Wonder the chance to revisit some of his earlier years, it also provided him with an opportunity to work with one of his ultimate heroes. As he shared, “[Bennett] was someone that I have consistently admired, his singing, amazing.”
For their incredible collaboration, Wonder and Bennett received a Grammy Award in 2007, but that accolade was secondary, as far as the Motown legend was concerned, to the great honour of being able to perform alongside a figure of unparalleled inspiration, Tony Bennett.
