The song that woke Stevie Wonder up out of his coma: “This dude is going to make it”
Often, when people are asked about their first musical memory, they are likely to offer some embellished account that usually involves an incredibly high-brow artist and an overly emotional moment. I don’t know the specifics, but I do know the first music I heard was Stevie Wonder‘s. His music filled the halls in which I grew up with joy, through multi-layered instrumentation and vibrant production techniques and enveloped my day-to-day experiences.
Looking back, I think I attribute it to his rhythm specifically. If I think of the songs that struck a chord in my infancy, they were all rhythm powerhouses that helped me put one foot in front of the other.
But it was the offbeats of his 1973 track ‘Higher Ground’ that seemed to resonate with me more than the rest of his discography. At 126 beats per minute, his funk masterpiece felt almost in sync with my walking tempo, injecting me with energy between each step while occupying my attention with its reverberated melody in between. Despite the glossy and well-thought-out embellishments, something about the song felt innately primal to me.
Perhaps my primal response emanates from the song’s genesis, born from that very idea? After a car accident, Wonder spent ten days in a coma, leaving his friends, family and fans in a constant state of panic as the signs pointed towards a fatal outcome. When Wonder’s friend and tour director, Ira Tucker, stopped by the hospital, he played him a brief section of ‘Higher Ground’ in the hope it might provoke a subtle response.
“The first time I didn’t get any response,” explained Tucker. But he persisted, as all friends with hope would do in that situation and returned to play the same song. “The next day I went back and I got right down in his ear and sang ‘Higher Ground’,” stated Tucker. “His hand was resting on my arm, and after a while, his fingers started going in time with the song. I said, Yeah! Yeeeeaaah! This dude is going to make it.”
126 beats per minute seemed to be a comfortable tempo for the seduced Wonder, who later recovered from his accident to finish his 1973 record Innervisions to great success. While the song never directly alludes to any sort of divine intervention, its lyrics can be fairly decoded as a message for prosperity and resilience in the face of whatever social adversity presents itself. And so you’d be forgiven for thinking Wonder added the lyrics to the track after awaking from his coma, but it was quite the opposite.
He said, “For me, I wrote ‘Higher Ground’ even before the accident. But something must have been telling me that something was going to happen to make me aware of a lot of things and to get myself together”.
Without the specific context for the writing, it remains one of Wonder’s finest songs to date. Perfectly balancing his penchant for off-beat rhythm sections with the sort of innovative production techniques he was injecting into 1970s soul. But, I guess we have Ira Tucker to thank for making sure we didn’t lose the song, along with Wonder himself.
