Stevie Wonder - Hotter Than July
#473
By Brian Kushnir with special guest Tom Mott
September 29 1980
Stevie Wonder, “Hotter Than July”
Genre: Stevie Wonder On His Stevie Wonder Game
Allen’s Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Brian’s Rating: 4.5 of 5
Highlights:
Did I Hear You Say You Love Me
Master Blaster (Jammin’)*
Do Like You
Cash in Your Face
Happy Birthday
Early summer 2020. Just ahead of the massive social upheaval and protests over racial inequality in the states, my editor hands me a disc to review, Stevie Wonder’s “Hotter Than July.” I was instantly excited - Stevie Wonder!
And then, the reckoning came and I started asking myself questions.
Why didn’t I listen to this when it came out? Did I have a blind spot in my musical upbringing and was there some bias at work there that had kept me away from Hotter Than July? Most likely it was because I was 13 at the time and “soul music,” let alone soul music that grappled with heavy duty black-community issues wasn’t on my radar. KMEL was (and still is) the soul station in the Bay Area and I just wasn’t spending time at that end of the dial.
40 years later, on a steady diet of New Orleans Funk and Soul (via the excellent series from Soul Jazz Records and multiple trips to Jazz Fest) and “Hotter Than July” is squarely in the wheelhouse of my daily jams, so relentlessly pleasing to listen to with catchy melodies, great playing through and through - dare I say it was both ahead of its time and completely necessary for its time.
The tunes are here! Stevie had come off a disappointing release prior to this one, “Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants” and “Whither Wonder?” may have been scribbled in all the hip writers notebooks. The tunes here suggest he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder.
He also had a social movement in mind and wanted to support the campaign to recognize Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday with a national holiday. And to pay tribute to a young Jamaican singer by the name of Bob Marley who he had toured with.
I pulled on up to The Listening Post with Tom Mott as I wanted to listen to this with him.
B: I once took a plane to Detroit. It was a red eye, the only time I’ve actually been to Detroit. When I woke up, and staggered bleary eyed to the terminal, I realized that Stevie Wonder was right in front of me. It was like 5 am. I thought, I just slept like 5 feet away from Stevie Motherfucking Wonder.
“Did I Hear You Say You Love Me”
T: Wow! This is funky!!!! I don’t know this song! Holy cow! It’s a great, classic Stevie Wonder song. I don’t know why this wasn’t a single. This is Commodores style 1980 funky jammin’. I know Stevie’s mid-70s stuff of course. And LOVE it.
B: Sir Duke, etc? Higher Ground? LIving For The City?
T: Yes! I and his less-good 80s stuff. This album is uncharted territory for me. I’ve never heard it before. I hope the whole album is like this.
B: It also has serious ear worm potential. It’s funny, my Dad played “Innervisions” a lot when I was a kid and it came out, I loved that album. And then, by the time this came out, I was just not into Stevie. Because I was into lame stuff that a 13 year old in Sunnyvale would be listening to. Loverboy, Journey, Sammy Hagar…
T: We were a Sir Duke family. My brothers and I were all horn players.
It’s got Horns. Cowbells. Timbales. Congas. This a super grooving opener, in which Stevie is right up front with his lover about his needs - no passive aggressive bs for him, “If you love me honey let me hear you say it!”
This segues directly into “All I Do” one of a handful of slow jams. “All I do, Is Think About You.” It has to be said Stevie you’re a little OCD in the first couple songs with your loving demands. Tell me you love me because all I’m doing is thinking about you. Since the songs are kind of mashed together one can only speculate that this is a part of a song cycle. The third song of which is …
“Rocket Love,” and now we’ve got a curious choice, the second slow jam in a row, this time a Fender Rhodes and swooping strings driven latin rhythm and the woman Stevie is singing to is this time letting him down hard. She’s unfortunately dropped him back to this “cold cold world.”
B: Theme from Taxi perhaps?
T: Yup. But also … bad 80s jazz
B: It’s like a slowed down version of Copacabana. Cue strings.
T; I like strings in my Donna Summer classics. But this is weird. Like someone heard “we need strings” and accidentally hired Bernard Hermann.
B: But the version from High Anxiety rather than Psycho?
T: The percussion is TIGHT. That triangle is on point. Unintentional pun.
So… Stevie says f’ it and takes on the persona and vocal stylings of a Cowboy.
“Ain’t Gonna Stand For It”
B: This is like a precursor to “Old Town Road.” The Country Vocals!
T: This bassline rips! OK, this song jams. I see why it was a single
B: Stevie knows how to write a hit song.
T: It’s like “Hey, Sir Duke mixed funk and big band. Let’s try funk and country” and it mostly works.
B: Wait go back to 3:25
T: RAWK! Right before the awesome bass breakdown
“Master Blaster (Jammin')”
This starts with a sparse reggae drum fill and a few bars of just drums, I had to look up who played on this because my first thought was it was Stevie himself. But no, it was ...Dennis Davis, who was David Bowie’s drummer on most of his work from the mid-70s through Scary Monsters. Holy cow. This is Stevie’s tribute to Africa and Bob Marley that also references Bob Marley’s original Song “Jammin’.” Hugely influential in Tom Mott’s life… I’ll let him tell it.
T: OK -- my one connection to this album. I had a brief romance in 1994 with a tall, curvy, beautiful valkyrie. A real “R Crumb” woman. This was her go-to “let’s get this party started” song. So … it gets a 10,000/5. Hotter than July!!
B: (Sweating). That sounds like a good memory. This song is awesome. He channels Bob Marley.
T: It is awesome. And I wouldn’t have pegged it as a “let’s get the party going” song. I always went for the disco tunes or Fame & Fashion Bowie for that. (author’s note: THE SAME DRUMMER on all of these!!!!)
B: (Naively) Could this qualify for “requisite 80s cover” in a way? It’s kind of a reworking of Bob Marley’s song.
T: Naah. It’s such a different song. Aside: Nathan Watts is delivering the goods again on bass
B: This triplet thing toward the end is exactly what Bob Marley does in his version of Jammin. Just saying.
T: It’s more like “variations on a jammin’ theme” than a straight-up cover though
Starting with juice and love songs, the album winds down with a trio of songs of struggle that demand social justice (“Cash in Your Face” and “Happy BIrthday”) and also find him on the outs with his lover (“Lately.”)
“Cash In Your Face”
B: The basic track for this would be a killer sample for someone in a couple years probably - mid 80s?
T: Oh God, the lyrics are heartbreaking. How is this so timely 40 years later?!?!? :-(
B: This album is actually very timely from a couple perspectives most notably Happy Birthday coming up.
T: I was re-reading “Working” by Studs Terkel this morning, and some of the interviews with Black workers in Chicago are completely devastating.
B: Oh, I haven’t read that.
T: It’s amazing. Highly recommended. AMAZING
What can I say about Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday?” I will go on a limb here and say that “Happy BIrthday” by Stevie Wonder is perhaps one of the most influential songs of our time. You may disagree but how many songwriters have written a song that leads to an annual national holiday? In fact the entire inner sleeve of the “Hotter Than July” packaging was entirely dedicated to the campaign to recognize Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday with a holiday, which was achieved in 1983. Some may say the song is overly simplistic, but to me it was a wise choice by Stevie to make it packaged from the start for memefication and action. Besides the achievement of the holiday it's now a part of black culture - the ‘black Happy Birthday.’ So….let’s go to Japan and see what the folks over there think.
B: When I lived in Japan during the 90s, we would often get together with friends for Happy Hour at El Torito. There’s actually an approximation of an El Torito in Tokyo. When you order chips and salsa they give you 4 Doritos chips and a spoon full of salsa which you gratefully receive for your $5 because this is Japan and Mexico is very very far away. Every time someone had a birthday recognized by the restaurant, they would play “Happy Birthday” by Stevie Wonder and the crowd would go wild singing along. I don’t think they knew it was a social justice song.
T: HAHAHAHAHA. It’s a little bit like the Mickey Mouse Happy Birthday song, which I’m SURE was modeled on this. Still. It’s better than “Birthday” by the Beatles which is easily my least favorite Beatles song ever. By far. I #$#$% hate that song.
B: Yeah this is better than the Beatles Birthday Song. Why do they have to one up you by saying “it is my birthday too?”
*Requisite 80’s cover
https://open.spotify.com/album/1ZuQduJGh0lBynUsfzD1tH?si=nxLo9TbzRUu-N1jcE8YyQQ
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