10 Things You Didn’t Know About Stevie Wonder

As one of the best-selling recording artists of all time, Stevie Wonder has lived quite the life.

Born in Saginaw, Michigan in 1950, Wonder fell into music at an early age and had a record deal at age 11. A multi-instrumentalist, compelling vocalist and ahead-of-his-time songwriter, Wonder wasted little time proving his talent. Within just a couple of years, he was a charting artist, on his way to becoming one of the most decorated musicians ever — not that the awards were the point for Wonder.

“I’m a lover of music, constantly curious about the sounds I hear,” he told Oprah Winfrey in 2004. “I’m always thinking about how I can take my music to the next level. It isn’t about selling millions of CDs or making millions of dollars. God has given me an incredible gift — the gift of music — and it’s a blessing that’s self-contained. I can go anywhere in the world with absolutely nothing and I can still find a keyboard and play. No matter what, no one can take that away from me.”

As famous as he is, there are probably some things you didn’t know about Wonder. Here are 10 of them.

1. His Legal Name Is Stevland Hardaway Morris

We’ll start with something straightforward: Wonder’s name at birth was Stevland Hardaway Judkins. In 1961, however, he was signed to Motown and his legal surname was changed to Morris, which was reportedly an old family name. It was Berry Gordy, founder of Motown, who came up with the stage name Stevie Wonder. “When I first saw Stevie, I did not think that he was a great singer,” Gordy said to Rolling Stone in 1990. “He was 10 or 11 years old, and he was not anything that special with his voice, but his talent was great. His harmonica playing was phenomenal. But I was worried that when he got to 13 or 14, his voice would change and we wouldn’t even have that. But lucky for us, it changed for the better.”

 

2. ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ Nearly Didn’t Get Made

Imagine a world in which 1976’s Songs in the Key of Life does not exist. No “Sir Duke,” no “Isn’t She Lovely,” no nothing. That was very nearly the case because Wonder, in 1975, was seriously considering leaving the music business entirely, moving to Ghana and helping children there with disabilities. Admirable, certainly, but ultimately he decided to move ahead with music and wrote one of the biggest R&B albums in history. (He became a citizen of Ghana in 2024 and, at the time of this writing, lives there.)

 

3. He Is the Youngest Solo Artist to Have a No. 1 Chart Song

The only thing more impressive than having a No. 1 hit song is having one at 13 years of age, which Wonder accomplished with the song “Fingertips” in 1963. That makes him, to date, the youngest artist ever to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Fun fact: Marvin Gaye played the drums on that track, both in studio and on live versions.

 

4. He Has 25 Grammys to His Name

At the time of this writing in May of 2025, Wonder holds the No. 8 spot for most Grammy wins. He has 25 of them to his name, to be exact, and he was also given a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996. Wonder is one of just four artists who have won the Grammy for Album of the Year at least three times as the main credited artist, along with Taylor Swift, Paul Simon and Frank Sinatra.

 

5. He Was Not Born Blind

Wonder was not actually born blind. He was born six weeks premature and, as a result of too much oxygen pumped into his hospital incubator, developed retinopathy of prematurity or ROP. It affects eye growth and can cause damage to the retina. Not that being blind has ever made Wonder think twice about what he wanted to do and accomplish in life. “Do you know, it’s funny,” he said to The Guardian in 2012, “but I never thought of being blind as a disadvantage, and I never thought of being Black as a disadvantage. I am what I am. I love me! And I don’t mean that egotistically – I love that God has allowed me to take whatever it was that I had and to make something out of it.”

 

6. He Was the First Person to Own the E-MU Emulator

There are certain perks to being Stevie Wonder, like being the first musician to ever receive the E-MU Emulator sampling synthesizer in the early ’80s. (Other high profile artsits who would go on to use an E-MU Emulator in their work include David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Yes and many others.) Actually, the first one — serial number 001 — had originally been promised to Daryl Dragon of Captain and Tennille, but Wonder was simply the more famous name. And for Wonder, it was a way to more efficiently bring his visions to life in the studio. “I wanted something where you could bend sounds,” he said to Rolling Stone in 2021, “do more with them, be more creative, not just have them be sterile sounds.”

 

7. A 1973 Car Accident Caused Wonder to Temporarily Lose His Sense of Taste and Smell

On Aug. 6, 1973, just three days after the release of his highly successful album Innervisions, Wonder was involved in a terrible car accident that put him in a coma for four days. (Wonder had been in a car being driven by his cousin John Wesley Harris when it crashed into the back of a flatbed truck outside Salisbury, N.C.) The accident also resulted in the partial loss of his sense of smell and a temporary loss of his sense of taste. He eventually recovered both and was back to performing, albeit against doctor’s orders, in November of 1973.

 

8. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday Is a Federal Holiday Because of Stevie Wonder

The very first Martin Luther King Jr. Day took place in 1986 and has been landing on the third Monday of January every year since. Wonder is largely responsible for that being the case. Back in 1979, Wonder called up King’s widow, Coretta Scott King. “I said to her, you know, ‘I had a dream about this song. And I imagined in this dream I was doing this song. We were marching, too, with petition signs to make for Dr. King’s birthday to become a national holiday,'” he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in 2011. Coretta was unsure, but the year after that, Wonder released a single in tribute to King, “Happy Birthday,” which was used at rallying events. Thousands of signatures were collected, and both Wonder and Coretta testified in support of their campaign before Congress and eventually got it passed.

 

9. He Is the Only Artist in Grammy History to Win Album of the Year With Three Consecutive Albums

Wonder has not only won Album of the Year at the Grammys multiple times, he holds a very specific title in relation to that award. As previously mentioned, he is one of a very small handful of artists to have won the award at least three times, but Wonder is actually the only artist to win the award with three consecutive album releases: Innervisions (1974), Fulfillingness’ First Finale (1975) and Songs in the Key of Life (1977).

 

10. He Is Vegan

What fuels Wonder? Literally, a vegan diet, which he has followed for several years now. “People have to make their choices in life, and so I say for me, it feels good to not eat meat,” he once said. “I think you have to do what is going to be healthy for your body. And I think that, when I read my word [God’s word], it talks about how the fruit and the various plants of the Earth were made for us to perpetuate our lives – I like that.”