Music: Black, Blind and on Top of Pop

"What is it, Stevie?" the folks would ask as they dropped a coin on the kitchen table. Though only five, Stevie would chirp right back: "Dime" ... "Nickel" ..."Quarter"—whatever it was. That was more of a feat than it might seem. Steveland Morris had been blind since birth. He had also been unstoppable. By the time he was two, spoons in hand, Stevie was beating away rhythmically on pans and tabletops, or on dime-store cardboard drums. At nine, he was singing and playing harmonica up and down the Detroit ghetto streets, and being eased out of the church choir for singing rock 'n' roll. Three years later, he had become the "twelve-year-old genius" of Motown Records, the black pop giant. Rechristened Little Stevie Wonder, he was a strutting, shimmying minibopper who rode to the top of the record charts and $1 million in sales with a rhythm-and-blues shouter called Fingertips, Part 2:

Evvybody say yeah,

Say yeah, say yeah ...

Clap yo'hands

Just a little bit louder...

Today Stevie Wonder no longer needs to coax applause. At 23, he is the prince regent of soul, a slender, 6 ft.-plus superstar in an Afro, whose songs about love, evil, oppression, freedom, Jesus and promised lands are a kind of ecumenical apotheosis of the blues. Still blind, Wonder in the eleven years of his professional career has distilled a wide array of black and white musical styles into a hugely popular personal idiom that emphatically defines where pop is at right now.

As a result, Wonder has become what the trade calls a "monster," a star who can automatically fill any arena or stadium and whose records, both in the stores and on radio, transcend musical categories in their appeal. He has had 20 hit singles and eleven bestselling albums, and now he is a multimillionaire. A month ago at the Grammy Awards show in Los Angeles, the record industry's equivalent of the annual Oscar presentations, he came close to turning the affair into a one-man show by copping four major awards. The prizes included best pop vocal performance by a male for his interpretation of his own song, You Are the Sunshine of My Life, and album of the year for Wonder's most recent LP, Innervisions.

In a crazy-quilt pop era that salutes everything from transvestite glitter and sadomasochism to Rocky Mountain fresh air and the Andrews Sisters, Wonder has managed the considerable task of establishing himself as both a hot commercial property and an authentic voice. Being black, blind and up from poverty entitles him, of course, to say that he has been there and back. A near-fatal auto accident outside Winston-Salem, N.C., last August has threatened to turn saga into legend. Stevie was riding in the front seat of his car when a log tore loose from a truck, crashed through the windshield and struck him in the forehead. He was pried from the wreck bloody and unconscious, and lay in a coma for a week. Friends knew that he was going to make it only when his aide, Ira Tucker Jr., knelt down next to Wonder's ear, started singing his song Higher Ground ("God is gonna show you higher ground/ He's the only friend you have around"), and Stevie's fingers slowly began moving in time to the music.