Syreeta - 1972 - Syreeta

Syreeta

1972

Syreeta

01. I Love Every Liitle Thing About You

02. Black Maybe

03. Keep Him Like He Is

04. Happiness

05. She’s Leaving Home

06. What Love Has Joined Together

07. How Many Days

08. Baby Don’t You Let Me Lose This

09. To Know You Is To Love You

Producer – Stevie Wonder

Arranged By – Stevie Wonder, Trevor Lawrence, Yusuf Rahman

Backing Vocals – Gloria Barley (tracks: A1, A3, B2), James Gilstrap (tracks: A1, A3, B2), Lani Groves (tracks: A1, A3, B2), Linda Tucker (tracks: A1, A3, B2)

Bass – Scott Edwards (tracks: A1 to A4, B2 to B5)

Drums – Keith Copeland (tracks: A1 to A4, B2 to B5)

Guitar – Buzzy Feiton (tracks: A1 to A4, B2 to B5)

All Other Instruments – S. Wonder

Strings – Julian Gaillard Orchestra

Without doubt one of the best female vocalist albums ever made, Yet still it remains largely overlooked as a Stevie Wonder side-project withhis then wife Syreeta. Syreeta’s incredibly delicate voice fits perfectly with Stevie’s experimental use of synthesisers. Margouleff andCecil are credited as synth programmers and TONTO is clearly at work in the very opening bars of the album with a wonderful electronic rhythmic effect. The Moog basslines growl throughout – the first two tracks in particular are awash with Stevie’s synth playing – and the use of real strings on Keep Him Like He Is and What Love Has Joined Together givethis album a powerful uplifting feel despite its daring experimentation.

After growing up in Pittsburgh, Syreeta moved to Detroit, where she joined Motown Records with receptionist duties, while contributing vocals in singles by The Supremes and Martha and The Vandellas. As Rita Wright she released "I Can't Give Back the Love I Feel For You", written and produced by Ashford & Simpson with Brian Holland. The single did well enough to convince Motown Records' president Berry Gordy that she could replace Diana Ross when she left the trio in 1970; but it was her association (and marriage) with Stevie Wonder that brought her wider recognition. They co-wrote several hits (Wonder's "If You Really Love Me", "Signed, Sealed, Delivered", "Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer" and "Superwoman", and "It's a Shame" and "We'll Have It Made" for The Spinners) and he produced her cult debut album Syreeta (on the MoWest label), followed by the classic Stevie Wonder Presents Syreeta. They were divorced in 1972 and Syreeta married drummer Curtis Robertson Jr., but she continued working with Wonder, as well as with Leon Ware and Richard Perry. In 1979 she had a Top 5 pop hit with Billy Preston, the love ballad "With You I'm Born Again", from the 1979 comedy Fast Break. They recorded two albums together and released other singles, but in 1983, after The Spell, an album produced by Jermaine Jackson, Syreeta left Motown. She briefly joined the group Karma with Robertson, and worked only occasionally as guest vocalist in movie soundtracks and albums by musicians as Gary Bartz, George Harrison and Donald Byrd, among many others. She is considered one of the most talented and best voices Motown Records ever had under contract.

Around the time this album was made, Stevie Wonder and Syreeta Wright's marriage was on the rocks, culminating in their divorce before its release. However they remained on amicable terms and after Syreeta had effectively relaunched Stevie's career in what was to be even in its much briefer period the most creatively thriving husband-wife partnership in popular music after Richard and Linda Thompson, he felt naturally inclined to repay the favour in getting Syreeta's solo recording career up and running. Not surprisingly, there's quite a bit of overlap in personnel between this album and Stevie's surrounding ones of the same year; he uses the same co-producers as on Music of My Mind and Talking Book, three of the backing singers and the bass player that were to appear on the evergreen You Are the Sunshine of My Life, and Buzz Feiton who plays on Superwoman and Looking for Another Pure Love, also feature prominently, with curiously the bell tree performed by the same Trevor Lawrence who plays the famous saxophone part on Superstition. Sonically it also has much in common with Stevie's 1972 LPs, with him playing the majority of the instruments, including his tried and trusted synthesizers, the talk box and other innovative devices.

However, in most other respects this is where the similarities end. Despite plenty of fine songs and performances and Stevie contributing six of the songs (three of them as the sole writer), the album just doesn't flow together to anything like the extent as Music of My Mind let alone Talking Book - you'll likely get an equally enjoyable experience sampling the songs at random than listening to them in order as at times it feels like this album is more a platform for exercising Stevie's songwriting, producing and instrumental talents as a warm up for his next big project than a cohesive artistic statement - even some of his own Motown controlled albums had more logical sequencing. And not all of his compositions are vintage Stevie by a long shot - How Many Days is easily the worst of them, a waterered down cross between You and I and Something Out of the Blue, with the unfortunate combination of sounding even more dated than the latter while still looking forward to the overwrought, melismatic female fronted power ballads that plagued the charts in the 1980s. Songs like the funky electronic remake of I Love Everything About You and voicebox-dominated cover of She's Leaving Home are more interesting as production experiments than providing an emotional experience, and while the former is enjoyably upbeat and actually remarkably ahead of its time, almost anticipating the remix-oriented genres of the 1990s, the latter after a pleasant opening minute with just Syreeta and a nice guitar-imitating clavinet part in what initially appears to be a respectful Beatles tribute from the chorus onwards becomes an ill-conceived mess which seems to be just weirdness for weirdness' sake; the "Goodbye" coda is particularly cringe-making when Syreeta decides to join in with Stevie for the talk box lark. Apart from I Love Everything About You and To Know You is To Love You, the style is predominantly soft, slow to mid tempo soulful love themed pop with some of Stevie's typical harmonic sophistication; to some extent the same could be said about his surrounding albums, but this has nothing like their anguished edge - it's mostly very pleasant listening, but it doesn't have the same lasting impact, and unfortunately the comparative lack of flow is a clear contributory factor.

However, whatever its flaws and limitations, there's still a lot of beautiful music on it, and certainly not to be missed by hardcore Stevie fans. Syreeta, while her high notes tend to sound somewhat strained during the more emotive moments, has a very pleasing mezzo-soprano vocal, often understated without sacrificing emotion, which contributes to this album's often laidback mood. The sole social commentary song Black Maybe, is a brooding and jazzy blues-inflected ballad with haunting and inventive keyboard effects contributing to its dreamy and languid atmosphere and a quintessential example of Stevie's peerless gift for elastic melody, and could have just as easily been made for him to sing as it was for Syreeta - his finest composition here and one of those great lost Stevie classics. Keep Him Like He Is is a lovely lilting number with very beguiling vocals and lead guitar and a string backing that like on other songs (with the exception of How Many Days) is tastefully and freshly done and not at all saccharin. Syreeta shows her emerging and underrated talent as a songwriter with her solitary contribution Happiness, a highly melodic Hawaian flavoured lullaby with more poetic synthesizer backing only marred by being a bit on the long side and the odd bit of over-emoting, mostly near the end.

On the next side, What Love has Joined Together is a wonderful cover of a Smokey Robinson minor classic, its strings and Stevie's majestic piano contribution giving it a romantic and epic quality in a nostalgic throwback to the mid-1960s Motown era. The poppy piano and moog-driven Baby Don't You Let Me Lose It with its sumptuous swirling backing vocals from Stevie is another highlight, and with such an obviously sounding commercial (in a good way) chorus, it's surprising it wasn't chosen as the lead single. The multi-part To Know You Is To Love You, opening with Stevie on lead vocal but with Syreeta taking over shortly after, is an effective summation of the various styles collectively explored by the two on this album, an upbeat declaration of love lightly tinged with melancholy that blends in string-sweetened 1970s soul with mellow Fender Rhodes laden funk, with a long instrumental outro with Buzz Feiten shining on electric guitar. (The track time above is taken from the original LP version, which fades out somewhat earlier than the CD one which the YouTube clip is taken from.)

So, if a long way from an unjustly neglected masterpiece or the level of Stevie's best solo work, it's far from a mere historical curiosity or that of a master simply exercising his pen - there's plenty of fine music in its own right that at its best is on a par with the better female fronted soul material of its era. It's surprising given its high critical acclaim upon its release that it fared so poorly on the charts (#185 on the US pop and #38 on R&B) and given its association with the most commercially and critically successful R&B recording artist of the last fifty years that more people haven't been curious enough to seek it out or there hasn't been sufficient demand to permanently reissue it on CD - clearly releasing it on Motown's short-lived subsidiary label MoWest when the company were about to move to Los Angeles anyway didn't help, nor did Motown's fixation on Diana Ross's movie career (of which her second movie as lead actor was directed by none other than Mr. Gordy himself). Let's hope it finds its way into wider circulation for the benefit of fans who acknowledge Stevie's sterling work beyond a handful of acclaimed early to mid-1970s albums.