Stevie Wonder is America's other great home-schooled musical genius, an urban black counterpart to California's pastoral composer-laureate, Brian Wilson. Wonder's talents, like Wilson's, range across the entire record-making spectrum; the job description on Stevie Wonder's tax form would go something like "composer/producer/arranger/singer/multi-instrumentalist." And unlike Wilson, whose creativity, it is universally agreed, reached its peak on the Beach Boys' 1966 masterpiece Pet Sounds, Wonder's career does not climax neatly on one album; selecting the Stevie Wonder masterpiece is no easy job. Does one go for a representative collection of those exuberant early singles like "Uptight" and "I Was Made to Love Her"? The massive 1976 double-album Songs in the Key of Life, which debuted at No. 1 and stayed there for 14 weeks? Or do you select one of the four studio albums (Talking Book, Music of My Mind, Innervisions, and Fulfillingness' First Finale) that in the early 70s marked Wonder's transformation from the Motown stable's precocious wunderkind into one of the most important and innovative musicians of the decade?

Frankly, I don't know, but I will say that there exists no better introduction to Wonder's greatness than Talking Book, recorded and released in 1972 when Wonder was 22 years old. It came after a protracted and occasionally ugly battle with Motown, and the deal he eventually negotiated for himself afforded him an artistic freedom unprecedented in the music industry at that time. Henceforth, Wonder would write, produce, and record his albums entirely at his whim, working in his private studio at his own pace and only with the musicians he wanted (if any). Some may have predicted this freedom would lead to disastrous self-indulgence, but if they did, Wonder proved them wrong. Talking Book clocks in at just ten songs, some longer than the typical three-and-a-half-minute window allotted by pop radio, but the composer's ego is nary to be seen.

Of course, if you really want to insist on the point, the album notes do raise an important question, namely, "Doesn't anyone else play on this friggin' record?" With the exception of a group of female back-up singers, Talking Book is pretty much a one-man show. Outside instrumentation is sparse apart from drums (which Wonder plays himself) and the occasional guitar or piano or horns; every other note on the record is synthesized. Bringing the synthesizer into the musical mainstream seems to be one of Stevie Wonder's less remembered achievements, but it's important all the same. He didn't regard it, as the Beatles and others did, as a way of spicing up an already-full arrangement with some weird sounds or textures. He treated it like any other instrument, no more intimidated by its technological newness than he would have been by an electric piano. The synthesizer enabled him to expand his palette independently of other musicians, and if it had the ultimate effect of making him into a musical hermit (he now takes years between albums, endlessly creating and refining sequences on his battalion of keyboards, often with no outside musicians at all), in the seventies he used it to create some of the most soulful music ever made. The Arp and Moog synthesizers Wonder used on Talking Book (primitive by today's standards) were not cold and digital: they had real, if idiosyncratic, warmth, and Wonder's ear never failed to pick up on it. The high, whistling background tones of "You and I" aren't supposed to fool you into thinking you"re listening to strings or winds, yet their wiry hum is every bit as beautiful. And if you think it's impossible to rock out on a Moog, think on this: with the exception of drums and horns, "Superstition" is all synths; there isn't even a real bass. 'Nuff said.

The album begins quietly with one of Wonder's biggest hits, "You Are the Sunshine of My Life". Listeners contemplating Wonder knowing how saccharine much of his music became in the eighties might be tempted to dismiss this ballad as more AOR fodder. Don't. This is Wonder at his most soulful, with a soft keyboard and bass line gently pushing a descending chord progression of inspired beauty. Wonder throws his listeners a curve by starting the track with two voices other than his own, suggesting that the song is actually a duet between lovers; then from the first bridge onward it's all Stevie, his voice free to roam through a spacious arrangement. (Wonder later decided it was too spacious, and added horns to the single version.) Next is the extended slow funk of "Maybe Your Baby," a song that doesn't entirely justify its near-seven-minute running time, though it's probably the most passionate vocal performance of the album. "You and I" is a grand ballad, stately where "Sunshine of My Life" is subdued. "Tuesday Heartbreak" is laid-back funk with a catchy chorus, while "You've Got it Bad Girl" is the sexiest thing on the record, or maybe the entire planet; you could seduce a one-legged nun with this song. Not that, um, I would know.

Side two opens with the album's other colossal hit, "Superstition." Everyone knows this is one of the hottest, funkiest singles ever recorded, though many don't realize how shrewdly its political message is put across, counseling rationality in an era riddled with paranoia and extremism. It's soul music's answer to John Lennon's "Revolution"--even the titles have a similar one-word catchiness--though Wonder's concern for ordinary people was deeper than that of the more self-absorbed Lennon ("Revolution" is about John Lennon: "You tell me it's the institution" --whereas "Superstition" is about you: "When you believe in things/that you don't understand/then you suffer/superstition ain't the way."). Wonder's sociopolitical statements, like Lennon's, could sometimes be too earnest for their own good, but not here: with a lyric sufficiently abstract to fit any context, "Superstition" couldn't lose. From there we fade directly into "Big Brother", a more overt political statement than its predecessor. A hypnotic harpsichord-like synthesizer chimes along to drums and harmonica while Wonder sings his pointed, almost chilling lyrics:

My name is Secluded
We live in a house the size of a matchbox
Roaches live with us wall-to-wall.
You've killed all our leaders
I don't even have to do nothing to you
You'll cause your own country to fall.

Having got that out of his system, Wonder returns to love songs, ending the album with three beautiful ballads. "Blame it on the Sun" is an elegy for a love that has ended, its lyrics haunting and unsparing as each verse ends with the same realization: "But my heart blames it on me." From this low place, "Lookin' For Another Pure Love" introduces the possibility of hope, and the final "I Believe (When I Fall in Love it Will Be Forever)" bursts with optimism, its ordered choruses breaking open to release a gospel-like coda of exultant voices and rhythms.

Talking Book may not show every facet of Stevie Wonder's genius--Songs in the Key of Life does that, and more--but as a simple collection of songs it's unsurpassed. And the next time you read about another musical "genius," whether it's Beck or Prince or any other one-named lone wolf of the American music scene, ask yourself if that person--if anyone else-- could have written, performed, and produced an album as good as Talking Book at the age of 22, almost single-handedly. Anyone? Anyone?

Didn't think so.