b. May 13, 1950 · American singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist · Motown’s Tamla label
Wonder’s reading is the reason the song is a standard rather than a footnote, and the error attached to it is purely one of sequence. Where every earlier version treated the song as a slow ballad, Henry Cosby’s production drove it hard, and James Jamerson’s bass line — restless, melodic, barely repeating a bar — is still held up by bassists as one of the finest things recorded at Hitsville. Berry Gordy thought it was wrong for Motown and shelved it; released over his objections in October 1968, it went to number two on the pop and R&B charts and number three in Britain. Wonder later returned to the song as a ballad in a Grammy-winning duet with Tony Bennett.