Photograph: CSU Archv/Everett / Rex FeaturesĬharacters was cut from the same local-radio-friendly cloth as its predecessor, 1985’s million-selling In Square Circle: diehard fans with time on their hands could probably pick through it and make a case for the funky Dark ’n’ Lovely and Skeletons, but it is hard to see why you would play the latter when you could play Superstition instead. The harmonica years … Stevie Wonder in the early 60s. There is a generous helping of schmaltz here – not least his version of Silver Bells, which sounds like pre-second world war pop – but there is also the troubled title track, which seems to have as much to do with the Vietnam war as Christmas, and the great closer, What Christmas Means to Me, which offers seasonal good cheer without an accompanying sugar overdose. He was particularly irked by a perky novelty track here called Hey Mr Harmonica Man, which is indeed pretty excruciating: the rest isn’t as bad as that, although its appeal is definitely kitschy. Wonder was later mortified by this stage of his early career, when he acquiesced to some deeply naff ideas.
It came out on Motown’s Mo Jazz subsidiary, but its contents are closer to easy listening. A curio: an album of harmonica instrumentals, released off the back of a minor hit version of Bacharach and David’s Alfie, with Wonder’s name pseudonymously spelt backwards.
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