In 1973, Stevie Wonder was one of the biggest artists on the planet and had just released his album, Innervisions. However, the momentum he had garnered from his successful career came to a screeching halt when he got in a car accident with a logging truck in North Carolina. A car accident that would leave him in a coma for 10 days.
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When the news hit the mainstream media, the masses were prepared for the worst. Frankly, his friends and family thought so too, as the doctor’s reports were not teetering in Wonder’s favor. However, that all changed when Stevie Wonder’s friend and tour director, Ira Tucker, sang Wonder’s No. 1 hit, “Higher Ground.”
“Higher Ground”—A Life-Saving Tune for Stevie Wonder
A year after the accident, Tucker sat down with Esquire and recollected every moment he spent with his friend in the hospital. He started his story by stating, “When I got to the hospital… man, I couldn’t even recognise him. His head was swollen up to about five times normal size” and “nobody could get through to him.”
Per Tucker’s last comment, he took it upon himself to try and get through to Stevie, and he tried everything. He divulged to the publication, “I knew that he likes to listen to music really loud, and I thought maybe if I shouted in his ear, it might reach him. The doctor told me to go ahead and try, it couldn’t hurt him.”
“The first time I didn’t get any response,” added Tucker. However, he tried one more thing, one more thing that would weirdly and ultimately save Stevie Wonder’s life. “The next day I went back and I got right down in his ear and sang ‘Higher Ground,’” stated Tucker. “His hand was resting on my arm and after a while his fingers started going in time with the song. I said yeah! Yeeeeaaah! This dude is going to make it,” remembered Tucker. After Tucker’s singing, Wonder awoke and went on to have the career we all so gladly got to see.
As scientifically and poetically peculiar this story is, it only gets more prophetic when you learn about the subtext of “Higher Ground.” In short, the song tells the tale about a man who thanks God for giving him a second chance at life. Weird, right? Regarding the dramatic irony, Wonder stated, “For me, I wrote ‘Higher Ground’ even before the accident. But something must have been telling me that something was going to happen to make me aware of a lot of things and to get myself together.”
Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns
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