Okay, I’ve got this uncle. He’s generally a good guy, but he’s also kind of a jerk. Every Christmas, he comes to the house, brings his so-called famous chili dip (not very good, mostly a block of Velveeta and a can of chili mixed together), and has a little too much of that classic Pennsylvania Dutch eggnog. All that’s fine, he’s my uncle, I love him. Fine until he gets on about his damn Stevie Wonder collection. “Lemme tell you, lemme tell you all right now,” Uncle Raymond inevitably says every holiday season. “I have every single record Stevie Wonder ever put out. Can you say that, Eric? What about you, Linda? NO none of you know good music bluuuurgh.” That “bluuuurgh” part represents the sound of him barfing into my mom’s fish tank. Well, shove it, Uncle Ray, ‘cause you don’t have every Stevie Wonder record any more. As FACT reports, “Just Enough to Ease the Pain,” a 1964 song by Wonder previously released only as a digital download, is receiving a 7-inch release as part of the Motown 7s: Rare and Unreleased box set, out November 18.
Aside from this unreleased Stevie Wonder track, sure to shatter my uncle’s precious world (at least until my dad gets him the box for Christmas), the Motown 7s box contains a total of seven 7-inch singles with tracks from Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, The Spinners, Chris Clark, and others. One of these singles is Frank Wilson’s “Do I Love You,” a song originally released in 1965 but quickly withdrawn, an original copy of which sold for over £25,000. Once my uncle receives a copy of this box, the record containing Wilson’s track, along with all the other non-Stevie Wonder records, will be thrown in a trash can and set ablaze. My uncle has some real problems.
• Motown: http://www.motown.com
• Stevie Wonder: http://www.steviewonder.net
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