On this day in 1963, Little Stevie Wonder recorded his hit song Fingertips

A 12 year old Wonder’s first two albums were released in 1962 but failed to garner any significant attention, and so the artist was added to a Motown tour known as “The Motortown Revue” where he quickly started thrilling audiences with his high energy shows. On March 10 the tour stopped in Chicago for a performance at the Regal Theatre where it was decided Wonder’s performance would be recorded. 

Wonder decided to play a highly improvised version of his song Fingertips, which extended the song to 10 minutes in length as the crowd went wild for the new version.  The stage manager, concerned about the show running late tried to usher Wonder off the stage while the next band, The Marvelettes began setting up. At this point, Wonder started playing an impromptu encore, where he was joined by several members of The Marvelettes. This improvised encore would be released as Fingertips Pt. 2.

The song quickly shot to number one, becoming the first live recording to reach the top spot, as well as making Little Stevie Wonder the youngest ever artist to top the chart. Fingertips is also an important part of Ritchie Yorke’s story. A young Ritchie was working at a radio station in Tamworth when he first play Fingertips Pt. 2. Higher ups at the station told him to stop playing the song due to the artists race. Ritchie’s response was to lock himself in the studio and play the song repeatedly, making it to 8 plays before he was taken off air and promptly fired, causing Ritchie’s relocation to Brisbane and to expand his travel plans for the future so as to be closer to the music he loved.