At the Close of a Century

Lavish 11 inch x 11 inch CD box set housed in a hard-back book from classic Universal artists featuring around 100 pages of essays, beautiful photographs and memorabilia. This repackaged box set, which spans the years 1962-96, features 70 classic hits, album tracks and rarities spread across four CDs from the immortal Stevie Wonder. Universal.

At the Close of a Century may seem a rather portentous title for a box set, even one showcasing the work of such a formidable writer-performer as Stevie Wonder. Consider, though, that these discs appear a few months before Wonder's 50th birthday and that he's already spent 36 years making records; he has more right than most to get a little highfalutin when invoking temporal milestones. Despite various retrospectives over the years, Close is the first to cover the arc of Wonder's entire career. By the end of the first disc we've heard his early Motown hits and watched him develop into the masterful artist who'd go on to stack up landmark album after landmark album in the '70s. (Aretha Franklin's Wonder-penned hit "Until You Come Back to Me" is here in a rare version by the composer.) The string of LPs from Talking Book (1972) to Hotter Than July (1980) provides gem after gem on the two middle CDs--with all of 1973's Innervisions save one cut represented--while post-"Master Blaster" winners such as "That Girl" and "Overjoyed" are the meat of the final disc. Add a smart booklet of essays, photos, and a discography, and this handsome package starts to look like a sharp addition to the collections of even hard-core Stevie buffs. --Rickey Wright