Stevie Wonder Birthplace — Saginaw, Michigan

Stevland Hardaway Morris — Stevie Wonder — was born on May 13, 1950, in Saginaw, Michigan, prematurely, and was blinded shortly after birth when excess oxygen in the hospital incubator damaged his retinas. His family moved to Detroit when he was four, where he was discovered by Ronnie White of the Miracles and signed to Motown at age eleven. The 'Little Stevie Wonder' marketing was built around his astonishing natural musicianship — he could play piano, harmonica, and drums by ear from an early age, and his live recordings from the Motown Revue documented a child prodigy performing with frightening authority.

Wonder's maturation from teen star to visionary artist came in the early 1970s when, on his twenty-first birthday, he renegotiated his Motown contract to have complete creative control. What followed was arguably the greatest sustained creative run in American pop: Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness' First Finale, and Songs in the Key of Life — five albums in four years, each Grammy-laden, each expanding what commercial soul music could address. He has not consistently reached those heights since, but those five albums alone secure his place among the greatest musicians of the 20th century.

Saginaw has acknowledged Wonder's birth with a historical marker. The city, on the Saginaw River in central Michigan, has faced severe economic decline since the 1970s. The broader Detroit connection is where most of Wonder's early career is documented — the Motown Museum in Detroit is the primary pilgrimage site for his early years.