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Any decent singer can carry a tune, but for Stevie Wonder, former collaborator Jim Gilstrap had true soul.
Gilstrap, a onetime member of Wonder's backing group Wonderlove and featured vocalist on "You Are the Sunshine of My Life," died Saturday, July 18, of natural causes. Aside from his collaborations with Wonder, Gilstrap was known for his 1975 R&B hit "Swing Your Daddy," as well as performing the theme song for the Norman Lear sitcom "Good Times."
Although "we didn't have the time [to] share together in conversation as much as we did back in the day, we still had great respect and friendship," Wonder, 76, told USA TODAY in an interview Monday, July 20. "I'm just happy that we were able to cross paths in our lives and do what we were able to do together."
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Wonder, already a superstar in his own right, met Gilstrap in the midst of working on his 1972 album "Music of My Mind" along with fellow background singers Lani Groves and Gloria Barley. In addition to recruiting the vocalists for Wonderlove, he enlisted Gilstrap and Groves to sing the opening lines of "You Are the Sunshine of My Life," an easy-listening midtempo that landed on Wonder's next album, "Talking Book."
The song would peak at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned Wonder a Grammy Award for best male pop vocal performance.
"People probably did not expect for someone else to start off singing it and then me coming in on the verse," Wonder reflected. "But that's what I wanted to do. And so that's different, but it was fun."
After the success of "Sunshine of My Life," Wonder joined musical forces with Gilstrap again on his 1973 album "Innervisions," with Gilstrap performing backing vocals on opening track "Too High."
"The quality of his voice was warm," Wonder said. "He had a very gentle, very smooth kind of voice, but he had his own definite sound."
But it wasn't just about hitting all the right notes.
Though Gilstrap always delivered on the musicality, Wonder said, it's the genuine emotion he brought to his performances that shone the brightest.
"He will always be a part of this song in my career that I wrote, and the song was obviously very special to me," Wonder said. "And it was at a time when that energy, that spirit of love that I was exploring ever so incredibly, he and Lani started that song off. And so, that will forever be a part of that 'Sunshine of My Life' that I won't ever forget."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Stevie Wonder pays tribute to 'Sunshine' singer Jim Gilstrap | Exclusive
