Illustration from the horror comic book After Dark #8, 1955
In 1966, Stevie Wonder turned sixteen. He decided to stop calling himself "Little" Stevie Wonder and started recording political songs. His first hit of the year was a cover of "Blowin' in the Wind" - the second was a song called "A Place in the Sun". I'm going to guess that the song's writers (Ronald Miller, Bryan Wells, and Clarence Paul) took the phrase "a place in the sun" from the 1951 film starring Montgomery Clift, Shelley Winters, and Elizabeth Taylor, and the song may be trying to address some of the movie's social themes. The song has a nice swinging rhythm, a classy mid-60s-syle Motown backing track, and separate sets of male and female backing vocals. By the following year, Wonder was having stronger hits with his own material, and I like those songs a lot better than these early covers, but he sounds great here. And I'm pretty sure he yells, "Hot dog!" during one of the choruses, which always cracks me up.
UK psych-rock band Jason Crest also wrote a song called "A Place in the Sun", but they were clearing referencing the use of the phrase by Prince Bernhard Heinrich Karl Martin von Bülow in his famous speech about the German colonial empire. Just kidding - they probably took it from the movie or the famous Stevie Wonder song from three years earlier. For Jason Crest, "A Place in the Sun" was the last of a string of fairly good singles that the band put out for Philips Records in the late '60s. The band was often lumped with Procol Harum because of their distinctive organ sound, which can be heard on "A Place in the Sun", along with some very nice harmonies and a fun, if jarring, set of tempo changes. For me, it's the marginal winner here, but it's not really a fair contest. Jason Crest wouldn't stand a chance against any of Stevie Wonder's later singles - that's right - any of them. Even "Boogie On Reggae Woman."
Winner: JASON CREST
"A Place in the Sun" by Jason Crest
"A Place in the Sun" by Stevie Wonder
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