Who Made It: Stevie Wonder's Talking Book and TONTO

Who Made It is our series on the people behind the records: who produced an album, what gear they used, and how to chase that sound today. Every gear fact comes from the artist, the label, the credits on the record or the official keepers of the instruments.

The first record in the series had three people behind the glass and one machine that filled a room. Stevie Wonder's Talking Book came out on Tamla in October 1972, and its credits name Stevie Wonder as producer, with Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff as associate producers, engineers and Moog programmers. The machine they worked on was TONTO, The Original New Timbral Orchestra, and it is still making music today.

Superstition, from Talking Book. Audio: Stevie Wonder (official channel, Motown / Universal Music)

The record

Talking Book is ten songs, and two of them never really left the radio: Superstition and You Are the Sunshine of My Life. The original sleeve credits Wonder with vocals, ARP and Moog synthesizers and all other instruments, with a short list of guests. Scott Edwards plays bass on You Are the Sunshine of My Life, Ray Parker Jr. plays guitar on Maybe Your Baby, David Sanborn takes the alto saxophone solo on Tuesday Heartbreak, Trevor Lawrence and Steve Madaio play the horns on Superstition, and Jeff Beck and Buzzy Feiten share lead guitar on Lookin' for Another Pure Love.

The sleeve lists four rooms: Electric Lady Studios in New York, Crystal Sound and the Record Plant in Los Angeles, and Air Studios in London. The songs were published through Stein & Van Stock and Black Bull, and the original gatefold even carries a message in Braille. It was Wonder's record in every sense, and you can find his work today on his official site and through Motown.

The producers

Stevie Wonder produced Talking Book himself, at 22, and played most of it. Malcolm Cecil was an English jazz bassist turned engineer and synthesizer builder. Robert Margouleff, known as Bob, was a New York record producer who owned a Moog modular system. Together the two recorded as Tonto's Expanding Head Band, and their 1971 album Zero Time is what brought Wonder to their door.

According to the National Music Centre in Calgary, which now owns and maintains TONTO, Wonder heard Zero Time and asked to see the instrument. The sessions that followed, many at Electric Lady, produced Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions and Fulfillingness' First Finale. On the sleeves, Cecil and Margouleff are credited for associate production, engineering and Moog programming through their company, Taurus Productions. Cecil later bought out Margouleff's share of TONTO in 1975 and kept it running for decades. He died in March 2021.

The gear

TONTO (The Original New Timbral Orchestra). What it did: in its own story on the instrument, the National Music Centre credits TONTO with the bassline on Superstition and lists it on Superstition and You Are the Sunshine of My Life from this record, plus Living for the City from Innervisions. It was the first multitimbral polyphonic analog synthesizer, meaning it could play several different sounds and several notes at once, a radical step for the early 1970s. Cecil designed it less as one synth than as a network of synths wired to talk to each other, built into curved wooden cabinets about six feet tall. Source: National Music Centre and its collection record for TONTO.

Moog Series III modular. What it did: it was the heart of the system. TONTO began in 1968 as a single Moog Series III modular that Margouleff owned, and a second Moog III was added later. Every Talking Book credit for Cecil and Margouleff includes Moog programming, the slow work of patching cables between oscillators, filters and envelopes to build each sound by hand. Source: National Music Centre and the Bob Moog Foundation.

ARP 2600. What it did: the sleeve credits Wonder with ARP synthesizer alongside Moog, and TONTO grew to include two ARP 2600s. ARP took its name from founder Alan R. Pearlman. David Friend, who co-founded ARP and helped design the 2600, names Stevie Wonder first among the players who made it one of the most influential instruments of its day, in a statement on Korg's official ARP 2600 M page. Source: Korg and the Bob Moog Foundation.

Oberheim SEMs and custom modules. What they did: over the years TONTO added four Oberheim SEMs (Synthesizer Expander Modules), modules from Serge, EMS, Roland and Yamaha, and circuits Cecil built himself, including a joystick controller he invented. The official sources do not say which of these were in place for the Talking Book sessions, so treat them as part of TONTO's story rather than a song by song list. Source: National Music Centre and the Bob Moog Foundation.

How to get the sound today

You cannot buy TONTO, but you can hear it. It lives in the National Music Centre's living collection in Calgary, kept in working order and made available for recording sessions, and the Halluci Nation used it on their 2021 album One More Saturday Night.

The original Series III modulars are museum pieces now. The closest thing to its patch and build approach at desk size is the Moog Grandmother, a semi-modular Moog with patch points across the panel, the Moog ladder filter and a built-in spring reverb. You can use it straight out of the box, then start pulling cables when you want to build sounds the way Cecil did.

For a fat, round mono bass in the spirit of Superstition, the Moog Messenger is the newer and cheaper route. Moog says it builds on the DNA of the Minimoog Model D, Voyager, Grandmother and Subsequent 37, and it adds a switch that keeps the low end full when you push the filter resonance.

For the ARP side, Korg makes the ARP 2600 M, a smaller version of its full-size 2600 reissue that Korg says uses the same analog circuitry, at about 60 percent of the original size. One 2600 will not give you a wall of synths, but layering a few overdubs is exactly how TONTO's parts were stacked.