2010-09-21-The Wonder Years
Seminars@Hadley
Ted Hull & The Wonder Years
Presented by
Ted Hull – Florida Division of Blind Services
Moderated by
Billy Brookshire
September 21, 2010
Billy Brookshire
Good morning, folks, the time is upon us and we are beginning another broadcast day here at Seminars@Hadley. Welcome to you all. We are so glad you came to join us.
Today we are going to be talking with Mr. Ted Hull, who for six years was Stevie Wonders private teacher, road manager, etc. And he will be talking to us about the early Motown years and his relationship with Stevie and what was going on back then. I think this is going to be wonderful. So without further ado, I want to introduce today’s speaker Mr. Ted Hull.
Ted, what I am going to do is go ahead and ask the first question. If you would tell us a little bit about yourself, something about your background, how you got into the blindness field, anything about your own musical pursuits. I’ll leave you with that, anyway you want to introduce yourself.
Folks, here's Ted Hull.
Ted Hull
I want to thank the people here at the Tampa Lighthouse for the Blind, especially Tony Pientka set this up for me. For me it is very nice and very quiet here and this is a new media for me and I think that it is great. I have just been listening to people talking from all over the United States and it’s a wonderful way to communicate.
I retired from the Division of Blind Services about five years ago after being an administrator in the Tampa office for about 15 years. I was born in a small town in Tennessee, called Jamestown, Tennessee. I was born with a birth defect called Coloboma. This is basically a missing part of the eye. It’s like if you look at a pie and see a big hunk missing that is what Coloboma does. It interferes with the retina. I never saw out of my right eye and I have 20/200 vision in my left eye and some scar tissue left from surgeries I have had.
My family traveled a lot and I went to 18 different schools before I went to college at Michigan State. I graduated from Michigan State with a degree to teach the blind. I did that for three years and then one day I got a call from Mrs. Ester Edwards. She introduced herself as the Senior Vice President of the Motown Record Company. She told me that they had this young artist Stevie Wonder who had a hit record and he needed to be able to go on the road and promote it but because he was young he could not be truant from school so they were looking for a private teacher.
It turns out that I was recommended by Dr. Robert Thompson who is really the hero of this story. Without Dr. Thompson’s input and his willingness to accept the responsibility for getting Stevie through to graduation and accepted me as his unpaid employee if Motown Record company would take care of Stevie’s career.
I had hitchhiked around Europe a couple of summers in between teaching jobs so Dr. Thompson knew me from that and he also knew me from my last year in high school. I was a student at the School for the Blind. It was easy for him to recommend me. I was not married at the time. I was a songwriter without any success and he knew that I liked to travel. That was the way I really got started with Motown Record Company.
I asked Robert Thompson one time a few years ago before he passed away if he had to ask the Board of Education permission to do this. He said no, sometimes it’s not a good idea to ask. He said by the time they found out about it you and Stevie were on the road and everything was going great and there was no problem. I will turn it back to you now.
Billy Brookshire
Thanks Ted. I am wondering if you would talk about what the early days at Motown were like.
Ted Hull
Motown, in itself is just an unbelievable experience. Berry Gordy, Jr. was the founder of Motown and he had no real plans of developing a music company. All he wanted was get his songs recorded and released.
When I started there Stevie had been with them for about one year. He signed on when he was 11 years old. He had several songs released and a couple of albums but none of them had really done anything. He did one album titled A Tribute to Uncle Ray that did something. It wasn’t until he had his first smash hit which was Fingertips Part Two that the company saw the necessity of getting him on the road so he could record. That’s how I got started. At the time we had The Supremes, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, The Marvelettes, Smokey Robinson, and The Miracles. These were all people where were really just kids walking in off the streets and becoming stars with the help of Motown and their wonderful song writers and their wonderful studio musicians.
We would go on one niter's together and we would all be on the bus, all of those that I just mentioned. We would all be on the bus and go down south playing one niters 30 days at a time. They were nice people and I got along with them very well. There was not a black and white problem at all for the most part.
It was exciting for me because I loved music and I finally got a chance to actually do some writing while I was there and have some success. To be with Stevie and to like music and to feel like I could work with him, and help in get to the point where he could be independent and take care of his own business. It was a marvelous experience but don’t let me kid you it wasn’t an easy experience by the time I got around to leaving, which was about six and half years after Stevie graduated I was ready to go. We were on the road sometimes 75% to 85% of the year. That is not a fun life, not after six years of it.
Billy Brookshire
You mention in your book when you were on the road you talk about what the black farmers call the Chitlin Circuit that goes across the south and you mentioned that you encountered some prejudices when you traveled that circuit. Would you talk about those a little bit?
Ted Hull
Yes, and your right about the Chitlin Circuit, you mostly go where the promoters were, and they were really mostly down south. We did some shows in California and all over, but most states do not have active promoters.
As far as the prejudice was concerned there were some things, and I don’t think Stevie and I didn’t see a lot of it. We simply didn’t see it. We had situations where people would talk to Stevie and they would turn their back to me, wouldn’t shake my hand. We had situations where people would walk down the street and give me a shove with their elbow because I was meeting a black boy.
One thing we always tried to do was to keep our sense of humor and we did a good job of that. We were outside of Atlanta one time, on our way back to Detroit after playing the Peacock Lounge. Stevie had to go to the bathroom and we were traveling with Clarence Paul who was a mutual Director who was driving, we stopped at a service station, because when Stevie had to go, he had to go. Clarence said he would take him and he took him into the white bathroom and has he walked out with Stevie the service station attendant came out and jumped all over him. He said you can’t go in there. Clarence said well he’s blind and the attendant said well you’re not blind and Clarence said, well I didn’t have to go. He jumped into the car and took off laughing.
Billy Brookshire
That’s a great story Ted. You also mention in your book that you helped Stevie on stage. You helped him with musical cues and some other techniques to help him get around the stage better. Would you talk a little bit about that?
Ted Hull
In fact I got some criticism from some of the people at Motown because they felt like Stevie’s blindness was a great contribution to his success. But that was not my training, my training was to make him as independent as possible and that is what he wanted to do too. It wasn’t just me; it was a lot of people working together. We would come up with ways for Stevie to get around the stage without someone having to lead him.
One of the basic things we did was Clarence Paul when he was the director or whoever was the director, generally played the tambourine and directed the band. When it was time for Stevie to walk out, I would be behind the curtains with him, I would point him in the right direction and the band would start playing. Clarence Paul would start playing the tambourine where Stevie could hear him and he would walk right towards him, and when he got to the mike, Clarence would put his hand on the mike and he was on his way.
Other things that we did, we had a song that we played called La La La La La and he would play different instruments. We learned to set these instruments up on stage so he would know how to move from one to the other. They were like bongos and so forth.
It’s like teaching independent living, there’s lots of ways to do it. The independent living counselors have certain ways they like, they always say that this is not the only way there are many ways you can approach the same issue.
Billy Brookshire
Thanks Ted. There is one other thing I would like you to talk about specifically, the instances where you helped Stevie sign autographs.
Ted Hull
It has come up recently. In Tampa there is a TV thing, I can’t remember the name of it right now, but people write in about different things. One of the things that was written last year is “I understand that Stevie Wonder never signs his own autographs, that Ted Hull signed them for him”. And that got me thinking, because basically I was doing that for him but was using Stevie’s hand. Stevie was never able to sign his name to a picture when we were standing out in a crowd of people and everyone was shouting at him and the picture was about the size of your hand. I would guide his hand and sign best wishes, Stevie Wonder. In a way I did not teach him to sign his own pictures, we would always sit down before a trip and sign about 100 of them so he wouldn’t have to worry about that. We would just pass them out.
Maybe I should have paid more attention to that but at the time it just wasn’t an important thing. It worked out.
We did an interesting thing when we went to Paris one time, we were doing a show there for a week, we got off the plane and I helped Stevie sign a few pictures for the fans that were waiting for us there. The next day in the newspaper it said that Stevie Wonder was so nervous that his manager had to hold his hand to keep it from shaking.
Billy Brookshire
I love it Ted. I understand the first time you helped Stevie sign an autograph you came out with a rather unusual autograph.
Ted Hull
Yes I do. You know there are times that teachers really embarrass themselves. I could tell you two or three stories about that even before I started working with Stevie.
I had never seen Stevie’s name in writing and my name is T E D, T E D D Y, we were going to Chicago to do Stevie’s first and only string album and this was the first trip I had been on, it was the second week after I started. I had pictures with us; it was Clarence Paul, me, Stevie and our valet Gene Shelby, who was also our driver for years. We were sitting at a table and some one came up and wanted Stevie’s autograph. Usually Clarence would reach for it and sign it for him, but I said no Stevie will do this. I took Stevie’s hand and I misspelled his name, I spelled it S T E V Y, S T E V E Y instead of S T E V I E. After we ate, the three of them got up to go to the bathroom while I paid the bill. After I paid the bill I walked into the bathroom and the three of them were standing at the urinals and I heard Clarence Paul say well if he doesn’t even know how to spell your name I don’t know how he is going to teach you anything. I just silently walked back out and acted like I didn’t hear that, but it was embarrassing and I certainly learned how to spell his name after that.
Billy Brookshire
But I take it there is a collector’s item out there somewhere with Stevie’s name spelled with a Y. I love that story Ted.
You mentioned the Paris trip, and I know Stevie was the first Motown artist to play Paris. Do you want to tell us a little about that whole experience? How was Stevie received? What was the experience like for you?
Ted Hull
It was kind of a difficult experience because we took his mother with us. Lula and I turned out to be great friends and she was very supportive. In the beginning it was very suspicious and also suspicious of Motown. She was not really a mother that was prepared to have a blind child and then to have this blind child become an international star, I don’t know of any mother that is really prepared for anything like that. She was the type of person that you never knew when she was going to blow up or what she was going to say. That made me pretty nervous. It was also a time when Stevie was not sure of me either.
There were people talking about this white guy that comes over and picks up Stevie Wonder and takes him away for two to three weeks at a time.
We were playing the Olympic Theater and it was an interesting show because there were about 12 different acts. I remember one of the acts was actually from Afghanistan and there were like 13 of them. Stevie was the star of the show but his voice was changing, it was like he would be in one key and six weeks later we would have to be changing all the arrangements because he was in another key. He was having trouble singing. His musical director at the time, it wasn’t Clarence at the time it was Wade, and he put him in the back of the show, like second from the end of the show. He had him doing more harmonica things that singing. It was a difficult time for Stevie and for me too.