Stevie Wonder visits E.U. Wurlitzer, 1990

Fritz Jung was Vice President of E.U. Wurlitzer Music.

On Oct. 27th, 1990 I was working, out back, in the offices of E.U. Wurlitzer Music (no relationship to the piano/organ company) on Comm. Ave. in Boston. The phone rang… it was my friend Mark who ran one of the largest recording studios in Boston – Soundtrax.

Mark: “Hey Fritz, it’s Mark from Soundtrax, how busy are you ?

Me (sarcastically): Jez Mark, it’s a wednesday in the summer in Boston, how busy do you think we are ? it’s a ghost town… What’s up?

Mark: We have Stevie Wonder over here for a business meeting and he wants to ‘check out’ a music store…

Me (cutting Mark off): Seriously? Stevie Wonder ? Send him over!!! (note to self – WOW Stevie Wonder? It doesn’t get bigger than that!)

I hang up the phone and immediately get caught up in work and loose track of this big news – 30 min. later I take the alley out to the main store and notice a couple of limos out front – Holy Shit, I think Stevie Wonder is in the house. Sure enough, I enter the store and there is magic in the air, and there he is, in our keyboard room with headphones on, ‘testing’ out a keyboard. He is smiling and rocking his head back and forth just like I expected him to.

Stevie hangs out for about 30 minutes, graciously poses for pictures and is led to the register for a purchase.

“I’ll ring that up” – Pretty sure I was covering for the store manager that day – but I could be wrong – I do know I WAS at the register and do have a copy of the receipt.

Stevie desires to purchase a ‘midiman pocket merge’ (a keyboard interface for 324.00 dollars) – One of his posse hands me an American Express gold card – I see that it has the name ‘Steveland Morris’ – As a huge fan, I know that this is Stevie ‘s real name . Wow, I am holding Stevie Wonder’s Amex card… Cool.

I run the credit card through one of those old fashion ‘knuckle cruncher’ imprint machines and slide the multi-part receipt across the counter to Stevie – (for a moment I panic and wonder, do blind guys actually sign things?) Quickly one of his staff puts what looks like a 35mm slide on top of the cc receipt. – takes Stevie’s right thumb and ‘signs’ the cc receipt with Stevie’s thumb print.

Over the years, we met many ‘rock stars’ at Wurlitzer, but to this day we say – “Wow, Stevie Wonder? It just don’t get bigger than that”

–Fritz Jung 

Published on February 20, 2013