“Sir Duke” by Stevie Wonder

"Sir Duke" is Stevie Wonder tipping his hat to the giants, cut for his 1976 album Songs in the Key of Life and sent out as a single in 1977 on the heels of "I Wish". He wrote it for Duke Ellington, who had died in 1974, and the song's roll call reaches out to Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald too. It went all the way to the top of the Billboard Hot 100.

The sound is pure celebration. That horn line, blasted out by Trevor Lawrence and Hank Redd on saxophones and Steve Madaio and Ray Maldonado on trumpets, charges out front, Nathan Watts' bass bounds underneath and Raymond Pounds swings hard on drums. Ben Bridges and Michael Sembello chop out the guitar parts, and Wonder, who produced and arranged it, handles Rhodes, percussion and the joyous lead vocal.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.