Pack a picnic, grab your sweetie, and it's off to a sunny day in the park with MY CHERIE AMOUR. This 1969 Motown staple delivers the young Stevie Wonder wrapped in lush string and horn sections, adding a certain grandiose quality to the music that he seemed to cast off only a few years later. MY CHERIE AMOUR is 12 tracks worth of innocent summertime R&B.

Dig the refrain from the title track, as Stevie la-las in unison with the flutes--unlike other aspects of the recording, this is a foreshadowing of things to come in his career. "At Last" is just plain exuberant, driven by a funky bass, free-spirited ascending modulations and an insistent string section that testifies to Stevie's sunny declarations. A funkified rendition of the Doors anthem "Light My Fire" is made dream-like with legato bowing from the strings, punctuated by the unmistakable happy tooting of Stevie's harmonica.