Lula Mae Hardaway was a songwriter and the mother of musical genius Stevie Wonder. She co-wrote many of Stevie’s songs during the early years of his career. She was co-nominated for the 1970 Grammy Award for Best R&B Song for co-writing “Signed, Sealed, Delivered“.
Lula Mae was born January 11, 1930, in Eufaula, Alabama on a sharecropper’s farm. Her life was marked by poverty and abuse, according to her biography, “Blind Faith: The Miraculous Journey of Lula Hardaway, Stevie Wonder’s Mother.” She spent her early adult life in Saginaw, Michigan before moving to Los Angeles in 1975 where she remained until she died in 2006.
She co-wrote several of Stevie’s songs, including “I Was Made to Love Her”, “Signed Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours”, “You Met Your Match” and “I Don’t Know Why I Love You”. Two of these songs also appeared on Stevie’s 1968 album “For Once in My Life” and two other songs, “I Wanna Make Her Love Me” and “Ain’t No Lovin'”, were also co-written by Lula. For the hit “Signed, Sealed, Delivered”, she was co-nominated for the 1970 Grammy Award for Best R&B Song.