Sylvia Moy: Pots-and-Pans Rhythm, a Bet With Gordy and Saving Stevie Wonder

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Sylvia Moy was born in Detroit in 1938 and grew up on the city's northeast side in a family of nine children, who formed a kitchen rhythm section out of pots and pans. At Northern High School she studied jazz and classical music, and by 1963 she was singing in Detroit clubs, where Marvin Gaye and Mickey Stevenson heard her and brought her to Motown. The label offered her both a recording contract and a songwriting contract, then pressed her to set the recording deal aside because it was short on material for its growing roster. In the mid-1960s, with Stevie Wonder's voice changing and Berry Gordy ready to drop him, Moy asked Gordy whether he would keep Wonder if she wrote him a hit, and Gordy took the bet.

Working with producer Henry "Hank" Cosby, Moy built lyrics around a driving pattern Wonder was improvising at the piano, and the result was Uptight (Everything's Alright). Because Wonder could not read a lyric sheet and did not yet know the words, she sang each line into his headphones just ahead of him while the tape rolled. The hit kept Wonder at Motown and made Moy the first woman at the label to formally write and produce for its acts. She went on to write across the roster, win three BMI awards in 1969, compose for television and film, and found a nonprofit for underprivileged children in Detroit.

• Moy co-wrote My Cherie Amour, I Was Made to Love Her, Never Had a Dream Come True and Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day with Wonder.
• She co-wrote This Old Heart of Mine for the Isley Brothers with Holland-Dozier-Holland.
• Her credits include Honey Chile and Love Bug Leave My Heart Alone for Martha and the Vandellas, It Takes Two for Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston, and With a Child's Heart for Michael Jackson.
• Her nonprofit in Detroit was called the Center for Creative Communications.
• She entered the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006 alongside Hank Cosby and died in Dearborn, Michigan, in 2017 at age 78.