Tag: Sylvia Moy

Of all Stevie Wonder songs…this one is at the top of the list for me.

Anything Stevie does I like. Sometimes when I hear a song it takes a few times for me to like it but this one…hooked me the first time. This song peaked at #2 on the Billboard 100, #5 in Canada, and #5 in the UK Charts in 1967. The song was written by Wonder, Lula Mae Hardaway, Henry Cosby, and Sylvia Moy. Lula Mae Haraway was Stevie Wonder’s mother.

The producer was Henry Cosby. He said to get the right vocal out of Wonder he took him to a Baptist church in Detroit. He had Stevie imitate the preacher. To do that Stevie wanted people in the studio with him when he was singing it. He said he had to feel the presence of people. Cosby then went outside the studio and pulled in people from the street who were passing by.

There is some dispute on who played bass on this song…Carol Kaye or James Jamerson? Allan Slutsky who wrote Standing In The Shadows of Motown disagrees with Carol Kaye on this song. He says that James Jamerson played bass in this session. The people he contacted from Motown swear it was James Jamerson. The Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team said it was Jamerson, and Hank Crosby, who co-wrote it and did production on this song, signed an affidavit saying that the bass line was performed by Jamerson.

Either way…you can’t go wrong with either of those bass players.

Carol Kaye: “The first four bars were written, so that thing was pretty straight. The first bar was written to give me an indication of what they wanted the rest of the tune. And then another part I can remember was written – that triad lick was written. And I screwed that one up. (laughing) I mean, you always remember when you make a mistake on the hits. And I made plenty of mistakes, but the feel of the record was good. And that’s the main thing. So the rest, I was on my own. No problem, a lot of chromatics and just aiming for the triads and stuff.”

Stevie Wonder: “Kind of speaks of my first love to a girl named Angie, who was a very beautiful woman. Actually, she was my third girlfriend but my first love. I used to call Angie up and, like, we would talk and say, ‘I love you, I love you,’ and we’d talk and we’d both go to sleep on the phone. And this was like from Detroit to California, right? You know, mother said, ‘Boy, what you doing – get off the phone!’ Boy, I tell you, it was ridiculous.”

I Was Made To Love Her