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Henry Cosby was born in Detroit on May 12, 1928, and served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, playing in a military band alongside Cannonball Adderley. Back home he played tenor saxophone in pianist Joe Hunter’s band, and when Berry Gordy launched Motown in 1959 he recruited Hunter’s group, including Cosby, Benny Benjamin, James Jamerson, Larry Veeder and Mike Terry, as the nucleus of the Funk Brothers. Cosby played on hundreds of uncredited Motown sessions, including Martha and the Vandellas’ Dancing in the Street, and moonlighted on John Lee Hooker’s 1962 single Boom Boom.

Cosby then showed Gordy he could write, arrange and produce. Working with a young Stevie Wonder from roughly 1963 to 1970, often alongside Sylvia Moy, he co-wrote and co-produced Fingertips, a 1963 No. 1, followed by hits through My Cherie Amour. He co-produced the Supremes’ Love Child and co-wrote and co-produced Smokey Robinson and the Miracles’ The Tears of a Clown. After Motown moved west he joined Fantasy Records. He died on January 22, 2002, at 73, and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame with Moy in 2006.

• His Stevie Wonder run includes Uptight (Everything’s Alright), A Place in the Sun, I Was Made to Love Her and For Once in My Life.
• Comedian Bill Cosby, no relation, reworked Uptight into Little Old Man, a No. 4 hit in 1967 that carried Henry Cosby’s writing credit.
• At Fantasy he produced gospel singer Rance Allen and worked with Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1974.
• His 1977 song Be My Fortune Teller for 94 East is among the earliest studio recordings featuring a young Prince.
• His name appears on an honorary construction beam at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, where he died.