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It seems like Rick Derringer has been on
the rock & roll scene forever — actually, it's only been since
1965, which makes him one of the more enduring veterans of his
generation. Derringer's work with his band the McCoys in his midteens,
highlighted by the bubblegum anthem "Hang On Sloopy," gave him
a claim to low-level rock & roll immortality, and his subsequent
playing with Johnny (and later Edgar) Winter provided him with
a degree of credibility that a lot of guitar players can only
envy, especially after the release of the Edgar Winter live double
album Roadwork.
Derringer began getting production experience with the McCoys,
but they were never able to overcome their bubblegum rock image,
and by the end of the 1960s, Derringer and his brother Randy were
recruited by Johnny Winter into his band, with Derringer playing
guitar and also producing. He emerged as a solo artist in the
wake of his playing with Edgar Winter's White Trash. Derringer
first became popular in his own right during the early/mid-'70s,
beginning with a new version of his own "Rock & Roll, Hoochie
Koo" (which Johnny Winter had covered for him a few years earlier)
off Derringer's heavy metal-influenced debut album, All American
Boy. Derringer soon had his own band, called Derringer, on the
road — although his guitarist and bassist, Danny Johnson and Kenny
Aaronson, left in 1977 to form Axis — and within a couple of years
had established himself as a popular favorite.
Derringer's recorded history was somewhat spotty, however, as
his record sales never matched his favor with concert audiences
— a huge gap also existed between releases, which didn't bother
him; even in the late '90s, Derringer played close to 200 shows
a year. He spent most of the late '70s and 1980s, however, as
a producer, working with artists as diverse as Bette Midler, Kiss,
Meat Loaf, Cyndi Lauper, Barbra Streisand, and Weird Al Yankovic.
Derringer is known for his hard-rocking live shows, which don't
necessarily translate well to recordings, or lend themselves to
much originality. As he neared age 50 in the 1990s, however, he
had mellowed, and this showed when he began recording again for
Shrapnel Records in 1993 with the albums Back to the Blues and
Electra Blues. Years of fair to average rock and adult contemporary
albums followed, but in 2002 Derringer did an about-face and tried
his hands at jazz with the adventurous Free Ride.
This bio courtesy www.allmusic.com
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