The Story
Detroit guitarist Dennis Coffey played on more hits than most people could name. On StarPower Collective, he walked through a career that started at 15, when he played his first recording session, got paid $15 a song and heard himself on the radio two weeks later.
Music ran in the family. His mother played piano and sang big band standards, and she told him he could name every song on the radio at two or three years old. Cousins playing country music got him started on guitar, and he practiced up to eight hours a day in the summer before studying harmony and theory at Wayne State University.
At Motown he joined a producers' workshop, and a new wah-wah pedal a friend lent him became the sound of The Temptations' "Cloud Nine." He also used an Echoplex tape-echo machine on guitar. Sessions were cut live, one song an hour with no overdubs, and some of his best-known parts were made up on the spot.
His own record, "Scorpio," did nothing for its first year. Then dance clubs started playing it, and it went gold. He says it has been sampled more than 90 times. Dennis still values what Detroit taught him: it didn't matter what color you were, only whether you could play.
In Dennis Coffey's Words
“In Detroit, it didn't matter what color you were. It was just you could play or you couldn't play.”
Dennis Coffey
“We did one song an hour with no mistakes.”
Dennis Coffey
On the Playlist
- Dennis Coffey – "Scorpio"
- The Temptations – "Cloud Nine"
- Hank Williams
- Jimmy Reed
- B.B. King
Questions & Answers
How did Dennis Coffey's "Scorpio" become a hit?
Dennis Coffey told StarPower Collective that "Scorpio" did nothing for its first year until dance clubs started playing it, which led to his first gold record.
