Dennis Coffey

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Our guest this afternoon has made music you’re all familiar with in one capacity or another, whether you realize it or not. He’s a session player on countless recordings and a key player on a little record label called Motown, back in the day. He also has done a number of solo recordings, which you may have heard sampled by some of your favorite hip-hop artists and he’s done numerous productions that were popular in certain clubs during the disco era. So, please, let’s give a warm welcome to Dennis Coffey.

[Applause]

Dennis Coffey

How you doing? Nice to be here, great crowd so far.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, before we get going, we’ve heard a bit of the background about the stuff you’ve done recently, but I just want to give a very quick introduction to something you did back in the day, which goes a little something like this.

(music: Dennis Coffey – “Getting It On” / applause)

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, that’s one of your solo recordings, but before you were a soloist you were doing session work. You actually started at quite a young age, is that correct?

Dennis Coffey

Yes, also Chuck D was here last week and he sampled that “Getting It On” record you just heard, without my knowledge, of course [laughter). So, I’m sitting in the studio, saying, “Let me hear what’s going on,” and I hear this track and say: “I don’t remember getting paid for this session.” I talked to him at the R&B Foundation gala in Philadelphia about four weeks ago, because that was the first time I had a chance to talk to him, and he said, “We didn’t get paid either. I thought you might sue the company and get us some money too.” So, that’s the story for the first time I remember myself being sampled.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Your roots obviously pre-date that. If we can go back, tell us how you got started playing guitar. You’re from Detroit, is that correct?

Dennis Coffey

From Detroit, and I had a couple of cousins in the upper peninsula of Michigan, and they played guitar and showed me some chords. I was fascinated with the guitar, and my mom told me I could name every song on the radio when I was three. Somehow, I had a real affinity for music and I started practicing, practiced eight hours a day when I wasn’t going to school in the summer. I ended up contracting and playing on my first session when I was 15, got some friends from high school and had to get one guy who could drive, because we weren’t old enough to drive to the session [laughs]. It was great, I heard myself on the radio when I was 15, took a couple of solos and I was hooked from then on, so I just kept practicing. I still consider myself a student of music, it’s still out there and every day I try to do something different. I still love it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, you started in the ’50s when you were a teenager, the birth of the rock & roll era.

Dennis Coffey

I was in the middle of it, so as things were evolving, the crowd that I hung around with in Detroit, we were playing teen clubs working two night a week. We were 16, 17-years old and we were getting paid and doing gigs already.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Describe that scene, because before you were old enough to get into bars and start doing gigs, you left to join the military, is that correct?

Dennis Coffey

I wasn’t old enough to go from the teen clubs to the bars, so I volunteered for the draft, spent a couple of years in the paratroopers, jumping out of airplanes, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but I’m not so sure it was. I was doing gigs at the same time at night, and I almost got court-martialed, because they were all lined up for doing maneuvers one day and I pulled up in a cab with my guitar. So, I had to join another unit, where I could play at night while still being in the service. So, I was recording with Maurice Williams down in South Carolina while I was still in the service.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, once you got out of the service, you went back to Detroit, playing in the clubs and things like that... Set the scene for us – what was the environment like? Detroit being the city where the motor industry is based, a working-class blue-collar city, where people would cut loose after working in the plants all day.

Dennis Coffey

Detroit still is a music town. I still play one night a month at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge, which is a jazz club that has been in existence for 74 years. We never rehearse, we never plan, I count off a couple of chords and we run with it. Which means every time we play stuff it’s different, which is a good thing for me. But when I got out of the service, I was out of the army for two weeks, I auditioned for a band gig, got the gig, and I was working six nights a week from that point on. Detroit at that time had a lot of bars, a lot of music and a lot of people supporting the music. Right now, the city is going through some economic woes but you can still hear live music all over the city. It’s always been a great place to learn how to play, get your chops together and the people like it. You can still go out in Detroit and hear live music all the time.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And still a lot of young musicians, too, coming up.

Dennis Coffey

Absolutely. I have some young cats in my band, they’re in their 20s and 30s, and we have fun.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Who were some of the musicians you would see around in the ‘60s, performing in bars?

Dennis Coffey

There was one guy who performed with me in the Funk Brothers is Bob Babbitt, the bass player, and he and I used to do all the early ‘60s stuff, the Motown stuff. We played in clubs together too. There were different musicians, Bob Seger came up through the ranks playing clubs at a young age, plus you had the whole soul thing going on there too.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Before we jump ahead too much, explain the whole soul scene in Detroit at the time. On one of your early sessions, you met someone who had a little something to do with Motown. So, just explain what that whole environment was like.

Dennis Coffey

Well, I was 16 and had this partner who was 16, and we were doing rockabilly, he wrote the Elvis-type song called “Crazy Little Satellite,” and we cut a demo at Fortune Records. Somehow, Jackie Wilson’s manager Nat Tarnopol heard that demo, so I found myself in the studio at 16, trying to be an artist with my partner, and Berry Gordy was the arranger – this was even before Motown. We cut the song, it didn’t come out, and after six months we got impatient and demanded our contract back. And that’s the end of it, I don’t know what happened to that record.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

But in the wake of Motown starting – Berry Gordy being its founder – I guess, in addition to Motown doing its thing, there were a lot of labels and studios popping up in Detroit, trying to ride that wave of popularity.

Dennis Coffey

There were studios popping up on every corner, studios in the back of record shops, all over the place. We were doing sessions one after another, getting paid cash. Life was good, we were working all the time just making records.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What was your ambition at that point? Did you want to be a performer on your own, a soloist, work with a group, or were you happy just going night to night and seeing what was coming to you?

Dennis Coffey

I always liked to practice and write songs, and one day I woke up and thought, “People are actually paying me to play music.” Because I used to play gigs for nothing in the beginning. The lights went on and I thought, “This is great, I actually get paid for this,” and it just kept going. I never got up one day and thought I want to make a living as a musician, because I just never thought it would happen. So, as it started happening I just got busier and busier. In Detroit, a recording session is usually three hours, and we had to walk in at Motown or Golden World or wherever and put up some sheet music. You had to play that song in that hour, read the chart, come up with some ideas and make it a hit. There were three hours a session, I was doing 18 sessions a week, so figure it out — I was involved in about 50 songs every week for a long period of time. I could look on the Billboard charts and for one year solid I was on at least 10 songs in the top 100 and at least three in the top 10, for one year straight. We were very busy.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Explain what Golden World was.

Dennis Coffey

Golden World was a studio on Davidson started by Ed Wingate. We were never quite sure where he got the money, but I think he had a numbers-running business under the table. Whenever he had distribution problems, he would send out a couple of his guys and they always got paid. He seemed to have a lot of money. That was the Golden World era, we’d record there all the time with JJ Barnes and Edwin Starr and all the different acts there, all soul singers.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And that was before you got down with Motown that you were doing stuff with Golden World?

Dennis Coffey

Golden World and a lot of different labels. We did a thing with The Parliaments, with George Clinton, “I Wanna Testify,” that kind of stuff; “Open The Door To Your Heart” with Darrell Banks, Betty LaVette, all kinds of things were happening even before Golden World and Motown, there were always different sessions going on.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

These were all ’60s soul records made in Detroit, with a Motown-type of feel. Later on, you found a lot of these obscure records had found a whole new audience with the Northern soul scene.

Dennis Coffey

The Northern Soul scene... I put out a book over in Europe called Guitars, Bars and Motown Superstars, I went over there for nine days and people coming up to me who knew more details about the records I’d done than I did. They were coming up to me with mint copies of records I’d done that I didn’t even have copies of. They were avid collectors, they knew their stuff, they knew their music.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Does everyone know what Northern Soul is? Not everybody. Northern Soul is basically records that sound like Motown records, made at the same time, but that weren’t commercial successes, so they faded into obscurity. But in the early ’70s in the north of England, soul collectors and DJs found these records and championed them at all-nighters, which are parties that went on all night, as you might guess. It kind of pre-dates all the rave culture in a funny way that came afterwards. But you played on a bunch of them and were surprised to find they were actually very popular, even though they were nobodies in terms of their success.

Dennis Coffey

I played on some of the records and then I went to a couple of some of the soul clubs that were playing Northern Soul and I did a weekend at a resort called Cleethorpes, where I rehearsed with a band in London – I was opening act for The Velvelettes. They’re like maniacs [in the UK]. They partied all night and dance to this music. It was great.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, at this time, for a session player in Detroit, getting down with Motown was something what everyone wanted to do?

Dennis Coffey

The Funk Brothers was the epitome of the best band in the world. My opinion of it was that I wouldn’t have a chance of getting on there, so I never bothered with it. But I got a call one day from James Jamerson, the bass player, he introduced me to Hank Cosby, who was Stevie Wonder’s producer. They said they were doing this producers’ workshop upstairs at Golden World, because by then Motown had purchased it, and they wanted me to be part of the rhythm section. We were going to provide somewhere for the producers to get some of their ideas and have more time, as opposed to the studio time.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Because they were so rushed in the studio?

Dennis Coffey

Maybe for them, not for us, we were used to it. But for someone who didn’t have a hit, maybe they’re saying, “Why don’t you have a hit?” So, we started two-and-a-half hours a night, four nights a week, and within a few weeks Norman Whitfield, the producer, came in with this song “Cloud Nine”, and by that time I was playing funk in the clubs and I had wah-wah pedals, and distortion and all the effects. So, I pulled out the wah-wah pedal and played it on “Cloud Nine” and within two weeks I was in the studio recording it. All that effects stuff on all The Temptations records, that’s me doing all that.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So that was your first session at Motown, let’s hear a bit of that.

(music: The Temptations – “Cloud Nine” / applause)

Dennis Coffey

Thank you. That was the Funk Brothers. You don’t get any better than that. I can’t even count how many millions of records we sold over at that place. They were the cats. Over in that room we all did that at the same time – that whole rhythm section was all of us playing together. That was about as good as it gets, at least to my mind.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And that session, too, was a change of pace in a lot of ways, not only for the style of music, which was a lot funkier than what Motown was normally doing, but also the drummers. Can you explain what was going on there?

Dennis Coffey

That was one of the first sessions... At the workshop, we had a drummer called Spider Webb, he came up with that cymbal figure. The first drummer at Motown was Benny Benjamin, but by the time I got there it was Uriel Jones and Pistol. So, on that first session it was Spider Webb doing the cymbal part, and I’m not sure if it was Uriel or Pistol doing the backbeat and the foot. From then on, most of the sessions I was doing with The Temptations, one drummer would play the fancy hi-hat and another would do the kick drum and the snare. That’s how you got that powerhouse. Then you had Eddie ‘Bongo’ Brown on congas, that’s how you got that polyrhythm thing, and Jack Ashford doing the hi and tambourine. Then you had James Jamerson doing the funky bottom, and Earl Van Dyke laying those big fat chords and the organ player Johnny Griffith. Then there was myself and usually Eddie Willis, from Mississippi, playing those funky things while I’m doing something psychedelic. Then we had Robert White on guitar or Joe Messina doing the backbeat – he had a Fender. But those rhythm sections were all cut at the same time, so we played off each other and the track itself was better than any one of us because it was us collectively us jamming together, it was great.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

But what about the wah-wah on there? Talk a bit about that, because before this The Temptations had been doing pretty straight Motown stuff, the classic Motown sound. But this was more influenced by Sly Stone and a lot more funky stuff.

Dennis Coffey

The producer, Norman Whitfield, was listening to the psychedelic sound, Sly & the Family Stone and other groups, including the English groups. He wanted to take it in a different direction, this was protest time and in Detroit we’d had the riots. Someone came in the studio and said someone had just firebombed the drugstore down the street, and it was in flames. We had one person watching the flames while we tried to finish the record, and we got it done, finished up, took the tapes and left. But it was very tense in those days, and Norman brought that to the music, because Motown was love songs. But he brought the protest element to it and he saw me as someone to make it happen, with the distortion pedals and the funk and the wah-wah stuff and the Echoplex, and all that texture could add to what he was trying to achieve.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you want to give us a little demo of that stuff, because Norman didn’t have the idea of adding the wah-wah element to the song – he just had you do your thing, right?

Dennis Coffey

We made up stuff as we went along.

(music: Dennis Coffey – guitar demo / applause)

That’s the wah-wah pedal, now I’ll show a bit of distortion.

(music: Dennis Coffey – guitar demo)

And you can add effects to it like in “Ball of Confusion.”

(music: Dennis Coffey – guitar demo)

I combined all this with other devices, so Norman would say, “Let me see your bag of toys, let’s see what you’ve got.” So, I’d pull out all these pedals and he’d say, “I like that one.” And we’re off and running.

[Applause]

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, I’m curious to know for you as a session player, how much of it was an assembly line, a type of tunnel-vision mentality, and how much were you aware of the songs you were playing and the impact they might have?

Dennis Coffey

Motown would have a master rhythm chart with three different lines: the piano part, the bass part and maybe a third part in there. The rhythm section would all get the same chart, and we’d play the chart. What we would do is play the chart, but my job was to maybe like [provide] the intro on “Just My Imagination” – that was mine, I made that up. And at the end you might hear a solo or a figure, which I’d made up. We also got good at playing fill-in’s, which we played on the offbeat, so we wouldn’t interfere with the singer, because we had no idea what the singer would be singing. We got very good at doing little fill-in parts that wouldn’t overpower anyone, so that’s how we did it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, you had no idea of what track you were doing for what singer?

Dennis Coffey

Sometimes they had the name of the track on there, sometimes they had the artists, sometimes they didn’t. But we never heard it until they came in. I remember when we did “Still Waters Run Deep” with The Four Tops, to me it sounded backwards when we played it, but once it was a finished record it sounded great and ended up being a hit. We didn’t know that at the time.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Is there something else from this Temptations era you want to throw on?

Dennis Coffey

This is the intro with the Echoplex and the Fuzz,

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

“Ball Of Confusion,” The Temptations.

(music: The Temptations – “Ball of Confusion” / applause)

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, you weren’t exclusive to Motown, but others were, right?

Dennis Coffey

Most of the Funk Brothers were signed exclusively to Motown and they couldn’t work for anybody else. I remember doing a session with the Funk Brothers at 4 AM on a Sunday at United Sound, and it’s raining and cold and dark out, and there was a knock on the back door. We opened it up expecting it to be a musician and it was Ralph Seltzer, Berry Gordy’s hatchet man, and he runs in, points at Willis and Jamerson and said, “I see you,” and runs back out the door. They got fined over that, but they couldn’t do anything to me.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, the Funk Brothers, who were under contract to Motown, if they got caught they got fined for doing outside sessions?

Dennis Coffey

Yes, and on rare occasions they got fired for a short time.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

But you avoided all that.

Dennis Coffey

I considered myself a free agent. I almost signed to Motown as an artist. I did a record called “It’s Your Thing” and gave a copy to Clarence Avant at Sussex Records, a copy to Hank Cosby to give to Berry. Within a month I had a signed contract to Sussex Records as an artist, then Hank comes up to me and says, “Berry loves that record, he wants to sign it.” Too late, that’s the deal.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, at that point you’re doing stuff with Sussex and you were working with Mike Theodore at that time?

Dennis Coffey

He was my partner playing in a jazz club three nights a week after doing all the sessions with the Lyman Woodard group. Mike and I ran into each other at Golden World, he was an arranger, I was an arranger. The way he learned to produce was a friend of ours owned Tera-Shirma Studio, and he gave us the keys to the studio, because Mike Theodore was engineering and I was doing the production and arranging. We’d bring in these bands from the clubs we knew and we’d record them at about 3 AM, when the studio wasn’t busy. That’s how we learned how to produce. One of the first groups we did was Rare Earth, we did an album with them on MGM, and that was the beginning. When I first met Mike, Steve Mancha had this session with Scepter and he wanted Mike to do the charts. Mike had this big budget to do horns and strings, and I’d had my first string day with The Holidays the week before, so he said, “I notice you can do violins, I can do horn and rhythm, but I’ve never done strings before, so let’s partner up on this arrangement.” I said to myself, “I’ve done them once, that makes me an expert.” So away we went.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

How did you go from doing the productions for other people with Mike to doing your own solo recordings?

Dennis Coffey

We signed up as house producers for Sussex. I took the Lyman Woodard Trio and did an album with them for MGM, because Clarence okayed it once he’d heard the demo. That album was the first I did, but they didn’t promote the album because the label, Clarence, had went under. So, he came back with this new label, Sussex, and gave me the money to cut the Evolution album.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, you put this solo album out and what happened?

Dennis Coffey

For the first year, nothing. I thought, “This is great. I’m trying to get something going and nothing’s happening.” I did another album with a guitar band, I used the Funk Brothers, and then I wrote out horn parts for guitarists and I brought in Ray Monette from Rare Earth, myself and Joe Podorsek and we had nine guitarists playing the melody to “Scorpio.” In the year nothing happened, I did another album called Goin’ for Myself and used horns and strings instead. Before that album could be released, Ron Moseley, the national promotions guy in New York, called me on the phone and said, “Man, I’m going to all the clubs and they’re going crazy over Scorpio. It’s tearing the roof off, so we’re going to stop this album and re-service Scorpio.” I remember I was sitting in a bar in Detroit with Mike, the record was number 13 and the next week we’re listening, they’re going up the charts, nothing – I thought it had fallen off – but it went from 13 to number one in one week.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, this was a year after you put the album out, and you thought it was dead in the water?

Dennis Coffey

It sat there and did nothing for a year.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, this is what revived that album.

(music: Dennis Coffey – “Scorpio” /applause)

Dennis Coffey

Thank you. If you hear all the guys yelling in the background, that’s Jack Ashford and Bongo Eddie, they always went crazy. I left the mics on and Theodore said, “We’ve got to keep that,” so we left it in.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, you wrote the guitar parts as horn parts, basically?

Dennis Coffey

Yeah, Mike and I were doing a lot of horn and string arranging with the rhythm section and we were getting so jaded that we’d look in the union book and find some instrument, and if someone knew how to play it, we’d bring them down and use it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, that’s basically nine guitars doing the melody?

Dennis Coffey

Yes, then I did a baritone sax part through my wah-wah and my bass to add another piece to it, so it’s like a guitar orchestra.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, you get that wall of sound with the melody. But you couldn’t recreate that live when you went and toured to support the album…

Dennis Coffey

It was too expensive. To fly all those guys around the country, no one’s going to pay you to do that, unless you’re one of the big superstars.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

But that song was still pretty huge for you.

Dennis Coffey

Over a million sold, and people still want to hear it today. We still do it, but we don’t do it like it is on the record, we change it every time and just get wild with it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I guess, the breakdowns in a lot of these tracks from that period are what has sustained them for a whole new audience. Obviously, they were sampled in the late ’80s and ’90s, but they were also played in the hip-hop park jams in the Bronx, by DJs who were just spinning back the breakdowns.

Dennis Coffey

I think that’s what broke “Scorpio,” and a lot of my records. I had the guitar parts out in the open – they could grab it, sample it and then loop it, make other records around it. The first time I went to New York, in this big hotel in Brooklyn... I’m not saying it was rough but we went in this place and I asked the manager, “Where do we park, where’s your parking lot guy?” He said, “To tell the truth, our parking guy was shot last night, so we don’t have one. Drive around to the parking lot, back your truck up against the wall, take your distributor cap off and chain down your steering wheel and you’ll be OK.” Anyway, we’re playing to 2,000 people in this big ballroom, it’s jammed, and we do “Scorpio,” and I look up during the percussion break and there are 2,000 people in a conga line coming towards the bandstand. It freaked me out, it was wild.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, you’re doing the solo records, you’re on Sussex. You’re not doing the Motown stuff at this point, or are you?

Dennis Coffey

I was working out at Mowest. Why not? They were paying me scale-and-a-half, and I still did the Motown stuff, and I worked with Ringo Starr, Quincy Jones, Tom Jones, everyone in the S.W.A.T. TV show and, in concert, everything that LA had to offer.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Let’s back up a bit, you moved out to L.A. What was the motivation for that?

Dennis Coffey

Things were getting slow in Detroit and I wanted to move somewhere that had more action. The Motown thing was slowing down and there weren’t a lot of labels in Detroit like there used to be, so I moved to LA to see what opportunities were out there. And I wanted to do a film – I thought that was a big deal. When I got there, I told Clarence Avant to see if he could find me a deal to do a film, and I was sitting out there for two months, and didn’t hear anything, so I thought, “OK, we’re falling off a cliff here, we’re done.” So, I get a call from Motown, and I went into the studio at Mowest at 10 AM, and they kept bouncing me upstairs, downstairs. By the time I’d finished recording everything they needed doing it was 4 AM the following day, that was my first session at Mowest.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

That was Motown’s West Coast studios, but Motown actually left Detroit altogether around that time.

Dennis Coffey

They had their other studio ready, and then one day the Funk Brothers turned up for a session... Here you come, you’ve spent the major part of your career doing sessions for Motown, you show up to do a session, and there’s a sign on the door saying: “There will never be any sessions here again. We’re closed.” That’s the word to the Funk Brothers got on their final day. They turned up expecting to do a session, and to get paid, and there’s a sign on the door saying Motown is closed in Detroit.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

That’s pretty crazy. What was the reaction of the guys who you stayed in touch with?

Dennis Coffey

Has anyone seen the Standing in the Shadows of Motown documentary? That pretty much sums it up. The guy who made it, Allan Slutsky, wanted me to do more in the film. He said, “Let me see your guitar, I want to show you how I want you to play it.” I said, “OK.” So, when it came to the show I said, “Alan, why don’t you play it yourself?” and I didn’t go. But the guys felt bad about what happened – he just rubbed me the wrong way – but all the guys felt let down and about four weeks later I was at the R&B Foundation in Philly and Chaka Khan and Aretha [Franklin] and Jerry Butler, everyone was there, Bonnie Raitt, and they gave myself, Uriel Jones, Eddie Willis and Bob Babbitt – pioneer Funk Brother – awards, it was really nice. Dionne Warwick was singing there, everyone in R&B was performing. So, it was a great wrap-up to the whole career of working with the Funk Brothers.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, you went to LA to try and get some TV and soundtrack work. As far as “Scorpio,” and that whole era, you did the whole guitar orchestra thing, but when you had a chance to do film work, you experimented with that as well…

Dennis Coffey

I always try to do different things, it’s the heart of creativity. I always try to play new songs, try new licks, always something new. If you don’t, it can get boring, you’ve got to challenge yourself all the time. So, I went to see Fred Weintraub, who was doing this movie Black Belt Jones, and he had everything except a main theme and a love theme. So, I sat down and decided I’ve got to do something different. I watched it and came up with the main theme and the love theme. I decided again to do something different, what could I do different on this film? I knew the singers in LA could sight-read, they could read pretty much anything, so I wrote out vocal parts for the melody, ran them through my wah-wah pedal and the amp. Then, in the middle, I did this breakdown, wrote out this counterpoint piece of four voice parts working against each other in harmony, almost like a Bach kind of invention, and I put that in the middle, which is what you hear in “Theme from Black Belt Jones.”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

OK, this is “Theme from Black Belt Jones,” a martial arts film.

(music: Dennis Coffey – “Theme from Black Belt Jones” / applause)

Dennis Coffey

Thank you. The horn and string parts were written by my partner Mike Theodore. You can see we had all the LA cats. It’s fun, you can hear it in the intensity of the players, that’s what it’s all about for me.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Besides the Black Belt Jones tracks, you never really tried that again with the voices and the wah-wah?

Dennis Coffey

I went to the screening, and the sound effects were louder than my music, so I got ticked off and I didn’t do any more movies [laughs]. I get stubborn sometimes.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

How did you like LA?

Dennis Coffey

I was out there for three years, I did the film, did all the TV shows, and played with everyone I wanted to play with. After a while, I decided it was too hectic and I wanted some peace and quiet, so I went back to Detroit.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And what happened back in Detroit, what was the game plan at that point?

Dennis Coffey

Sussex was having financial difficulties, so I switched companies and got a deal with Westbound, with Armen Boladian for myself and my partner Mike Theodore, so we moved our operations there. In 1975, we recorded an album for Westbound, part of it was done in LA, part in Detroit. Then we moved operations to Detroit to support Westbound.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

At this point you’re working with Westbound out of Detroit. You said you were studying what was happening with disco. What did you do to study what was going on and how it was put together?

Dennis Coffey

We were getting pressure from Armen, who was getting pressure from Atlantic – you know, we’ve got to get some hits and disco was out there. Mike and I had been to New York to go to some of the Billboard conventions, so I knew what was going on with the disco market. I went and bought a bunch of disco records and pulled them apart, piece by piece, figured out what made them tick and used that as a foundation. That’s how we created this record “Devil’s Gun,” and to make it happen we got the disco mixmaster Tom Moulton, a fantastic guy, and had him do the mixdown on it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Who was Tom Moulton?

Dennis Coffey

Back then he was a DJ, very successful in the clubs of New York. He did the mixdowns at Sigma Sound in Philadelphia, and we knew that to make this thing happen we needed him to do the mixes for us.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Now, we don’t have “Devil’s Gun,” which was the single. But we can play another one from CJ & Company. This is by CJ & Company, so this is you and Mike Theodore writing and producing?

Dennis Coffey

Not writing, arranging.

(music: CJ & Company – “We Got Our Own Thing” / applause)

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You don’t hear that much about your work in this area. Everyone talks about “Scorpio” and all that stuff. But your records from then, a lot of them were embraced by people like David Mancuso at The Loft and other big underground DJs in New York. Nobody talks about this era, though.

Dennis Coffey

At first, it was like the stepchild of the funk era, they didn’t want to understand it in Detroit. But we were using the funk players to do it, and the Bee Gees were using the funk players to do it, it was just a different form of music. My partner Mike Theodore got very good at doing horns and strings, and the records still hold up. When I work at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge, the first few times I did upright bass, traditional jazz and the people gave me blank stares, so I had to bring back the funksters and we get crazy and funky. That’s what people want from me, so that’s what I do.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

This wasn’t a good experience for you at Westbound?

Dennis Coffey

I think their deal just ran out. We came in to talk to Armen, and Atlantic had cut them loose, so within two weeks we’re out of work, boom!

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And then you moved to New York at this point?

Dennis Coffey

Yes, we had a couple of independent deals, but the record business was so bad they would give you $50,000, Columbia did, for a project and they didn’t even put it out. The record companies started as a small business, then it got huge, but at that point there was a lot of competition for the entertainment dollar, and this was the first of the cracks starting to appear in the record business – and this was back in the late ’70s, early ’80s. It was suddenly not a young business any more, it was starting to age. We had three deals already paid for with different acts, and the companies refused to put the stuff out. Once we got to New York, the labels changed up. They said, “OK, Mr Producer, you spend your money and you go cut a master, and if we like it, we will put it out. If we don’t, you eat the cost.” So, that’s when I stopped being Mr Producer. “You’ve gotta be kidding me, man, we’re not playing that game.”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What about session work? Was there any session work in New York at that time?

Dennis Coffey

There were a few things, but New York was jammed up. I was there for a few years but it just wasn’t working out, and I realized it was time to rethink being in the music business, and came back to Detroit and ended up going to work for one of the car companies.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

In your book, you make a very profound point about how the thrill of life is your livelihood and once that’s taken away from you, it can leave you very depressed.

Dennis Coffey

If there’s one thing that I can state to everybody, it’s self-reliance and flexibility. No one’s going to cover you. No one’s going to cover you or give you money the rest of your life. You have to take care of your own skill and talent and have to be flexible. I went back to school, got two masters degrees and I was sent all over the country by one of the car companies. And all my buddies in the music business were literally dying because things fell apart, some of them couldn’t cope. I mean dying, dead. It was really tragic. But you have to keep your skills going and be aware, because no one can be creative when they’re starving.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

But one thing you had to do when you got back to Detroit, you had to find a way to pay the bills because things had dried up.

Dennis Coffey

Yeah, I went to work on an assembly line. They’re playing my records on the radio while I’m building cars. You’ve got to be flexible, if you take it too seriously, it’ll kill you. So, you just say, “OK, I’ve got to find another way to make money now,” and you just do it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, you were on the assembly line. What was the environment like and your mentality?

Dennis Coffey

Well, it kind of sucked. I was putting in transmissions, putting in torque converters, building transmissions, it was 120 degrees in the summer. Then they said they needed someone to be an instructor, and I had taught guitar. So, I applied for that job, and I ended up learning a thing called instructional design. So, while I was working on the line, I went back and got a masters degree in instructional technology and for the last ten years, I was a consultant for the Ford company, they were sending me all over the place. That was my last job in the regular business, now I’m just back doing music again.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

During that time, was music completely absent from your life? Did you play at all, any regular gigs?

Dennis Coffey

The only time in my entire life that I didn’t have my hands on a guitar on a regular basis was in boot camp in the army, because they wouldn’t let me bring my guitar there. But after that, and after jump school, I had my guitar the entire time in the army, then every day of my life. I play two hours a day, I’m on it, it’s just what I like to do.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, you were working at Ford, then you got back into the music thing and realized you could make a living doing gigs around town.

Dennis Coffey

It worked out good, the first time I did a gig at Baker’s Keyboard, I talked to the owner, and I figured out after three weeks trying to get a rehearsal, it wasn’t going to happen. So, I showed up the day of the job with musicians I hadn’t met before. I gave the piano player and the bass player a chord sheet and said, “OK, we’re doing this song.” I counted it off and away we went. I’ve never rehearsed with anybody since for the Baker’s gig. I’ve been through many musicians, but one thing about Detroit, if you get good players, it will work out, and it always has.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What is it about Detroit as a city that has produced so many great musicians, producers, DJs?

Dennis Coffey

It’s part of the culture. I can only figure out that you can go all over the place and still hear live music. Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops just passed away, and the reason I think that shows you something about the culture is because a few years ago he had a stroke and I played a show for him at the Opera House in Detroit; all the major stars showed up, and halfway through the show, they brought him out in a wheelchair. He was singing two verses of a song with Aretha Franklin, and the Four Tops were singing behind him and Dennis Edwards and The Temptations were singing on the side, and it just brought the house down. But he was our friend and we were all going to do this, and that’s also part of the culture of the city.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Speaking of Rodriguez and that whole era, and even the Temptations material that Norman Whitfield did, it was very topical, incorporating that protest sensibility in the late ’60s. There were famous riots in Detroit in the late ’60s, what was it like at the time?

Dennis Coffey

The thing that started it was a place, a “blind pig,” which was [an licensed place] but was serving alcohol. The police went in and busted it and got heavy handed with the people and it was a hot summer night. And the economy wasn’t doing too good, there was a lot of tension, and it just erupted into a riot. It got so bad that they brought in the National Guard, and they actually brought in my old unit, the 101st Airborne division. Some of them had come back from Vietnam. But you can see how serious it was – when you had the 101st Airborne and when they show it on TV, they had a sniper in a building. He’s shooting at the 101st Airborne division guys and they’re in a self-propelled gun. The captain of the unit has a bullhorn and he tells them to stop firing, and you can hear the pings off the self-propelled gun. And the guy says something and you can see the cannon go and it blew off the whole corner of the building with the guy still in it. That’s how bad that was.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

The Motown musicians were black and white players. Was there any sort of carry over, or any camaraderie?

Dennis Coffey

We were all friends, and I was working in the black clubs anyway. Eddie Willis, the guitar player, told me he came home one night after a session and he got stopped outside of his house by a tank. The tank had a turret pointing at him, and it made him get out of his car – and Eddie uses a cane too. They got the tank on him and asked him what he was doing there. He said, “Man, this is my house, I live here.” It was kind of a weird story he told us later on.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Any questions?

Audience Member

First of all, much respect. So, what year was it that you put the wah-wah on that song?

Dennis Coffey

That was probably ‘68.

Audience Member

So, [Jimi] Hendrix was using it?

Dennis Coffey

Hendrix, Eric Clapton and a few other folks. The only thing I did was, I was the first to put it in an R&B song.

Audience Member

There’s been a debate about who was the first person to use the wah-wah. Do you know who might have used it first?

Dennis Coffey

Boy, I don’t. I can only speak for when I used it. In R&B, I was using special effects, like “In the Rain” by The Dramatics, the Echoplex intro, that was me. And “Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get,” I used something different on that. Also “Don’t Knock My Love,” with Muscle Shoals and Wilson Pickett. So, I was getting around using sound effects on different things. “Smiling Faces Sometimes,” I put a solo in the middle of that, but that was a Condor unit, that was a different effect.

Audience Member

So, you had no idea that you were responsible for all the psychedelic Motown stuff? That’s really cool.

Dennis Coffey

We had fun. Norman Whitfield, who unfortunately passed away three weeks ago, he was the guy who wanted to do that. The BBC were doing a documentary and they came into Baker’s and Spyder Turner, who was a friend of Norman’s, was telling me about his illness and how they were staying together for a while. And Norman was telling him, “Man, I’ve gotta have some fried chicken.” “It’s the fried chicken that’s got you sick, you ain’t getting any more.” That was the story about Norman.

Audience Member

My last question – do you remember when you started working at Motown how many tracks they had in the studio? Was it just four-track?

Dennis Coffey

I would think probably eight by then. When me and Mike Theodore started recording, we used four, and we were recording orchestras. What we’d do is record the rhythm tracks, then bounce them to one track; then the horns and strings, and bounce that to one track; then the lead; then the background singers. With a four-track you’d have an orchestra on one, a full rhythm section on one, a lead singer on one, and background singers on one. I’m telling you, you were limited in the mixing, trying to do that. Trying to get a stereo image with just four tracks, and you couldn’t re-equalize everything much. Certainly, you couldn’t redo the individual instruments, you couldn’t re-EQ them because they were all on one track.

Audience Member

We have limitless tracks now [laughs).

Dennis Coffey

It was a big deal when we went from four to eight, I thought “This is heaven.” Then we went to 16 and I thought, “Man, we’re really living now.” Then 24. Then in LA, they were linking two 24-tracks together. Then I did a session where they brought in some guys from Motown, and I would say they had a 24-track on nothing but background voices. It’s crazy – this is taxing my brain, we need to do simple things.

Audience Member

How old were you when you did your first Motown session?

Dennis Coffey

Probably in my late 20s. I’d already played with The Volumes and on hit records with Del Shannon, so it just segued from Golden World into the Motown thing.

Audience Member

Thanks for being here.

Dennis Coffey

You folks are the next generation, you’ve got the future right here. Down the road you may be sitting up talking to some people like I’m doing now. You’ll be having this chair, you’re the people who are going to be doing things down the road. The future belongs to you, folks.

[Standing ovation]

Speaker: Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Thanks for the spontaneous standing O. Thank you, Mr Dennis Coffey.

Dennis Coffey

Thank you, let’s give Jeff a big hand for what he’s done.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Like I said, Dennis will be around for four more days.