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Rock legend and Celina native Rick Derringer has died.
CELINA - The man who sang lead vocals on The McCoys' megahit "Hang on Sloopy" and went on to make a name for himself with the white-hot, guitar rave-up "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo" has died at 77.
Rick Derringer, a Mercer County native, died Monday in Ormond Beach, Florida, according to a Facebook announcement from his caregiver, Tony Wilson. No cause of death was announced.
"God bless Rick Derringer," Ringo Star said in a statement on social media. "It was great playing with him in the All Starrs. I send peace and love to his family."
Back in August 2011, Derringer had a homecoming of sorts when he performed at the Fraze Pavilion in Kettering as one of the headliners of Hippiefest - a traveling rock 'n' roll show featuring the great musicians of the 1960s and '70s.
Derringer turned in an incendiary, jaw-dropping show that Saturday night, proving his extraordinary guitar chops were still burning bright. The guitar slinger who made his solo album debut with 1973's "All American Boy" and left his mark on records by The Edgar Winter Group, Alice Cooper, Todd Rundgren, Steely Dan and KISS, talked to The Daily Standard backstage before the show.
Derringer said he was born in a hospital in Celina and lived in Fort Recovery until the eighth grade when his family moved to Union City, Indiana. He received a guitar on his 9th birthday and was influenced by a guitar-playing uncle.
Originally born with the surname Zehringer, he later changed it to Derringer which "came to him in a dream, inspired by a picture of a derringer gun on the Bang label," according to The Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock and Soul.
Asked if he had always dreamed about playing guitar for a living, Derringer said his parents were practical people - his father John worked for the railroad - and told him that a musical profession wasn't likely in the cards.
By age 17, he was playing with his brother Randy, a drummer, in a band eventually called The McCoys after a few name changes.
"We just wanted to play," he said.
Derringer said they played gigs at the Forest Park Arena in Dayton as a backup band for artists such as Chuck Berry. One night, Derringer said the band played backup for the Strangeloves and learned they were looking for someone to record for them.
"We turned out to be those guys," Derringer said.
The McCoys recorded "Hang on Sloopy" - a cover of "My Girl Sloopy" by soul group The Vibrations - in 1965 in New York City for Bang Records. The company was an offshoot of Atlantic Records, he said.
The song became a smash hit, and The McCoys toured extensively and played on The Dick Clark Show and Where The Action Is. Derringer said "Hang on Sloopy" was patterned on the original song, as his band was into soul, blues and Motown stuff.
"Hang on Sloopy" in the summer of 1965 knocked The Beatles' "Yesterday" off the top of charts, a moment that Derringer said really didn't phase him until he saw it advertised on a billboard.
"We're in pretty good company," he said.
Derringer said Beatles' drummer Ringo Starr later jokingly told him he didn't care because he hadn't played on either song.
Music was the whole world for a whole group of people back then - it etched itself into people in a different way, Derringer said.
"It became very pervasive in our whole culture," he said. "The Beatles became a real cultural phenomena."
Many bands are popular today, but somehow contemporary music isn't burned into people's souls and psyches like it was in the past, he said.
"We were at the right place at the right time," he said.
Ohio legislators in 1985 designated "Hang on Sloopy" as the state's official rock song. Ohio is the only state to have an official rock song in recognition of the genre's integral part in state and national culture, according to ohio.gov.
"The song is reported to be about Dorothy Sloop, a singer from Steubenville, Ohio, who sometimes used the stage name Sloopy," the website states. "The Ohio State University Marching Band first performed the song at the Ohio State vs. Illinois football game in October 1965. The marching arrangement written by John Tagenhorst became a staple of the band's repertoire and cemented the song as an Ohio icon."
Derringer enjoyed his first solo hit with "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo," which was introduced to subsequent generations via the "Dazed and Confused" soundtrack and in the fourth season of "Stranger Things."
Rick Derringer's monster solo hit on 45 rpm record.
Another area rock 'n' roll luminary, Harold Miracle, who played in a number of bands, notably the Fabulous Jokers, claimed Derringer gave the combo a shout-out in "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo," when he sang about "a band called The Jokers, they were laying it down."
"That was the only time that the Jokers ever got mentioned nationwide and worldwide. But boy, I tell you what, we were his idols," Miracle told The Daily Standard in 2016, noting a 12-year-old Derringer, then a Zehringer, used to watch the band when it played a club near Eldora Speedway on Sunday afternoons.
Miracle passed away in July 2019.
Judy Bruns, a retired teacher in Coldwater, shared memories of growing up in the same Fort Recovery neighborhood with Derringer and his family. Children in the neighborhood, she said, were invited to the Derringer house to listen in on jam sessions.
"Wow! They were not 'ordinary,' but were excellent back then," Bruns said in a text to the newspaper. "Rick was SO nice - always- a gentle spirit, but boy could he and his brother jam! Randy once (played) an accordion! Then he switched to drums. Rick always played his guitar, as far as I know. But as a kid, his talent was already stellar!"
Throughout the 1970s and '80s, Derringer worked extensively as a session musician, playing on albums by Steely Dan - including "Countdown to Ecstasy," "Katy Lied" and "Gaucho" - Todd Rundgren, KISS and Barbra Streisand. He played on Air Supply's "Making Love Out of Nothing at All."
He earned a Grammy Award for producing "Weird Al" Yankovic's debut album.
In the mid-1980s he began working with Cindi Lauper, touring in her band and playing on three of her albums, including the hit "True Colors." He toured with Ringo Starr and The All-Starr Band.
In 1985, he produced the World Wrestling Federation's "The Wrestling Album," which consisted mostly of pro wrestlers' theme songs, many of which he co-wrote, including what would become Hulk Hogan's theme song "Real American."
Ted Nugent also paid tribute to Derringer on social media, calling him "a roustabout all American top 1% guitarmaster musicalforce of nature! A grand gentleman & friend. RIP my soulmusic bloodbrother soulbrother funkbrother."
- The Associated Press contributed to this article
Rick Derringer plays in 2010 at Radio City Music Hall in New York.
