Resonance Records is proud to
announce the release of Dennis Coffey's Hot Coffey in the D: Burnin' At Morey
Baker's Showplace Lounge, previously unreleased live recordings made during the
legendary guitarist's residency at Morey Baker's Showplace Lounge in Detroit in
1968 featuring Motor City staples on the scene — organist Lyman Woodard and drummer
Melvin Davis.
In the late
'60s, Dennis Coffey was a fixture in the fertile Detroit soul recording studio
scene, where he helped shape the sound of countless hits for Detroit's indie
soul labels Golden World, Ric-Tic, Kelmac and Revilot, among others. Jack
Montgomery’s
"Dearly Beloved," The Reflections' "Just Like Romeo and
Juliet" and Darrell Banks's "Open the Door to Your Heart" are
just a few of the Northern Soul classics of that era that Coffey played on. At
the same time, organist Lyman Woodard was the musical director for Martha
Reeves and The Vandellas (“Heat Wave”) and Melvin Davis was busy cutting 45s of his own as a
vocalist on the Groovesville, Fortune and Mala labels and landing a number
regional hits including “This Love Was Meant To Be”/“Save It (Never Too Late).”
As Coffey's
renown as a top funk studio guitarist grew among the movers and shakers of the
Detroit music scene, on the recommendation of legendary Motown bass player
James Jamerson, producer Norman Whitfield recruited Coffey to play on records
he was producing for Motown. Thus Coffey became established as a “Funk Brother,” a member of one of the world's
preeminent studio ensembles, which formed the backbone of countless Motown hit
records and which was the subject of the celebrated GRAMMY® Award-winning
feature-length documentary film, Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002), in
which Coffey is featured.
On Norman
Whitfield's productions for Motown, Coffey contributed to the evolving soul and
funk sound coming out of Detroit by introducing guitar innovations like
fuzz-tone distortion, Echoplex tape delay and wah-wah, previously the exclusive
province of rock and roll players. This new style developed by Coffey can be
heard on such mega-hits as the Temptations' "Ball of Confusion (That's
What the World Is Today)," Edwin Starr's "War," and the
Supremes' "Someday We'll be Together," among many others. Coffey's
sound was something new and different and lent a modern feel to all the records
he played on. Eventually, the demand for Coffey's magic touch led to
appearances on recordings by Quincy Jones, Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson,
Stevie Wonder and many others.
In addition
to the virtuosity he imparted on other artists' records, Coffey, along with his
producing partner, Mike Theodore (co-producer with Coffey of the original
recordings that make up this album), also produced recordings for a number of
successful artists, as well as hit projects of their own. The iconic music
executive Clarence Avant engaged Coffey and Theodore, through their production
company Theo-Coff, to produce sessions, create arrangements and write songs for
projects he released on his labels, Maverick/Venture and Sussex Records.
As
producers, writers and talent scouts, Coffey and Theodore looked beyond soul
and funk and ventured into new stylistic areas: rock, pop, folk and Latin.
Coffey and Theodore discovered and produced albums by Sixto Rodriguez, the
subject of the Oscar®-winning documentary, Searching for Sugar Man (2012). They
had a million seller rock hit, "Nice to be With You" by the band
Gallery and Coffey had his own million-seller instrumental funk hit
"Scorpio," which Theodore produced.
Coffey may
have been toiling in the studios making classic funk records during the
daylight hours, but by night, he and fellow Detroit soul and studio funk
masters organist Lyman Woodard and drummer Melvin Davis were doing their own
thing holding forth in local Detroit clubs as a jazz/funk ensemble billed as
the Lyman Woodard Trio, fronted by Coffey's distinctive guitar playing and arrangements.
Their first gigs were in 1966 at a club called the Frolic Show Bar. In 1967,
the trio left the Frolic and began an extended tenure at Morey Baker's
Showplace Lounge, where this set was recorded.
Melvin Davis
says about Woodard, “Lyman Woodard was probably one of the premier organists to
come out of the east coast actually. He was a very accomplished musician; he
was a person that had a very extensive following in the city of Detroit.”
At Morey
Baker's, the trio played to a loyal following of discerning listeners who came
every night just to listen to them play, rather than simply to dance.
Therefore, it was important for the trio to maintain a distinct and compelling
musical identity that evolved over time. They couldn't just revisit the same
material over and over and expect to hold onto their audience. Coffey says, “We played there once a week and
always packed the house. Much of our audience was middle to upper class folks
who were judges, attorneys, businessmen and women who just loved listening to
our brand of funk, jazz, rock and soul. I even hooked up a strobe light to the
stage and would hit the switch that shut off the main lights. The strobe would
go off while we'd jam on stage. It blew their minds!"
Coffey was
always on the lookout for new and interesting repertoire and he would
constantly bring in new music from different genres, having worked out all the
musical arrangements in advance, as is evidenced by the repertoire on this
album, which includes covers of soul classics such as "Casanova (Your
Playing Days Are Over)" that Coffey played on the original Ruby Andrews
studio version of; pop hits of the day such as the rousing version of Jimmy
Webb’s
"By the Time I Get to Phoenix" treated in Coffey's signature style; a
smoldering version of the Burt Bacharach classic “The Look of Love” made popular by Dusty Springfield in
1967; a faithful adaptation of the Herbie Hancock classic “Maiden Voyage;” as well as two Coffey originals — the opening distortion-laden funk
opus "Fuzz” and the infectious and grooving “The Big D.”
The music on
this album, Hot Coffey in the D: Burnin' At Morey Baker's Showplace Lounge,
represents the trio in a raw and unfiltered display of their prodigious musical
gifts. Indeed the recordings that make up this album served as the springboard
for Dennis Coffey and Mike Theodore to be picked up by Clarence Avant on his
own Sussex Records label, effectively launching their producing career in
earnest. Another springboard was the seminal soul-funk instrumental album, Hair
and Thangs, which was released on the Maverick label (distributed by Venture
Records) in 1969 under Dennis’s name featuring both Lyman Woodard and Melvin Davis, and
included a psychedelic version of the Isley Brother’s hit “It’s Your Thing.”
The release
of this unique album is the direct result of the long friendship between
Resonance producer Zev Feldman and the respected music journalist Kevin Goins,
recognized expert on the Detroit music scene. They have been colleagues and
friends for years dating back to Goins's days in retail at the HMV store in New
York in the '90s when Feldman was rising in the ranks of the PolyGram
organization. In early 2016, Goins learned from Coffey that these performances
at Morey Baker's had been recorded using studio quality gear and immediately
called Feldman to alert him to the availability of this previously unheard
session. Feldman recalls, “I was so excited when Kevin first told me about the existence
of these tapes. Right off the bat I was intrigued and felt compelled to release
these recordings and tell the story of Dennis Coffey, who is to me one of the
unsung heroes of guitar.”
To Feldman,
Dennis Coffey was a fascinating figure and an essential member of the guitar
pantheon of popular music. Already aware of Coffey's stellar history, it
impressed Feldman that Coffey's career as a guitarist/producer/arranger and
artist spanned a myriad of styles and that he had a distinctive guitar sound
that influenced so many guitarists of the day and many who followed. In 2011,
the Fuel 2000 label released Absolutely The Best of Dennis Coffey, a collection
of all of Dennis’s 1970s output on Sussex, and Feldman handled the marketing
of the album. This experience solidified Feldman's conviction that this music
deserved to be heard; that there was an audience for this music, indeed a loyal
audience that would be thrilled that this previously unknown music would be
available to them. “In my time working as the SVP of Sales and Marketing at Fuel
2000 Records, we released many of the masters from Clarence Avant’s catalog of albums. I became a big
fan of Dennis and Mike Theodore during that time and knew the importance of
their legacy and Dennis's artistry.”
Once again,
consistent with its mission to honor the traditions of great American music in
all its glory, Resonance Records has pulled out all the stops in creating this
release. The deluxe CD & LP packages feature stunning original cover art by
acclaimed cartoonist and Metro Detroit native Bill Morrison, who was one of the
original illustrators on The Simpsons, art director of Futurama and one of the
co-founders of Bongo Comics with Matt Groening. Feldman was searching for a
particular vibe for this project that harkened back to the feeling he would get
gazing at psychedelic 60s LP covers like Sgt. Pepper’s and reading Mad magazine. “We struck out trying to get Robert
Crumb and Al Jaffee,” Feldman explains, “so our associate producer Zak
Shelby-Szyszko suggested we look into artists that have Detroit roots. When he
sent me Bill Morrison’s work, I knew right away he was the guy. And working with
him was such a treat. We’d provide buzzwords about the characters, look and vibe we
were going for and he delivered this masterpiece.”
The package
also includes extensive liner notes with rare photos by acclaimed Detroit
photographers such as Leni Sinclair, essays by Resonance producer Zev Feldman
and veteran music journalist Kevin Goins, plus interviews with Dennis Coffey,
Melvin Davis and Mike Theodore, along with music industry icon Clarence Avant
and Detroit soul singer Bettye LaVette. The LP version, available as a Record
Store Day exclusive for their Black Friday Event, is presented in a
limited-edition, hand-numbered pressing on 180-gram black vinyl mastered by the
legendary Bernie Grundman at Bernie Grundman Mastering and pressed at Record
Technology, Inc. (RTI).
Track
Listing:
1. Fuzz
(8:17)
2. By the
Time I Get to Phoenix (7:09)
3. The Look
of Love (11:45)
4. Maiden
Voyage (7:06)
5. The Big D
(4:13)
6. Casanova
(Your Playing Days Are Over) (7:04)
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