![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/coffey_goin.jpg\")
Goin\u2019 for Myself <\/i>(1972)<\/b>
\nOn its initial release, Evolution<\/i> didn\u2019t sell. \u201cThe album was out there,\u201d Coffey recalls, \u201cbut for a year, it did nothing. So, Mike and I said, \u2018Well, maybe the people aren\u2019t interested in the guitar band thing.\u2019 So, we went in the studio and said, \u2018We\u2019re gonna go back to horns and strings.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Almost half of the songs on Goin\u2019 for Myself<\/i> are covers\u2014tunes from Carole King, Simon and Garfunkel and the Jackson 5\u2019s \u201cNever Can Say Goodbye.\u201d Coffey explains, \u201cI was still finding my way. Don\u2019t forget, we thought Evolution<\/i> had stiffed, and that had mostly originals on it. So, I said, \u2018Well, maybe I need to do some cover stuff.\u2019 You mix it up until you find something that works.\u201d Theodore and Coffey\u2019s lush strings and beefy horns add texture to the relatively streamlined rock ensemble, and Coffey\u2019s sinewy guitar leads often engage in spirited dialogue with the brass and strings.<\/p>\n
But halfway through the sessions, Coffey received a phone call from Ron Moseley, Sussex\u2019s national promotions representative. \u201cLook, the dance clubs are tearing \u2018Scorpio\u2019 up in New York,\u201d Coffey recalls being told. \u201cI thought the album had been stiff for a year. All at once, the fans found it. And Moseley told me, \u2018Stop what you\u2019re doing in the studio. We want more guitar band stuff!\u2019 And that\u2019s where \u2018Taurus\u2019 came from.\u201d Coffey and Theodore ran the rest of the sessions without the horns and strings. With \u201cTaurus,\u201d Coffey scored his second Top 40 hit under his own name.<\/p>\n
Goin\u2019 for Myself<\/i> made it to #37 on the R&B album charts, and #90 on the mainstream album chart.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/coffey_detroit.jpg\")
Electric Coffey <\/i>(1972)<\/b>
\nWith the creative momentum shifting back toward guitar-centric arrangements, Electric Coffey<\/i> was an unabashed attempt to capitalize on the success of \u201cTaurus\u201d and \u201cScorpio.\u201d The guitar overdub technique of Evolution<\/i> was applied throughout, and seven of the album\u2019s nine cuts have astrologically-themed titles, the most blatant being \u201cSon of Scorpio.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coffey freely admits that for him, the song titles are an afterthought, \u201ca matter of convenience. When I write a song, they\u2019re just numbers: song #5, whatever. Once the songs are finished, then I decide on the names.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Coffey says that he often writes on demand. \u201cAny time that I know that I have a reason to write, I go down to my basement, I sit down with my guitar and start doodling around,\u201d he says. \u201cI can work on a schedule, and stuff will show up. Now, every so often nothing shows up. Then I say, \u2018Well, let me stop this today, and I\u2019ll do something else.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Reaching #189 on the album charts in the early months of 1973, Electric Coffey<\/i> would be the last Sussex album Coffey would record in Detroit. The company had relocated to Los Angeles, and the Theo-Coff team soon followed.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/coffey_instant.jpg\")
Instant Coffey<\/i> (1974)<\/b>
\n\u201cRecording in L.A. is a whole different ball game than recording in Detroit,\u201d Coffey says. \u201cDetroit has a certain musical DNA, which is why the Funk Brothers were here\u2014that\u2019s part of Detroit DNA, and that\u2019s what I missed the most when I was in L.A.\u201d For his fourth Sussex LP, Coffey still availed himself of some of the finest players available, including keyboardists Joe Sample and Melvin Melvoin, conga player King Errison and Funk Brother James Jamerson on bass.<\/p>\n
Instant Coffey<\/i> found the guitarist and Theodore making greater use of strings, brass and woodwinds, giving the album a sound closer to the early sessions for Goin\u2019 for Myself<\/i>. But despite the inclusion of excellent material like \u201cOutrageous (The Mind Excursion),\u201d the positively cinematic \u201cSonata\u201d and a reading of Lalo Schifrin\u2019s \u201cTheme from Enter the Dragon<\/i>,\u201d the album failed to chart.<\/p>\n
Part of that may have been due to Clarence Avant\u2019s business troubles at the time. \u201cHe was losing the Sussex label, the whole thing,\u201d Coffey explains. \u201cAnd he was kind enough to give me a heads-up about it.\u201d Coffey negotiated a new deal with Armen Boladian\u2019s Westbound Records. \u201cI got the same kind of deal with Armen that we had with Clarence, but that only lasted about a year and a half. Then Armen\u2019s deal with Atlantic crashed,\u201d he says. \u201cThey let him go.\u201d While at Westbound, Coffey released three albums, highlighted by 1976\u2019s hit Finger Lickin\u2019 Good<\/i>, a record sporting racy, provocative cover art.<\/p>\n
Coffey\u2019s albums always did better with black audiences. He recalls a gig in Brooklyn, probably around 1972. \u201cI\u2019m playing at this hotel ballroom that had a capacity of 2,000 people, I hit \u2018Scorpio,\u2019 and suddenly there\u2019s this huge conga line, everybody dancing. I was like, \u2018What\u2019s going on? This is bizarre!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Modern-day musical artists have mined the tasty licks found throughout Coffey\u2019s Sussex-era catalog; \u201cScorpio\u201d has been sampled at least 100 times by artists as diverse as Moby, Fugees, Public Enemy, Queen Latifah, the Prodigy, Run-DMC, Snoop Dogg, TLC, Bell Biv Davoe, Digital Underground and literally dozens of others. And Clarence Avant\u2014with whom Coffey remains on good terms\u2014helped make sure Coffey got the credit he deserved.<\/p>\n
Coffey recalls Avant telling him, \u201cLook, I\u2019m gonna talk to the other label presidents. I know all these guys and I\u2019m in New York. I will figure out a way where we start getting paid.\u201d Avant believed that sort of preemptive action was preferable to a flurry of lawsuits. \u201cSo, I started getting part writing [credit] on the songs,\u201d Coffey says.<\/p>\n
Dennis Coffey remains as busy as ever today; his sizzling self-titled 2011 album paired him with a variety of today\u2019s vocalists, revisiting classics that he played on back in the day, like Rodriguez\u2019s \u201cOnly Good for Conversation,\u201d Wilson Pickett\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Knock My Love\u201d and Funkadelic\u2019s \u201cI Bet You.\u201d And he still plays live, with a regular Tuesday gig at the Northern Lights Lounge in Detroit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A look back at the renowned guitarist\u2019s Sussex Records years Continued from Part One … Goin\u2019 for Myself (1972) On its initial release, Evolution didn\u2019t sell. \u201cThe album was out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18804,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,40,41,73],"tags":[664],"class_list":["post-18810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-funk","category-instrumental","category-interview","category-vinyl","tag-dennis-coffey","cat-31-id","cat-40-id","cat-41-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18810"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29024,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18810\/revisions\/29024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}