Rick Derringer – Let Me In

Did you know?
While Rick Derringer was in The McCoys, they had their first live appearance opening for The Rolling Stones during their entire 1966 American tour.

About Rick Derringer

It seems like Rick Derringer has been on the rock & roll scene forever — actually, it’s only been since 1965, which makes him one of the more enduring veterans of his generation. Derringer’s work with his band the McCoys in his midteens, highlighted by the bubblegum anthem “Hang On Sloopy,” gave him a claim to low-level rock & roll immortality, and his subsequent playing with Johnny (and later Edgar) Winter provided him with a degree of credibility that a lot of guitar players can only envy.

Derringer began getting production experience with the McCoys, but they were never able to overcome their bubblegum rock image, and by the end of the 1960s, Derringer and his brother Randy were recruited by Johnny Winter into his band, with Derringerplaying guitar and also producing. He emerged as a solo artist in the wake of his playing with Edgar Winter’s White Trash. Derringer first became popular in his own right during the early/mid-’70s, beginning with a new version of his own “Rock & Roll, Hoochie Koo” (featured on this album) off Derringer’s heavy metal-influenced debut album, All American Boy. Derringer soon had his own band, called Derringer, on the road and within a couple of years had established himself as a popular favorite. Derringer’s recorded history was somewhat spotty, however, as his record sales never matched his favor with concert audiences — a huge gap also existed between releases, which didn’t bother him; even in the late ’90s, Derringer played close to 200 shows a year. He spent most of the late ’70s and 1980s, however, as a producer, working with artists as diverse as Bette Midler, Kiss, Meat Loaf, Cyndi Lauper, Barbra Streisand, and Weird Al Yankovic.