Rick Derringer obituary

The Guardian

31-05-2025

As a member of the American band the McCoys, the guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer Rick Derringer, who has died aged 77, scored a US No 1 hit with the 1965 single Hang on Sloopy, which also made it to No 5 in the UK. Later he went on to record and perform with some of the most famous names in the music industry over a career spanning six decades.
Hang on Sloopy, with Derringer on vocals, was not the McCoys' own song; written by Wes Farrell and Bert Berns, it had first been recorded the year before by the Los Angeles soul vocal group Vibrations, and had largely gone unnoticed, although it quickly became a favourite of US garage rock bands of the era. The McCoys' version made the song popular across the world, and they went on to have a another Top 10 hit in the US with a cover of Fever, written by Eddie Cooley and John Davenport, and a Top 40 interpretation of Come on, Let's Go, written by Ritchie Valens.
However, two subsequent psychedelic albums failed to build on the popularity of those singles, and when the group disbanded in 1969, Derringer joined the blues guitarist Johnny Winter to play on Johnny Winter And (1970) and Live Winter And (1971). He also recorded with Johnny's younger brother, Edgar Winter, producing the hit singles Frankenstein (1973) and Free Ride (1973), among others.
That work gained him a strong reputation as a guitarist and producer, and he subsequently worked with Alice Cooper and Todd Rundgren, played slide guitar on the Steely Dan single Show Biz Kids (1973), and a guitar solo on the song Chain Lightning, on their Katy Lied album (1975).
He also worked with Bonnie Tyler, Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf, and in 1986 Cyndi Lauper called on him to provide guitar work for two tracks on her album True Colors. Another powerhouse vocalist, Barbra Streisand, featured him as lead guitar player on her single Left in the Dark (1984), and he played on Air Supply's Making Love Out of Nothing at All (1983) as well as Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart (1983). In addition he toured three times with Ringo Starr & His All-Starr band, and played in a performance at Radio City Music Hall in New York with Paul McCartney to celebrate Starr's 70th birthday in 2010.
Derringer was born Richard Zehringer in Celina in Ohio, the son of John, a railway worker, and his wife, Janice (nee Thornburg), and grew up in Fort Recovery, Ohio. His family moved to Union City, Indiana, when he was in his early teens, and it was there that he began his music career in 1962, forming Rick and the Raiders with his brother Randy on drums and Dennis Kelly on bass. With expansion and personnel changes, they eventually became the McCoys, and following the success of Hang On Sloopy, Derringer also changed his name – in order, he said, to make it easier to pronounce and remember.
Derringer's first solo album, All American Boy (1973), featured his composition Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo, which has become a classic of rock radio. The track was released as a single that peaked at No 23 on the US charts, and is featured on the soundtracks of Richard Linklater's movie Dazed and Confused (1993) and in season four of the Netflix series Stranger Things (2022).
Subsequent solo albums were not commercially successful, but the list of artists that Derringer worked with in the 80s read like a Who's Who of popular recording acts of the era.
Two of his more left-field collaborations came as producer of the first six albums for the comedy musician Weird Al Yankovic and of two albums of music in conjunction with the World Wrestling Federation, The Wrestling Album (1985) and Piledriver: The Wrestling Album II (1987), both featuring the theme music of various wrestlers. His song Real American was the theme for the tag team US Express and subsequently for Hulk Hogan, and in 2011 President Barack Obama used that tune as walk-on music at the White House correspondents' dinner while his birth certificate was displayed on a video screen; an irony given that Derringer was a Donald Trump supporter.
With his third wife, Jenda Hall, Derringer later recorded four Christian-themed albums. Two earlier marriages, to the journalist Liz Agriss and then to the singer and percussionist Dyan Buckelew, ended in divorce.
He is survived by Jenda and a daughter, Mallory, from his second marriage.
Richard Dean Derringer (Zehringer), musician, born 5 August 1947; died 26 May 2025