Rick Derringer (77) was born Richard Dean Zehringer in Fort Recovery, Ohio on August 5, 1947. Aside from his parents’ extensive record collection, his first major music influence was his uncle, Jim Thornburg, a popular guitarist and singer in Ohio.
Derringer recalled first hearing him play guitar in the kitchen of his parents’ home and knowing immediately that he wanted to learn the instrument. He was eight years old at the time, and his parents gave him his first electric guitar for his ninth birthday. Soon after, he and his brother Randy began playing local gigs with his uncle, a country musician, before he was in high school.
After eighth grade, the family moved to Union City, Indiana, where Derringer formed a band he initially called the McCoys. He later renamed it the Rick Z Combo and then Rick and the Raiders before reverting to the original name.
In the summer of 1965, before Derringer turned 18, the McCoys were hired to back up a New York-based band called the Strangeloves in concert. The Strangeloves, who were also record producers from New York City with a major hit song “I Want Candy”, were looking for a band to record the song “My Girl Sloopy”, originally released by the Vibrations the previous year, and chose the McCoys. Derringer later persuaded the producers to change the title to “Hang On Sloopy”. After the Strangeloves recorded the guitar and instrumental parts, Derringer and the McCoys were brought into the studio to sing on the recording, which was then released under their name. The song reached number one on the Hot 100 when Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” fell from number one to number two and The Beatles’ “Yesterday” shot from number forty-five to number three.
June 6, 2019 – Dr. John was born Malcolm John Rebennack in New Orleans on November 20, 1941, and early on got the nickname “Mac.”
Peter Tork (The Monkees) was born Peter Halsten Thorkelson on February 13, 1942 in Washington DC. His father John taught economics at the University of Connecticut. He began studying piano at the age of nine, showing an aptitude for music by learning to play several different instruments, including the banjo, French horn and both acoustic bass and guitars. Tork attended Windham High School in Willimantic, Connecticut, and was a member of the first graduating class at E. O. Smith High School in Storrs, Connecticut. He attended Carleton College in Minnesota but, after flunking out, moved to New York City, where he became part of the folk music scene in Greenwich Village and with his guitar and five-string banjo he began playing small folk clubs. He billed himself as Tork, a nickname handed down by his father, and reportedly played with members of the soon-to-be formed band Lovin’ Spoonful (Summer in the City). While there, he befriended other up-and-coming musicians such as Stephen Stills (Crosby, Stills Nash and Young).When Tork “failed to break open the folk circuit,” as he later phrased it, he moved to Long Beach, California in mid-1965. Later that summer, he fielded two calls from his friend Stephen Stills (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young), who had auditioned with more than 400 others for the Monkees. Stills urged Tork to try out. “They told Steve, ‘Your hair and teeth aren’t photogenic, but do you know anyone who looks like you that can sing?’ And Steve told them about me,” Tork told the Washington Post in 1983.
September 5, 2017 – Holger Czukay was born on March 24, 1938 in the Free City of Danzig (since 1945 Gdańsk, Poland), from which his family was expelled after World War II. Due to the turmoil of the war, Czukay’s primary education was limited. One pivotal early experience, however, was working, when still a teenager, at a radio repair-shop, where he became fond of the aural qualities of radio broadcasts (anticipating his use of shortwave radio broadcasts as musical elements) and became familiar with the rudiments of electrical repair and engineering.
November 10, 2015 – Allen Toussaint was born January 14, 1938 in New Orleans.
March 13, 2015 – Daevid Allen, was born Christopher David Allen on 13 January 1938 in Melbourne, Australia.
January 19, 2013 – Steve Knight was born on May 12, 1935 in New York to artist parents. From 1938–1950 his family lived in Woodstock, New York. In 1950, his father became a professor at Columbia University and moved the family to New York City. In 1952, Knight graduated from high school and enrolled at Columbia later that year. He stayed at Columbia for most of the 1950s (1952–1959) studying art, music and psychology. He earned a B.S. degree majoring in psychology, and had one year of graduate work in psychology.
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