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.
