Mink DeVille
Encyclopedia
Mink DeVille was a rock band
known for its association with early punk rock
bands at New York
’s CBGB
nightclub and for being a showcase for the music of Willy DeVille
. The band recorded six albums in the years 1977 to 1985. Except for frontman Willy DeVille, the original members of the band played only on the first two albums (Cabretta
and Return to Magenta
). For the remaining albums and for tours, Willy DeVille assembled musicians to play under the name Mink DeVille. After 1985, when Willy DeVille began recording and touring under his own name, his backup band
s were sometimes called “The Mink DeVille Band,” an allusion to the earlier Mink DeVille.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
songwriter Doc Pomus
said about the band, “Mink DeVille knows the truth of a city street and the courage in a ghetto love song. And the harsh reality in his voice and phrasing is yesterday, today, and tomorrow — timeless in the same way that loneliness, no money, and troubles find each other and never quit for a minute.”
(then called Billy Borsay) met drummer Thomas R. "Manfred" Allen, Jr. and bassist Rubén Sigüenza in San Francisco. Said DeVille, “I met Manfred at a party; he'd been playing with John Lee Hooker
and a lot of blues people around San Francisco…. I met Rubén at a basement jam
in San Francisco, and he liked everything I liked from The Drifters
to, uh, Fritz Lang
." Willy DeVille occasionally sat in with the band Lazy Ace, which included Allen Jr. on drums and Ritch Colbert on piano. When Lazy Ace broke up, DeVille, Allen Jr., Colbert, Rubén Sigüenza, and guitarist Robert McKenzie (a.k.a. Fast Floyd, later of Fast Floyd and the Famous Firebirds) formed a band called Billy de Sade and the Marquis. "We were playing the leather bars
down on Folsom Street," Willy DeVille recalled. "We were Billy de Sade and the Marquis then. We played the Barracks. After a while they would take their clothes off. This one guy—Jesus Satin he called himself—he'd dance on the pool table. It was nuts! Crazy!"
can there?" DeVille also remarked about the name, "What could be more pimp than a mink Cadillac? In an impressionistic
sort of way." Another story about the Mink DeVille name says that it originated with Fast Floyd, who owned an old Cadillac with a cracked dashboard. To cover the cracks, Fast Floyd glued an old mink coat he had purchased at a thrift store to the dashboard. According to a 1977 article in Creem
, DeVille's wife Toots suggested the name: "...the band looked like it might have been going nowhere, in reverse. So maybe another name change would help—God knows the music was great. Mink Pie...hmmmm. 'No, it's gotta be something slick—something sorta French, somethin' sorta black...poetry. Mink...MINK DE VILLE!' blurted out Toots, Willie's omnipresent, black-bouffanted old lady, whose quiet intensity is not unlike his own." This issue of Creem shows a picture of DeVille driving a car with what looks to be mink on the dashboard.
Looking at music magazines in City Lights Bookstore
, DeVille noticed a small ad in The Village Voice
inviting bands to audition in New York City
, his hometown. "I convinced the guys that I could get them work, and we climbed in the van and drove back the other way." Guitarist Fast Floyd and keyboard player Ritch Colbert did not make the trip to New York. Fast Floyd was replaced by Louis X. Erlanger
, who had played with John Lee Hooker
and brought a deeper blues
sensibility to the band; Colbert was replaced by Bobby Leonards (formerly of Tiffany Shade
).
s at CBGB
, the New York nightclub where punk rock
music was born in the mid 1970s. "We auditioned along with hundreds of others, but they liked us and took us on. We played for three years... [D]uring that time we didn't get paid more than fifty bucks a night", DeVille said. In 1975, CBGB was the epicenter of punk rock and what would later be called New Wave
, but Mink DeVille didn’t necessarily fit in the scene. "Onstage, Willy’s band, Mink DeVille, had nothing in common with the New Wave CBGB bands that the press had lumped them with," wrote Alex Halberstadt. "Unlike Television
, The Ramones, or Blondie
, at heart Mink DeVille was an R&B
band, and Willy an old-fashioned soul
singer…" Wrote Mark Keresman, "Mink DeVille's earthy, streamlined sound, rejecting the mainstream high-gloss that ruined much of 1970s rock, was accepted by the same folks who'd go to see Blondie
, The Shirts
, and Television
."
Wrote Daily Telegraph
critic Neil McCormick:
Said DeVille, "We were doing Little Walter
stuff, we were doing Elmore James
stuff. The only stuff we were doing that people had heard was 'Please, Please, Please
' by James Brown
. We used to do an Apollo
thing. We played CBGBs for three years, and all of the sudden word got out, and then came this word Punk, which where I come from is a bad word. A punk is somebody who picks a fight with you and then never shows up." In 2007, Willy DeVille said about the bands that played CBGBs, "We were all labeled as part of this American punk thing but I really didn't see any of us having much in common." "Every f----n' art student that plays out of tune gets a record deal," he said dismissively in 1981, when asked about the punk scene.
However, Mink DeVille had in common with the CBGB bands an aversion to the hippy aesthetic
(what Willy DeVille called "electric this and strawberry that"); moreover, the band brought an eclectic New York sensibility to its music that the other bands didn’t have and that New York City rock fans recognized and appreciated. Critic Robert Palmer
wrote, "Mr. DeVille is a magnetic performer, but his macho stage presence camouflages an acute musical intelligence; his songs and arrangements are rich in ethnic rhythms and blues echoes, the most disparate stylistic references, yet they flow seamlessly and hang together solidly. He embodies (New York's) tangle of cultural contradictions while making music that's both idiomatic, in the broadest sense, and utterly original."
In 1976, three Mink DeVille songs appeared on Live at CBGB's, a compilation album
of bands that played CBGB (for the recording sessions, drummer Thomas R. "Manfred" Allen, Jr. was credited as Manfred Jones).
Later in life, DeVille had only sour memories of CBGB. He did not play any benefit concert
s or recordings for the nightclub. He told Music Street Journal: "The whole band only got $50 dollars a night, even to the end. That's why I never went back there. I've never walked through those doors other than to have maybe a beer once. I was down in New Orleans and I came up here, kind of going down Memory Lane so to speak. I ended up on Bowery down there and I thought, 'Let's see what's going on here.' I walked in (to CBGB) and I saw Hilly (Hilly Kristal
) standing there. I had a big straw hat on, silk suit. He bought me a beer and it got around to 'Would you like to come back?' I said, 'No Hilly and you know why? Because you never treated me right. You never were fair to me.'"
man for Capitol Records
, and previously an editor for Creem
, signed the band after spotting them at CBGB. Wrote Edmonds:
Said Willy DeVille about Edmonds:
(entitled Mink DeVille in the U.S.), produced by Jack Nitzsche
, in January 1977. Nitzsche would, in alternation with Steve Douglas
, produce the first four Mink DeVille albums. Both men, members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
, had apprenticed under Phil Spector
and helped shape the Wall of Sound
production technique. These producers were a natural fit for Mink DeVille, whose members’ tastes ran to the Ronettes
, the Crystals
and other 1960s-era New York bands with their Brill Building sound. Said Willy DeVille, "You listen to that music and you hear those really high strings
, and that percussion, and the castanet
s; that's all Jack's (Jack Nitzsche’s) work. All that really cool stuff".
Nitzsche said about DeVille, "We hit it off right away. Willy pulled out his record collection, he started playing things, that was it. I thought, 'Holy shit! This guy's got taste!'" Wrote Ben Edmonds, who paired Nitzsche with Mink DeVille:
Cabretta, a multifaceted album of soul
, R&B
, rock
, and blues recordings, is generally regarded as one of the best debut albums by a new band of the mid-1970s. Steve Douglas played saxophone
, and the Immortals, a cappella
singers whom Willy DeVille discovered at a reggae
concert at Max's Kansas City
, sang background vocals
. On the catchy "Spanish Stroll", bassist Rubén Sigüenza spoke words in Spanish during the break
("Hey Rosita! Donde vas con mi carro Rosita? Tu sabes que te quiero, pero ti me quitas todo"), adding a Latin flavor to the album. This song was chosen as the album's lead single
and reached No. 20 on the UK Singles Chart
; it was to be DeVille's only record ever to chart in the UK. Cabretta was elected number 57 in the Village Voices 1977 end-of-the-year Pazz & Jop
critics poll.
The band's 1978 follow-up album Return to Magenta
continued in the same vein as Cabretta, but with a twist. "We went against strings
on the first album—decided it should be outright, raw, and rude." On Return to Magenta, Willy DeVille and producers Nitzsche and Steve Douglas employed lavish string arrangements on several songs. Dr. John
played keyboards and, once again, Douglas played saxophone. Mink DeVille toured the United States in 1978 with Elvis Costello
and Nick Lowe
.
for a short while.
Here he took his band in a new direction and recorded an entirely original album called Le Chat Bleu
. For this album, DeVille wrote several songs with Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
member Doc Pomus
. Guitarist Louis X. Erlanger
had become acquainted with Pomus while frequenting New York City's blues clubs and had urged Pomus to check out the group. Wrote Alex Halberstadt, Pomus's biographer:
DeVille said about their first meeting, "Now here I am at 29, a writer, doing pretty good and I've just been asked if I want to write songs with a guy who helped lay the foundations for the music I fell in love with sitting at my mother's kitchen table when I was only seven years old. You've got to be kidding!"
Willy DeVille hired Jean Claude Petit to supervise string arrangements
, and he dismissed the members of the band except for guitarist Louis X. Erlanger
in favor of new musicians, including accordion
ist Kenny Margolis. Said DeVille: "I wanted to record the album in Paris... because I desperately wanted to use Jean-Claude Petit, whom I had contacted through Édith Piaf
's songwriter Charles Dumont, for string
arrangements... The band with me was a dream come true. I've got Phil Spector
's horn player, Steve Douglas
(who also served as producer), on tenor
and baritone
. Elvis Presley
's rhythm section
, Ron Tutt and Jerry Scheff
, want to play with me. Wow! That's pretty cool! Songwriting with Doc Pomus. Not to mention Jean-Claude doing the strings. How can I go wrong?"
Capitol Records
released Le Chat Bleu in Europe in 1980, but believed that American audiences would not warm to a record featuring accordions and strings. "It says something about the state of the American record business—something pathetic and depressing—that Willy DeVille's finest album fell on deaf ears at Capitol," wrote Kurt Loder
of Rolling Stone
. Said percussionist Boris Kinberg, "Capitol in the U.S. didn’t know what to do with it because they perceived Willy as this punk rocker from CBGB
s and he came back from Paris with a very different kind of record. They didn’t understand the record, but they understood it in Europe. They released it immediately in Europe and everybody loved it." After Le Chat Bleu sold impressively in America as an import, Capitol finally released it in the United States. Wrote Alex Halberstadt:
The Rolling Stone Critic’s Poll ranked Le Chat Bleu the fifth best album of 1980, and music historian Glenn A. Baker
declared it the tenth best rock album of all time. "(Willy DeVille) created a record that sounded like nothing that had come before...," wrote Alex Halberstadt. "It was clear that Willy had realized his fantasy of a new, completely contemporary Brill Building record. To the symphonic sweetness of the Drifters
he added his own Gallic
romance and, in his vocal, a measure of punk rock
's Bowery
grit."
, where head man Ahmet Ertegün
signed him to a fat new recording deal and promised to personally shepherd his career...", reported Rolling Stone
in 1980. "According to Willy—never one to let false modesty intrude on a good story—the Atlantic Records chairman said, 'You got the look, the performance, the writing, you know exactly what to do.'"
By this time, no members of the original Mink DeVille save Willy DeVille remained in the band, but DeVille continued recording and touring under the name Mink DeVille. "Those boys went through the wars with me, the $50 a night bars, and I had to turn on them and lop their heads off and say, 'I love you man, but that's the way it’s gotta be.' I still feel guilty about it, but we were just a good bar band. That's all we were. We weren't ready to make great rock and roll records."
Wrote critic Robert Palmer in 1981:
DeVille recorded two albums for Atlantic, 1981's Coup de Grâce
(produced by Jack Nitzsche
) and 1983’s Where Angels Fear to Tread
. Both albums featured saxophonist Louis Cortelezzi and had a full-throated Jersey Shore sound that evoked Bruce Springsteen
and Southside Johnny
. Wrote critic Thom Jurek about these albums:
The albums Mink DeVille recorded for Atlantic sold well in Europe but not in the United States. Explained Kenny Margolis, who played piano and accordion
in DeVille's early 1980s bands, "I don’t think the American public had a chance to experience him because in America at that time you had MTV
telling you what to like. Europe had not had MTV at that point and they were very open to different music." DeVille said about his years with Atlantic Records
, "Ahmet Ertegün and I got along, but we never got anything done."
, was recorded for Polydor
in 1985. For this album, DeVille penned two more songs with Doc Pomus
("Something Beautiful Dying" and "When You Walk My Way"). The album was recorded at the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio
in Alabama
with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, and DeVille and Duncan Cameron producing. The song "Italian Shoes" was a hit in some European countries, but some critics thought the album was overproduced. Wrote Allmusic: "Its sound is steeped in mid-'80s studio gloss and compression that often overwhelms quality material." However, David Wild
of Rolling Stone
praised Sportin' Life, calling it "[t]he most modern, polished sound of (Willy DeVille's) career." He added, "Pushed to center stage, DeVille delivers, singing with more passion and more personality than ever before."
After Sportin' Life, DeVille dropped the "Mink" moniker and began recording under his own name. Mink DeVille played its last concert on February 20, 1986 in New York City.
(1993) and Acoustic Trio Live in Berlin
(2003), Willy DeVille’s backup band was sometimes called The Mink DeVille Band, an allusion to the earlier Mink DeVille. Some musicians who backed up Willy DeVille in The Mink DeVille Band played and toured with him for decades. Bass player Bob Curiano, for example, backed up Willy DeVille in his 1981 and 2007 European tours. As well, musicians who played in The Mink DeVille Band sometimes played on Mink DeVille and Willy DeVille albums. These members of different Mink DeVille Bands played with Willy DeVille for ten years or more:
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
known for its association with early punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
bands at New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
’s CBGB
CBGB
CBGB was a music club at 315 Bowery at Bleecker Street in the borough of Manhattan in New York City.Founded by Hilly Kristal in 1973, it was originally intended to feature its namesake musical styles, but became a forum for American punk and New Wave bands like Ramones, Misfits, Television, the...
nightclub and for being a showcase for the music of Willy DeVille
Willy DeVille
Willy DeVille was an American singer and songwriter. During his thirty-five year career, first with his band Mink DeVille and later on his own, Deville created original songs rooted in traditional American musical styles. He worked with collaborators from across the spectrum of contemporary...
. The band recorded six albums in the years 1977 to 1985. Except for frontman Willy DeVille, the original members of the band played only on the first two albums (Cabretta
Cabretta
Cabretta, known as Mink DeVille in the United States, was the 1977 debut album by Mink DeVille. It peaked at number 186 on the Billboard 200 chart and was voted the 29th best album of 1977 in the Village Voices Pazz & Jop critics' poll...
and Return to Magenta
Return to Magenta
Return to Magenta, issued in 1978, is the second album by the rock band Mink DeVille. The album was the last to feature all the original members of the band. For this album, the band was joined by Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Steve Douglas on sax and, on piano, Dr...
). For the remaining albums and for tours, Willy DeVille assembled musicians to play under the name Mink DeVille. After 1985, when Willy DeVille began recording and touring under his own name, his backup band
Backup band
A backing band or backup band is a musical ensemble that accompanies an artist at a live performance or on a recording. This can either be an established, long-standing group that has little or no change in membership, or it may be an ad hoc group assembled for a single show or a single recording...
s were sometimes called “The Mink DeVille Band,” an allusion to the earlier Mink DeVille.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a museum located on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is dedicated to archiving the history of some of the best-known and most influential artists, producers, engineers and others who have, in some major way,...
songwriter Doc Pomus
Doc Pomus
Jerome Solon Felder, better known as Doc Pomus , was a twentieth-century American blues singer and songwriter. He is best known as the lyricist of many rock and roll hits. Pomus was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the category of non-performer in 1992. He was also inducted into...
said about the band, “Mink DeVille knows the truth of a city street and the courage in a ghetto love song. And the harsh reality in his voice and phrasing is yesterday, today, and tomorrow — timeless in the same way that loneliness, no money, and troubles find each other and never quit for a minute.”
Early days in San Francisco
Mink DeVille was formed in 1974 when singer Willy DeVilleWilly DeVille
Willy DeVille was an American singer and songwriter. During his thirty-five year career, first with his band Mink DeVille and later on his own, Deville created original songs rooted in traditional American musical styles. He worked with collaborators from across the spectrum of contemporary...
(then called Billy Borsay) met drummer Thomas R. "Manfred" Allen, Jr. and bassist Rubén Sigüenza in San Francisco. Said DeVille, “I met Manfred at a party; he'd been playing with John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist.Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally closest to Delta blues. He developed a 'talking blues' style that was his trademark...
and a lot of blues people around San Francisco…. I met Rubén at a basement jam
Jam session
Jam sessions are often used by musicians to develop new material, find suitable arrangements, or simply as a social gathering and communal practice session. Jam sessions may be based upon existing songs or forms, may be loosely based on an agreed chord progression or chart suggested by one...
in San Francisco, and he liked everything I liked from The Drifters
The Drifters
The Drifters are a long-lived American doo-wop and R&B/soul vocal group with a peak in popularity from 1953 to 1963, though several splinter Drifters continue to perform today. They were originally formed to serve as Clyde McPhatter's backing group in 1953...
to, uh, Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...
." Willy DeVille occasionally sat in with the band Lazy Ace, which included Allen Jr. on drums and Ritch Colbert on piano. When Lazy Ace broke up, DeVille, Allen Jr., Colbert, Rubén Sigüenza, and guitarist Robert McKenzie (a.k.a. Fast Floyd, later of Fast Floyd and the Famous Firebirds) formed a band called Billy de Sade and the Marquis. "We were playing the leather bars
Leather subculture
The leather subculture denotes practices and styles of dress organized around sexual activities. Wearing leather garments is one way that participants in this culture self-consciously distinguish themselves from mainstream sexual cultures...
down on Folsom Street," Willy DeVille recalled. "We were Billy de Sade and the Marquis then. We played the Barracks. After a while they would take their clothes off. This one guy—Jesus Satin he called himself—he'd dance on the pool table. It was nuts! Crazy!"
Name changes
In 1975, the band changed its name to Mink DeVille; lead singer Billy Borsay took the name Willy DeVille. Said DeVille, “We were sitting around talking of names, and some of them were really rude, and I was saying, guys we can't do that. Then one of the guys said how about Mink DeVille? There can't be anything cooler than a fur-lined CadillacCadillac
Cadillac is an American luxury vehicle marque owned by General Motors . Cadillac vehicles are sold in over 50 countries and territories, but mostly in North America. Cadillac is currently the second oldest American automobile manufacturer behind fellow GM marque Buick and is among the oldest...
can there?" DeVille also remarked about the name, "What could be more pimp than a mink Cadillac? In an impressionistic
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
sort of way." Another story about the Mink DeVille name says that it originated with Fast Floyd, who owned an old Cadillac with a cracked dashboard. To cover the cracks, Fast Floyd glued an old mink coat he had purchased at a thrift store to the dashboard. According to a 1977 article in Creem
Creem
Creem , "America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine," was a monthly rock 'n' roll publication first published in March 1969 by Barry Kramer and founding editor Tony Reay. It suspended production in 1989 but received a short-lived renaissance in the early 1990s as a glossy tabloid...
, DeVille's wife Toots suggested the name: "...the band looked like it might have been going nowhere, in reverse. So maybe another name change would help—God knows the music was great. Mink Pie...hmmmm. 'No, it's gotta be something slick—something sorta French, somethin' sorta black...poetry. Mink...MINK DE VILLE!' blurted out Toots, Willie's omnipresent, black-bouffanted old lady, whose quiet intensity is not unlike his own." This issue of Creem shows a picture of DeVille driving a car with what looks to be mink on the dashboard.
Looking at music magazines in City Lights Bookstore
City Lights Bookstore
City Lights is an independent bookstore-publisher combination that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics. It also houses the nonprofit City Lights Foundation, which publishes selected titles related to San Francisco culture. It was founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence...
, DeVille noticed a small ad in The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
inviting bands to audition in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, his hometown. "I convinced the guys that I could get them work, and we climbed in the van and drove back the other way." Guitarist Fast Floyd and keyboard player Ritch Colbert did not make the trip to New York. Fast Floyd was replaced by Louis X. Erlanger
Louis X. Erlanger
Louis X. Erlanger is an American is a rock and roll and blues guitarist best known for his work with the band Mink DeVille. Erlanger recorded three albums with the band: Cabretta , Return to Magenta , and Le Chat Bleu...
, who had played with John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist.Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally closest to Delta blues. He developed a 'talking blues' style that was his trademark...
and brought a deeper blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
sensibility to the band; Colbert was replaced by Bobby Leonards (formerly of Tiffany Shade
Tiffany Shade
Tiffany Shade was an American psychedelic rock band formed in 1966 in Cleveland, Ohio. They broke up 1968.They recorded and released one self-titled LP and two singles from the same album on the Mainstream label in 1968 prior to their demise.-History:...
).
House band at CBGB
From 1975 to 1977, Mink DeVille was one of the original house bandHouse band
For the British band that existed from 1984-2001, see The House BandA house band is a group of musicians, often centrally organized by a band leader, who regularly play an establishment. It is widely used to refer both to the bands who work on entertainment programs on television or radio, and to...
s at CBGB
CBGB
CBGB was a music club at 315 Bowery at Bleecker Street in the borough of Manhattan in New York City.Founded by Hilly Kristal in 1973, it was originally intended to feature its namesake musical styles, but became a forum for American punk and New Wave bands like Ramones, Misfits, Television, the...
, the New York nightclub where punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
music was born in the mid 1970s. "We auditioned along with hundreds of others, but they liked us and took us on. We played for three years... [D]uring that time we didn't get paid more than fifty bucks a night", DeVille said. In 1975, CBGB was the epicenter of punk rock and what would later be called New Wave
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
, but Mink DeVille didn’t necessarily fit in the scene. "Onstage, Willy’s band, Mink DeVille, had nothing in common with the New Wave CBGB bands that the press had lumped them with," wrote Alex Halberstadt. "Unlike Television
Television (band)
Television was an American rock band, formed in New York City in 1973. They are best known for the album Marquee Moon and widely regarded as one of the founders of "punk" and New Wave music. Television was part of the early 1970s New York underground rock scene, along with bands like the Patti...
, The Ramones, or Blondie
Blondie (band)
Blondie is an American rock band, founded by singer Deborah Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. The band was a pioneer in the early American New Wave and punk scenes of the mid-1970s...
, at heart Mink DeVille was an R&B
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
band, and Willy an old-fashioned soul
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
singer…" Wrote Mark Keresman, "Mink DeVille's earthy, streamlined sound, rejecting the mainstream high-gloss that ruined much of 1970s rock, was accepted by the same folks who'd go to see Blondie
Blondie (band)
Blondie is an American rock band, founded by singer Deborah Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. The band was a pioneer in the early American New Wave and punk scenes of the mid-1970s...
, The Shirts
The Shirts
The Shirts are a New York-based American power pop band, which was formed in 1975. The band’s early existence was closely linked with CBGB, a music club in the Bowery, but it reformed with many of the early members in 2003 and is currently active.-The CBGB years, 1975-1981:The Shirts had their...
, and Television
Television (band)
Television was an American rock band, formed in New York City in 1973. They are best known for the album Marquee Moon and widely regarded as one of the founders of "punk" and New Wave music. Television was part of the early 1970s New York underground rock scene, along with bands like the Patti...
."
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
critic Neil McCormick:
DeVille and his band reached deep into blues and soul, the classic romantic pop of Ben E. KingBen E. KingBenjamin Earl King , better known as Ben E. King, is an American soul singer. He is perhaps best known as the singer and co-composer of "Stand by Me", a U.S...
and The DriftersThe DriftersThe Drifters are a long-lived American doo-wop and R&B/soul vocal group with a peak in popularity from 1953 to 1963, though several splinter Drifters continue to perform today. They were originally formed to serve as Clyde McPhatter's backing group in 1953...
, with a side order of Spanish spices and New Orleans ZydecoZydecoZydeco is a form of uniquely American roots or folk music. It evolved in southwest Louisiana in the early 19th century from forms of "la la" Creole music...
swing. They favoured castanets over tom-toms, and accordion over distorted guitars, and Willy delivered his vocals with a sweet, tuneful flexibility that brought out the emotional resonance beneath his nasal sneer. What the wiry, dapper DeVille had that tied him to fellow CBGB resident bands like The Ramones, Television, Blondie and Talking HeadsTalking HeadsTalking Heads were an American New Wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison...
was an edge. He was drawing on some of the same musical areas that Bruce SpringsteenBruce SpringsteenBruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...
’s epic rock dipped into, but Willy was an entirely different creature, a macho dandy in a pompadour and pencil mustache, with the dangerous air of a New York gangfighter and an underbelly vulnerability that came out through the romanticism of his music. Springsteen sounded like he was your friend in desperate times. DeVille sounded like he couldn’t quite decide whether to serenade you or pull a knife on you.
Said DeVille, "We were doing Little Walter
Little Walter
Little Walter, born Marion Walter Jacobs , was an American blues harmonica player, whose revolutionary approach to his instrument has earned him comparisons to Charlie Parker and Jimi Hendrix, for innovation and impact on succeeding generations...
stuff, we were doing Elmore James
Elmore James
Elmore James was an American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and band leader. He was known as "the King of the Slide Guitar" and had a unique guitar style, noted for his use of loud amplification and his stirring voice.-Biography:James was born Elmore Brooks in the old Richland community in...
stuff. The only stuff we were doing that people had heard was 'Please, Please, Please
Please, Please, Please
"Please, Please, Please" is an R&B song written by James Brown and Johnny Terry and recorded by Brown and The Flames. Released in 1956 as a single on the Cincinnati, Ohio-based label Federal Records, it was Brown's first professional recording and his first hit, eventually selling over a million...
' by James Brown
James Brown
James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of Funk and is recognized as a major figure in the 20th century popular music for both his vocals and dancing. He has been referred to as "The Godfather of Soul," "Mr...
. We used to do an Apollo
Apollo Theater
The Apollo Theater in New York City is one of the most famous, and older, music halls in the United States, and the most famous club associated almost exclusively with Black performers...
thing. We played CBGBs for three years, and all of the sudden word got out, and then came this word Punk, which where I come from is a bad word. A punk is somebody who picks a fight with you and then never shows up." In 2007, Willy DeVille said about the bands that played CBGBs, "We were all labeled as part of this American punk thing but I really didn't see any of us having much in common." "Every f----n' art student that plays out of tune gets a record deal," he said dismissively in 1981, when asked about the punk scene.
However, Mink DeVille had in common with the CBGB bands an aversion to the hippy aesthetic
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
(what Willy DeVille called "electric this and strawberry that"); moreover, the band brought an eclectic New York sensibility to its music that the other bands didn’t have and that New York City rock fans recognized and appreciated. Critic Robert Palmer
Robert Palmer (author/producer)
Robert Franklin Palmer Jr. was a 20th century American writer, musicologist, clarinetist, saxophonist, and blues producer...
wrote, "Mr. DeVille is a magnetic performer, but his macho stage presence camouflages an acute musical intelligence; his songs and arrangements are rich in ethnic rhythms and blues echoes, the most disparate stylistic references, yet they flow seamlessly and hang together solidly. He embodies (New York's) tangle of cultural contradictions while making music that's both idiomatic, in the broadest sense, and utterly original."
In 1976, three Mink DeVille songs appeared on Live at CBGB's, a compilation album
Compilation album
A compilation album is an album featuring tracks from one or more performers, often culled from a variety of sources The tracks are usually collected according to a common characteristic, such as popularity, genre, source or subject matter...
of bands that played CBGB (for the recording sessions, drummer Thomas R. "Manfred" Allen, Jr. was credited as Manfred Jones).
Later in life, DeVille had only sour memories of CBGB. He did not play any benefit concert
Benefit concert
A benefit concert or charity concert is a concert, show or gala featuring musicians, comedians, or other performers that is held for a charitable purpose, often directed at a specific and immediate humanitarian crisis. Such events raise both funds and public awareness to address the cause at...
s or recordings for the nightclub. He told Music Street Journal: "The whole band only got $50 dollars a night, even to the end. That's why I never went back there. I've never walked through those doors other than to have maybe a beer once. I was down in New Orleans and I came up here, kind of going down Memory Lane so to speak. I ended up on Bowery down there and I thought, 'Let's see what's going on here.' I walked in (to CBGB) and I saw Hilly (Hilly Kristal
Hilly Kristal
Hilly Kristal was an American club owner and musician who was the owner of the iconic New York City club, CBGB, which opened in 1973 and closed in 2006 over a rent dispute. -Early years:...
) standing there. I had a big straw hat on, silk suit. He bought me a beer and it got around to 'Would you like to come back?' I said, 'No Hilly and you know why? Because you never treated me right. You never were fair to me.'"
The Capitol years
The exposure eventually led to a record contract. In December 1976, Ben Edmonds, an A&RA&R
Artists and repertoire is the division of a record label that is responsible for talent scouting and overseeing the artistic development of recording artists. It also acts as a liaison between artists and the record label.- Finding talent :...
man for Capitol Records
Capitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...
, and previously an editor for Creem
Creem
Creem , "America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine," was a monthly rock 'n' roll publication first published in March 1969 by Barry Kramer and founding editor Tony Reay. It suspended production in 1989 but received a short-lived renaissance in the early 1990s as a glossy tabloid...
, signed the band after spotting them at CBGB. Wrote Edmonds:
When Mink DeVille took the stage (at CBGB) and tore into "Let Me Dream if I Want To" followed by another scorcher called "She's So Tough," they had me. These five guys...were obviously part of the new energy, but I also felt immediately reconnected to all the rock & roll I loved best: the bluesy early StonesThe Rolling StonesThe Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...
, Van MorrisonVan MorrisonVan Morrison, OBE is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician. His live performances at their best are regarded as transcendental and inspired; while some of his recordings, such as the studio albums Astral Weeks and Moondance, and the live album It's Too Late to Stop Now, are widely...
..., the subway scenarios of the The Velvet UndergroundThe Velvet UndergroundThe Velvet Underground was an American rock band formed in New York City. First active from 1964 to 1973, their best-known members were Lou Reed and John Cale, who both went on to find success as solo artists. Although experiencing little commercial success while together, the band is often cited...
, Dylan'sBob DylanBob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
folk-rock inflections, the heartbreak of Little Willie JohnLittle Willie JohnWilliam Edward John was better known by his stage name Little Willie John. Many sources erroneously give his second name as Edgar...
, and a thousand scratchy old flea marketFlea marketA flea market or swap meet is a type of bazaar where inexpensive or secondhand goods are sold or bartered. It may be indoors, such as in a warehouse or school gymnasium; or it may be outdoors, such as in a field or under a tent...
45s. Plus they seemed to contain all the flavors of their New York neighborhood, from Spanish accents to reggaeReggaeReggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
spice.
Said Willy DeVille about Edmonds:
There was the RamonesRamonesThe Ramones were an American rock band that formed in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens, in 1974. They are often cited as the first punk rock group...
, Patti SmithPatti SmithPatricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....
, TelevisionTelevision (band)Television was an American rock band, formed in New York City in 1973. They are best known for the album Marquee Moon and widely regarded as one of the founders of "punk" and New Wave music. Television was part of the early 1970s New York underground rock scene, along with bands like the Patti...
, the Talking HeadsTalking HeadsTalking Heads were an American New Wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison...
, and us. We were the five big draws. And then one night this blond-headed guy came in to CBGB, Ben Edmonds. He was the guy who was responsible for being the visionary who saw that we were different than they were and that we could probably have a career playing music. So we went into this cheap little studio and did four songs, which Edmonds gave to Jack NitzscheJack NitzscheBernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche was an arranger, producer, songwriter, and film score composer. He first came to prominence in the late 1950s as the right-hand-man of producer Phil Spector, and went on to work with the Rolling Stones, Neil Young and others...
. I didn't even know who Nitzsche was. Nitzsche did all the Phil SpectorPhil SpectorPhillip Harvey "Phil" Spector is an American record producer and songwriter, later known for his conviction in the murder of actress Lana Clarkson....
stuff that we grew up with and loved. We just fell in love with each other. We were buddies to the end. He was like my crazy uncle. I called him my mentor and my tormentor.
Working with Jack Nitzsche
Mink DeVille recorded their debut album CabrettaCabretta
Cabretta, known as Mink DeVille in the United States, was the 1977 debut album by Mink DeVille. It peaked at number 186 on the Billboard 200 chart and was voted the 29th best album of 1977 in the Village Voices Pazz & Jop critics' poll...
(entitled Mink DeVille in the U.S.), produced by Jack Nitzsche
Jack Nitzsche
Bernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche was an arranger, producer, songwriter, and film score composer. He first came to prominence in the late 1950s as the right-hand-man of producer Phil Spector, and went on to work with the Rolling Stones, Neil Young and others...
, in January 1977. Nitzsche would, in alternation with Steve Douglas
Steve Douglas (saxophonist)
Steven Douglas Kreisman , better known as Steve Douglas, was an American saxophonist, flautist and clarinetist. Douglas is best known as a Los Angeles session musician, a member of The Wrecking Crew, who worked with Phil Spector, Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys...
, produce the first four Mink DeVille albums. Both men, members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a museum located on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is dedicated to archiving the history of some of the best-known and most influential artists, producers, engineers and others who have, in some major way,...
, had apprenticed under Phil Spector
Phil Spector
Phillip Harvey "Phil" Spector is an American record producer and songwriter, later known for his conviction in the murder of actress Lana Clarkson....
and helped shape the Wall of Sound
Wall of Sound
The Wall of Sound is a music production technique for pop and rock music recordings developed by record producer Phil Spector at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, California, during the early 1960s...
production technique. These producers were a natural fit for Mink DeVille, whose members’ tastes ran to the Ronettes
The Ronettes
The Ronettes were a 1960s girl group from New York City, best known for their work with producer Phil Spector. The group consisted of lead singer Veronica Bennett ; her older sister, Estelle Bennett; and their cousin Nedra Talley...
, the Crystals
The Crystals
The Crystals are an American vocal group based in New York, considered one of the defining acts of the girl group era of the first half of the 1960s. Their 1961–1964 chart hits, including "Uptown", "He's a Rebel", "Da Doo Ron Ron " and "Then He Kissed Me", featured three successive female lead...
and other 1960s-era New York bands with their Brill Building sound. Said Willy DeVille, "You listen to that music and you hear those really high strings
String instrument
A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
, and that percussion, and the castanet
Castanet
Castanets are a percussion instrument , used in Moorish, Ottoman, ancient Roman, Italian, Spanish, Sephardic Music, and Portuguese music. The instrument consists of a pair of concave shells joined on one edge by a string. They are held in the hand and used to produce clicks for rhythmic accents or...
s; that's all Jack's (Jack Nitzsche’s) work. All that really cool stuff".
Nitzsche said about DeVille, "We hit it off right away. Willy pulled out his record collection, he started playing things, that was it. I thought, 'Holy shit! This guy's got taste!'" Wrote Ben Edmonds, who paired Nitzsche with Mink DeVille:
It has always been assumed that our pairing was based on his (Nitzsche's) Spector accomplishments, but to me that was secondary. In the beginning I saw Mink DeVille as a hard-edged rock and roll band, and I wanted the Nitzsche who'd produced "Memo from TurnerMemo from Turner"Memo from Turner" is a solo record by Mick Jagger, featuring a guitar solo by Ry Cooder, from the soundtrack of Performance, where Jagger played a major part. It was re-released in October 2007 on a seventeen-song retrospective compilation album The Very Best of Mick Jagger, making a re-appearance...
" (off the PerformancePerformance (film)Performance is a 1968 British crime drama film; the film was produced in 1968 but not released until 1970. Directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, Performance stars James Fox and Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones in his film acting debut.-Plot:...
soundtrack) and the great first Crazy HorseCrazy Horse (album)Crazy Horse is the 1971 debut album by Crazy Horse, released by Reprise Records. It peaked at number 84 on the Billboard album chart.- History :...
album... 'How did you ever get Jack Nitzsche?' Elliott MurphyElliott MurphyElliott James Murphy is an American rock singer-songwriter, novelist, producer and journalist living in Paris.-Biography:Elliott James Murphy, Jr. was born in Rockville Centre, New York to a show business family...
later asked me incredulously. 'I tried to get him for years.' The sad truth is that it took one phone call, and even that was sheer luck—or maybe divine providenceDivine providenceIn Christian theology, divine providence, or simply providence, is God's activity in the world. " Providence" is also used as a title of God exercising His providence, and then the word are usually capitalized...
. I mentioned my mission while chatting with friend and Del ShannonDel ShannonDel Shannon was an American rock and roll singer-songwriter who had a No. 1 hit, "Runaway", in 1961.- Biography :...
manager Dan Bourgoise, who responded 'Jack? I can put you in touch with him.' Two days later the elusive producer was sitting in my office. I put on a live recording and after the first song, the band's version of Otis ReddingOtis ReddingOtis Ray Redding, Jr. was an American soul singer-songwriter, record producer, arranger and talent scout. He is considered one of the major figures in soul and R&B...
's 'These Arms of Mine,' Nitzsche motioned for me to stop the tape. 'When do we start?' he said. They had him. And that was the whole of it, plain and simple. I didn't get Jack Nitzsche. The voice of Willy DeVille did.
Cabretta, a multifaceted album of soul
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
, R&B
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
, rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, and blues recordings, is generally regarded as one of the best debut albums by a new band of the mid-1970s. Steve Douglas played saxophone
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
, and the Immortals, a cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
singers whom Willy DeVille discovered at a reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
concert at Max's Kansas City
Max's Kansas City
Max's Kansas City was a nightclub and restaurant at 213 Park Avenue South, in New York City, which was a gathering spot for musicians, poets, artists and politicians in the 1960s and 1970s.-Origin of name:...
, sang background vocals
Backing vocalist
A backing vocalist or backing singer is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists...
. On the catchy "Spanish Stroll", bassist Rubén Sigüenza spoke words in Spanish during the break
Break (music)
In popular music, a break is an instrumental or percussion section or interlude during a song derived from or related to stop-time – being a "break" from the main parts of the song or piece....
("Hey Rosita! Donde vas con mi carro Rosita? Tu sabes que te quiero, pero ti me quitas todo"), adding a Latin flavor to the album. This song was chosen as the album's lead single
Lead single
A lead single is usually the first single released by a musician or a band before the release of its home album.During the era of the grammophone record, all music arrived in the marketplace as what is now termed a single, one potential hit song backed by an additional song of generally less...
and reached No. 20 on the UK Singles Chart
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
; it was to be DeVille's only record ever to chart in the UK. Cabretta was elected number 57 in the Village Voices 1977 end-of-the-year Pazz & Jop
Pazz & Jop
The Pazz & Jop critics' poll is a poll of music critics run by The Village Voice newspaper. It is compiled every year from the top ten lists of hundreds of music critics...
critics poll.
The band's 1978 follow-up album Return to Magenta
Return to Magenta
Return to Magenta, issued in 1978, is the second album by the rock band Mink DeVille. The album was the last to feature all the original members of the band. For this album, the band was joined by Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Steve Douglas on sax and, on piano, Dr...
continued in the same vein as Cabretta, but with a twist. "We went against strings
String instrument
A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
on the first album—decided it should be outright, raw, and rude." On Return to Magenta, Willy DeVille and producers Nitzsche and Steve Douglas employed lavish string arrangements on several songs. Dr. John
Dr. John
Malcolm John "Mac" Rebennack, Jr. , better known by the stage name Dr. John , is an American singer-songwriter, pianist and guitarist, whose music combines blues, pop, jazz as well as Zydeco, boogie woogie and rock and roll.Active as a session musician since the late 1950s, he came to wider...
played keyboards and, once again, Douglas played saxophone. Mink DeVille toured the United States in 1978 with Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello , born Declan Patrick MacManus, is an English singer-songwriter. He came to prominence as an early participant in London's pub rock scene in the mid-1970s and later became associated with the punk/New Wave genre. Steeped in word play, the vocabulary of Costello's lyrics is broader...
and Nick Lowe
Nick Lowe
Nicholas Drain "Nick" Lowe , is an English singer-songwriter, musician and producer.A pivotal figure in UK pub rock, punk rock and new wave, Lowe has recorded a string of well-reviewed solo albums. Along with vocals, Lowe plays guitar, bass guitar, piano and harmonica...
.
Recording
Le Chat Bleu in Paris In 1979, Willy DeVille's love of art and French culture led him to relocate to ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
for a short while.
Here he took his band in a new direction and recorded an entirely original album called Le Chat Bleu
Le Chat Bleu
Le Chat Bleu, released in 1980, is the third album by the rock band Mink DeVille. The album received critical acclaim and elevated lead singer and composer Willy DeVille to star status. The Rolling Stone Critic’s Poll ranked Le Chat Bleu the fifth best album of 1980, andmusic historian Glenn A...
. For this album, DeVille wrote several songs with Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a museum located on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is dedicated to archiving the history of some of the best-known and most influential artists, producers, engineers and others who have, in some major way,...
member Doc Pomus
Doc Pomus
Jerome Solon Felder, better known as Doc Pomus , was a twentieth-century American blues singer and songwriter. He is best known as the lyricist of many rock and roll hits. Pomus was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the category of non-performer in 1992. He was also inducted into...
. Guitarist Louis X. Erlanger
Louis X. Erlanger
Louis X. Erlanger is an American is a rock and roll and blues guitarist best known for his work with the band Mink DeVille. Erlanger recorded three albums with the band: Cabretta , Return to Magenta , and Le Chat Bleu...
had become acquainted with Pomus while frequenting New York City's blues clubs and had urged Pomus to check out the group. Wrote Alex Halberstadt, Pomus's biographer:
One night Doc's pub crawl took him to The Bottom LineBottom LineThe Bottom Line was a music venue at 15 West Fourth Street between Mercer Street and Greene Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City...
just a block east of Washington Square ParkWashington Square ParkWashington Square Park is one of the best-known of New York City's 1,900 public parks. At 9.75 acres , it is a landmark in the Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village, as well as a meeting place and center for cultural activity...
(in New York City). He sat at his usual table and watched an empty spotlight. Cigarette smoke wafted into the shaft of light from offstage while the sax player blew Earle HagenEarle HagenEarle Harry Hagen was an American composer who created music for movies and television. He is remembered for co-writing and whistling "The Fishin' Hole", the melody of the main theme to The Andy Griffith Show, the instrumental classic "Harlem Nocturne" used as the theme to television's Mickey...
's "Harlem Nocturne". DeVille strode out of the wings and snatched the mikeMicrophoneA microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...
. With his pedantically trimmed pencil mustache he looked like a cross between a bullfighter and a Puerto RicanPuerto RicoPuerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
pimpPimpA pimp is an agent for prostitutes who collects part of their earnings. The pimp may receive this money in return for advertising services, physical protection, or for providing a location where she may engage clients...
. The tightest black suit clung to his thin frame; he wore a purple shirt, a narrow black tie and shoes with six-inch points. A PompadourPompadour (hairstyle)Pompadour is a tall style of men's haircut which takes its name from Madame de Pompadour.There are Latin variants of the hair style more associated with European and Argentine tango fashion trends and occasionally with late 20th century musical genres such as rockabilly and country.The pompadour...
jutted out above his forehead like the lacquered hullHull (watercraft)A hull is the watertight body of a ship or boat. Above the hull is the superstructure and/or deckhouse, where present. The line where the hull meets the water surface is called the waterline.The structure of the hull varies depending on the vessel type...
of a submarine. The show was the most soulful Doc had seen in ages. Onstage, Willy's band, Mink DeVille, had nothing in common with the New WaveNew Wave musicNew Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
CBGB bands that the press had lumped them with. Unlike TelevisionTelevision (band)Television was an American rock band, formed in New York City in 1973. They are best known for the album Marquee Moon and widely regarded as one of the founders of "punk" and New Wave music. Television was part of the early 1970s New York underground rock scene, along with bands like the Patti...
, the RamonesRamonesThe Ramones were an American rock band that formed in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens, in 1974. They are often cited as the first punk rock group...
, or BlondieBlondie (band)Blondie is an American rock band, founded by singer Deborah Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. The band was a pioneer in the early American New Wave and punk scenes of the mid-1970s...
, at heart Mink DeVille was an R&B band, and Willy an old-fashioned soul singer. He borrowed much of his phrasing from Ben E. KingBen E. KingBenjamin Earl King , better known as Ben E. King, is an American soul singer. He is perhaps best known as the singer and co-composer of "Stand by Me", a U.S...
and couldn't believe it when someone told him that Doc Pomus wanted to meet him after the show. "You mean the guy who wrote 'Save the Last Dance for MeSave The Last Dance For Me"Save the Last Dance for Me" is the title of a popular song written by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, first recorded in 1960 by Ben E. King with The Drifters....
'?" He was even more amazed when Doc asked whether he'd write with him. "Look me up. I'm in the bookTelephone directoryA telephone directory is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization that publishes the directory...
," Doc hollered before rolling away (in his wheelchair).
DeVille said about their first meeting, "Now here I am at 29, a writer, doing pretty good and I've just been asked if I want to write songs with a guy who helped lay the foundations for the music I fell in love with sitting at my mother's kitchen table when I was only seven years old. You've got to be kidding!"
Willy DeVille hired Jean Claude Petit to supervise string arrangements
String section
The string section is the largest body of the standard orchestra and consists of bowed string instruments of the violin family.It normally comprises five sections: the first violins, the second violins, the violas, the cellos, and the double basses...
, and he dismissed the members of the band except for guitarist Louis X. Erlanger
Louis X. Erlanger
Louis X. Erlanger is an American is a rock and roll and blues guitarist best known for his work with the band Mink DeVille. Erlanger recorded three albums with the band: Cabretta , Return to Magenta , and Le Chat Bleu...
in favor of new musicians, including accordion
Accordion
The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....
ist Kenny Margolis. Said DeVille: "I wanted to record the album in Paris... because I desperately wanted to use Jean-Claude Petit, whom I had contacted through Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...
's songwriter Charles Dumont, for string
String instrument
A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
arrangements... The band with me was a dream come true. I've got Phil Spector
Phil Spector
Phillip Harvey "Phil" Spector is an American record producer and songwriter, later known for his conviction in the murder of actress Lana Clarkson....
's horn player, Steve Douglas
Steve Douglas (saxophonist)
Steven Douglas Kreisman , better known as Steve Douglas, was an American saxophonist, flautist and clarinetist. Douglas is best known as a Los Angeles session musician, a member of The Wrecking Crew, who worked with Phil Spector, Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys...
(who also served as producer), on tenor
Tenor saxophone
The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor, with the alto, are the two most common types of saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B, and written as a transposing instrument in the treble...
and baritone
Baritone saxophone
The baritone saxophone, often called "bari sax" , is one of the largest and lowest pitched members of the saxophone family. It was invented by Adolphe Sax. The baritone is distinguished from smaller sizes of saxophone by the extra loop near its mouthpiece...
. Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
's rhythm section
Rhythm section
A rhythm section is a collection of musicians who make up a section of instruments which provides the accompaniment section of the music, giving the music its rhythmic texture and pulse, also serving as a rhythmic reference for the rest of the band...
, Ron Tutt and Jerry Scheff
Jerry Scheff
Jerry Obern Scheff is an American bassist, perhaps best known for his work with Elvis Presley in the early 1970s as a member of his TCB Band and his work on The Doors' final recordings....
, want to play with me. Wow! That's pretty cool! Songwriting with Doc Pomus. Not to mention Jean-Claude doing the strings. How can I go wrong?"
Capitol Records
Capitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...
released Le Chat Bleu in Europe in 1980, but believed that American audiences would not warm to a record featuring accordions and strings. "It says something about the state of the American record business—something pathetic and depressing—that Willy DeVille's finest album fell on deaf ears at Capitol," wrote Kurt Loder
Kurt Loder
Kurt Loder is an American film critic, author, columnist, and television personality. He served in the 1980s as editor at Rolling Stone, during a tenure that Reason later called "legendary". He has contributed to articles in Reason, Esquire, Details, New York, and Time. He has also made cameos on...
of Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
. Said percussionist Boris Kinberg, "Capitol in the U.S. didn’t know what to do with it because they perceived Willy as this punk rocker from CBGB
CBGB
CBGB was a music club at 315 Bowery at Bleecker Street in the borough of Manhattan in New York City.Founded by Hilly Kristal in 1973, it was originally intended to feature its namesake musical styles, but became a forum for American punk and New Wave bands like Ramones, Misfits, Television, the...
s and he came back from Paris with a very different kind of record. They didn’t understand the record, but they understood it in Europe. They released it immediately in Europe and everybody loved it." After Le Chat Bleu sold impressively in America as an import, Capitol finally released it in the United States. Wrote Alex Halberstadt:
(Willy DeVille) created a record that sounded like nothing that had come before... It was clear that Willy had realized his fantasy of a new, completely contemporary Brill Building record. To the symphonic sweetness of the DriftersThe DriftersThe Drifters are a long-lived American doo-wop and R&B/soul vocal group with a peak in popularity from 1953 to 1963, though several splinter Drifters continue to perform today. They were originally formed to serve as Clyde McPhatter's backing group in 1953...
he added his own GallicGaulGaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg and Belgium, most of Switzerland, the western part of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the left bank of the Rhine. The Gauls were the speakers of...
romance and, in his vocal, a measure of punk rockPunk rockPunk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
's BoweryBoweryBowery may refer to:Streets:* The Bowery, a thoroughfare in Manhattan, New York City* Bowery Street is a street on Coney Island in Brooklyn, N.Y.In popular culture:* Bowery Amphitheatre, a building on the Bowery in New York City...
grit. Doc (Pomus) was elated when he heard it. Thinking they'd signed a New WaveNew Wave musicNew Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
band, CapitolCapitol RecordsCapitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...
didn't know what to do with Willy's rock and roll chansonChansonA chanson is in general any lyric-driven French song, usually polyphonic and secular. A singer specialising in chansons is known as a "chanteur" or "chanteuse" ; a collection of chansons, especially from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, is also known as a chansonnier.-Chanson de geste:The...
and shelved it for a year. When it was finally released in 1980, Le Chat Bleu remixed by Joel DornJoel DornJoel Dorn was an American jazz and R&B music producer and record label entrepreneur. He worked at Atlantic Records, and later founded the 32 Jazz, Label M, and Hyena Records labels...
, made nearly every critic's list of the year's best records.
The Rolling Stone Critic’s Poll ranked Le Chat Bleu the fifth best album of 1980, and music historian Glenn A. Baker
Glenn A. Baker
Glenn A. Baker is an Australian journalist, commentator, and broadcaster well known in Australia for his vast knowledge of Rock music. He has written books and magazine articles on rock music and travel, interviewed celebrities, managed bands such as Ol' 55 and promoted tours of international stars...
declared it the tenth best rock album of all time. "(Willy DeVille) created a record that sounded like nothing that had come before...," wrote Alex Halberstadt. "It was clear that Willy had realized his fantasy of a new, completely contemporary Brill Building record. To the symphonic sweetness of the Drifters
The Drifters
The Drifters are a long-lived American doo-wop and R&B/soul vocal group with a peak in popularity from 1953 to 1963, though several splinter Drifters continue to perform today. They were originally formed to serve as Clyde McPhatter's backing group in 1953...
he added his own Gallic
Gaul
Gaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg and Belgium, most of Switzerland, the western part of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the left bank of the Rhine. The Gauls were the speakers of...
romance and, in his vocal, a measure of punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
's Bowery
Bowery
Bowery may refer to:Streets:* The Bowery, a thoroughfare in Manhattan, New York City* Bowery Street is a street on Coney Island in Brooklyn, N.Y.In popular culture:* Bowery Amphitheatre, a building on the Bowery in New York City...
grit."
The Atlantic years
"Willy had found a more appreciative reception at Atlantic RecordsAtlantic Records
Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...
, where head man Ahmet Ertegün
Ahmet Ertegun
Ahmet Ertegün was a Turkish American musician and businessman, best known as the founder and president of Atlantic Records. He also wrote classic blues and pop songs and served as Chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and museum...
signed him to a fat new recording deal and promised to personally shepherd his career...", reported Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
in 1980. "According to Willy—never one to let false modesty intrude on a good story—the Atlantic Records chairman said, 'You got the look, the performance, the writing, you know exactly what to do.'"
By this time, no members of the original Mink DeVille save Willy DeVille remained in the band, but DeVille continued recording and touring under the name Mink DeVille. "Those boys went through the wars with me, the $50 a night bars, and I had to turn on them and lop their heads off and say, 'I love you man, but that's the way it’s gotta be.' I still feel guilty about it, but we were just a good bar band. That's all we were. We weren't ready to make great rock and roll records."
Wrote critic Robert Palmer in 1981:
Mr. DeVille's career never quite took off, despite the impressive breadth and depth of his talent. He is recording a new album for Atlantic records, having departed from his previous recording commitment under less than amicable circumstances. And on Friday night he was at the SavoySaid DeVille:Savoy BallroomThe Savoy Ballroom, located in Harlem, New York City, was a medium sized ballroom for music and public dancing that was in operation from March 12, 1926 to July 10, 1958. It was located between 140th and 141st Streets on Lenox Avenue....
, where he demonstrated with an almost insolent ease that he is still ready for the recognition that should have been his several years ago. He has the songs, he has the voice, and he has the band. And he has expanded the scope of his music by adding elements of French cafe songs and Louisiana zydecoZydecoZydeco is a form of uniquely American roots or folk music. It evolved in southwest Louisiana in the early 19th century from forms of "la la" Creole music...
to the mixture of rockRock and rollRock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
, bluesBluesBlues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, LatinLatin American musicLatin American music, found within Central and South America, is a series of musical styles and genres that mixes influences from Spanish, African and indigenous sources, that has recently become very famous in the US.-Argentina:...
and Brill Building soul that was already there.
I had band problems, manager problems, record company problems. And yeah, I had drug problems. Finally I got a new recording contract, with Atlantic, and a new manager. I cleaned up my act. I figured that since playing music with people I was friends with didn't seem to work out, I would hire some mercenaries, some cats who just wanted to play and get paid. And those guys turned out to be more devoted to the music than any band I ever had. They're professional, precise, but they're full of fire, too.
DeVille recorded two albums for Atlantic, 1981's Coup de Grâce
Coup de Grace (Mink DeVille album)
Coup de Grâce, issued in 1981, is the fourth album by the rock band Mink DeVille. The album represented a departure for the band, as frontman Willy DeVille dismissed the only other remaining original member of the band, guitarist Louis X. Erlanger, and hired Helen Schneider's backup band to record...
(produced by Jack Nitzsche
Jack Nitzsche
Bernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche was an arranger, producer, songwriter, and film score composer. He first came to prominence in the late 1950s as the right-hand-man of producer Phil Spector, and went on to work with the Rolling Stones, Neil Young and others...
) and 1983’s Where Angels Fear to Tread
Where Angels Fear to Tread (Mink DeVille album)
Where Angels Fear to Tread, issued in 1983, is the fifth album by the rock band Mink DeVille. It was the second album Mink DeVille recorded for Atlantic Records, and Atlantic brought in two in-house producers, Howard Albert and Ron Albert, to produce the album.Mink DeVille as a rock group had...
. Both albums featured saxophonist Louis Cortelezzi and had a full-throated Jersey Shore sound that evoked Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...
and Southside Johnny
Southside Johnny
Southside Johnny is an American singer-songwriter, who usually fronts his band Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes.-Early days:...
. Wrote critic Thom Jurek about these albums:
(Both) are truly solid albums—despite lukewarm reviews at the time—showcasing much of Willy’s theatrical personality and his own desire to provide for the elements of fantasy in rock music that the early rockers and doo-wopDoo-wopThe name Doo-wop is given to a style of vocal-based rhythm and blues music that developed in African American communities in the 1940s and achieved mainstream popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s. It emerged from New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, Newark, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and...
pers did in the 1950s and 1960s (and that PiafÉdith PiafÉdith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...
and BrelJacques BrelJacques Brel was a Belgian singer-songwriter who composed and performed literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs that generated a large, devoted following in France initially, and later throughout the world. He was widely considered a master of the modern chanson...
did in France). Rootsy, hook-laden rock, iconic balladry, and the theater of aural experience were all contained in songs that offered the illusion that one could still find acted out under a streetlamp-lit stage, in front of a trashcan bonfire, narrated by one costumed in the decadent attire of a Euro-trash lothario-cum-stiletto-carrying 1950s gang banger... They captivate a listener in the same way a great period film would—they tell an epic story in a few minutes and capture all of its life and death drama.
The albums Mink DeVille recorded for Atlantic sold well in Europe but not in the United States. Explained Kenny Margolis, who played piano and accordion
Accordion
The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....
in DeVille's early 1980s bands, "I don’t think the American public had a chance to experience him because in America at that time you had MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
telling you what to like. Europe had not had MTV at that point and they were very open to different music." DeVille said about his years with Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...
, "Ahmet Ertegün and I got along, but we never got anything done."
A final album for Polydor
Mink DeVille’s last album, Sportin' LifeSportin' Life (Mink DeVille album)
Sportin’ Life, issued in 1985, is the sixth and final album by the rock band Mink DeVille. Since the band’s third album, 1981’s Le Chat Bleu, when the original members of the band departed, lead singer and composer Willy DeVille had been assembling musicians to record and tour under the name Mink...
, was recorded for Polydor
Polydor Records
Polydor is a record label owned by Universal Music Group, headquartered in the United Kingdom.-Beginnings:Polydor was originally an independent branch of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. Its name was first used as an export label in 1924, the British and German branches of the Gramophone...
in 1985. For this album, DeVille penned two more songs with Doc Pomus
Doc Pomus
Jerome Solon Felder, better known as Doc Pomus , was a twentieth-century American blues singer and songwriter. He is best known as the lyricist of many rock and roll hits. Pomus was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the category of non-performer in 1992. He was also inducted into...
("Something Beautiful Dying" and "When You Walk My Way"). The album was recorded at the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio
Muscle Shoals Sound Studio
The Muscle Shoals Sound Studio was formed in Muscle Shoals, Alabama,in 1969 when musicians Barry Beckett , Roger Hawkins , Jimmy Johnson and David Hood left FAME Studios to create their own studio...
in Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, and DeVille and Duncan Cameron producing. The song "Italian Shoes" was a hit in some European countries, but some critics thought the album was overproduced. Wrote Allmusic: "Its sound is steeped in mid-'80s studio gloss and compression that often overwhelms quality material." However, David Wild
David Wild
David Wild is an American writer and critic in the music and television industries and a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine. His published books include Friends: The Official Companion , Seinfeld: The Totally Unauthorized Tribute , Friends 'til the end and others.Wild was the host of...
of Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
praised Sportin' Life, calling it "[t]he most modern, polished sound of (Willy DeVille's) career." He added, "Pushed to center stage, DeVille delivers, singing with more passion and more personality than ever before."
After Sportin' Life, DeVille dropped the "Mink" moniker and began recording under his own name. Mink DeVille played its last concert on February 20, 1986 in New York City.
The Mink DeVille Band
On playbills and on live albums such as Willy DeVille LiveWilly DeVille Live
Willy DeVille Live is a live recording of Willy DeVille and the Mink DeVille Band. It was recorded on June 16-17, 1993 at the Bottom Line in Greenwich Village, New York, and in October 1993 at the Olympia Theatre in Paris...
(1993) and Acoustic Trio Live in Berlin
Acoustic Trio Live in Berlin
Acoustic Trio Live in Berlin is a 2002 album by Willy DeVille. The album consists of concert recordings made in Berlin to celebrate DeVille’s 25 years’ of performing, and concert recordings made in Stockholm...
(2003), Willy DeVille’s backup band was sometimes called The Mink DeVille Band, an allusion to the earlier Mink DeVille. Some musicians who backed up Willy DeVille in The Mink DeVille Band played and toured with him for decades. Bass player Bob Curiano, for example, backed up Willy DeVille in his 1981 and 2007 European tours. As well, musicians who played in The Mink DeVille Band sometimes played on Mink DeVille and Willy DeVille albums. These members of different Mink DeVille Bands played with Willy DeVille for ten years or more:
- Guitar: Ricky Borgia, Freddy Koëlla (also plays violinViolinThe violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
and mandolinMandolinA mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family . It descends from the mandore, a soprano member of the lute family. The mandolin soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections. A mandolin may have f-holes, or a single...
) - Bass: Bob Curiano, David Keyes
- Percussion: Boris Kinberg
- Drums: Shawn Murray
- Piano, accordion: Seth Farber, Kenny Margolis
- Saxophone: Louis Cortelezzi, Mario CruzMario CruzMario Cruz is a New York City-area saxophone player with a number of credits to his name. He is perhaps best known for playing on Bruce Springsteen's 1988 Tunnel of Love Express tour....
- Background vocals: Billy Valentine, John Valentine, Dorene Wise, Yadonna Wise
Discography
- For a complete discography of Mink DeVille/Willy DeVille recordings, see Willy DeVille discographyWilly DeVille discographyThe discography of American singer and songwriter Willy DeVille includes, as well as his solo recordings, recordings released by his band Mink DeVille in the period from 1977 to 1985...
.- 1977: CabrettaCabrettaCabretta, known as Mink DeVille in the United States, was the 1977 debut album by Mink DeVille. It peaked at number 186 on the Billboard 200 chart and was voted the 29th best album of 1977 in the Village Voices Pazz & Jop critics' poll...
(in Europe); Mink DevilleCabrettaCabretta, known as Mink DeVille in the United States, was the 1977 debut album by Mink DeVille. It peaked at number 186 on the Billboard 200 chart and was voted the 29th best album of 1977 in the Village Voices Pazz & Jop critics' poll...
(in the U.S.) (CapitolCapitol RecordsCapitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...
) - 1978: Return to MagentaReturn to MagentaReturn to Magenta, issued in 1978, is the second album by the rock band Mink DeVille. The album was the last to feature all the original members of the band. For this album, the band was joined by Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Steve Douglas on sax and, on piano, Dr...
(Capitol) - 1980: Le Chat BleuLe Chat BleuLe Chat Bleu, released in 1980, is the third album by the rock band Mink DeVille. The album received critical acclaim and elevated lead singer and composer Willy DeVille to star status. The Rolling Stone Critic’s Poll ranked Le Chat Bleu the fifth best album of 1980, andmusic historian Glenn A...
(Capitol) - 1981: Coup de GrâceCoup de Grace (Mink DeVille album)Coup de Grâce, issued in 1981, is the fourth album by the rock band Mink DeVille. The album represented a departure for the band, as frontman Willy DeVille dismissed the only other remaining original member of the band, guitarist Louis X. Erlanger, and hired Helen Schneider's backup band to record...
(AtlanticAtlantic RecordsAtlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...
) - 1983: Where Angels Fear to TreadWhere Angels Fear to Tread (Mink DeVille album)Where Angels Fear to Tread, issued in 1983, is the fifth album by the rock band Mink DeVille. It was the second album Mink DeVille recorded for Atlantic Records, and Atlantic brought in two in-house producers, Howard Albert and Ron Albert, to produce the album.Mink DeVille as a rock group had...
(Atlantic) - 1985: Sportin' LifeSportin' Life (Mink DeVille album)Sportin’ Life, issued in 1985, is the sixth and final album by the rock band Mink DeVille. Since the band’s third album, 1981’s Le Chat Bleu, when the original members of the band departed, lead singer and composer Willy DeVille had been assembling musicians to record and tour under the name Mink...
(PolydorPolydor RecordsPolydor is a record label owned by Universal Music Group, headquartered in the United Kingdom.-Beginnings:Polydor was originally an independent branch of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. Its name was first used as an export label in 1924, the British and German branches of the Gramophone...
)
- 1977: Cabretta