Spotlight: Dennis Coffey

Many recognize Detroit guitarist Dennis Coffey as the author of endlessly dynamic, oft-sampled B-boy anthem "Scorpio," but few know him as a Motown session player who, under producer Norman Whitfield's auspices, played on soul classics by the Temptations, Four Tops, Supremes, Edwin Starr, and Marvin Gaye.

Off the label, he finagled his wah-wah pedal onto recordings by Wilson Pickett, Johnnie Taylor, the Dramatics, and Funkadelic's landmark self-titled 1970 album. "When I'd come into the studio, they'd already have the tracks," Coffey remembers. "I'd just be off in the corner trying to add to what they already had."

As adept at lead as background roles, Coffey crafted the intro to the Temptations' epic "Ball of Confusion." Though quips like "having worked with [Motown bassist James] Jamerson, you know it's Jamerson when you hear him," pepper his conversation, Coffey's defining moment remains "Scorpio," which reappears on the sixtysomething's 2006 album, Big City Funk (Vampi Soul).

"The Evolution album, which had the Funk Brothers on it, came out in '71 and stiffed," he admits. "A year later, I was completing Goin' for Myself and started hearing from friends that the dance clubs in New York were going crazy over 'Scorpio.'"

His label, Sussex, investigated and soon enough told him to suspend work on the album in progress. They wanted him, he says, to "work on further material of the 'Detroit Guitar Band' ilk."

"We reissued 'Scorpio,'" continues Coffey, "and the next thing we knew it was Number 1 on Detroit radio."