Mink DeVille was a rock band founded in 1974, 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, after which it disbanded the next year. 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 bands were sometimes called "The Mink DeVille Band", an allusion to the earlier Mink Deville name.
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."This quote comes from the back cover of Mink DeVille's 1978 album Return to Magenta.
History
Early days in San Francisco Mink DeVille was formed in 1974 when singer Willy DeVille (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 on drums and Ritch Colbert on piano. When Lazy Ace broke up, DeVille, Allen, 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!"
Early 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 Cadillac 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 Deville 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 was nearby Stamford, Connecticut). "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 arrived in New York City several months later. 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 left the band and returned to California in 1977 and was replaced by Bobby Leonards (formerly of Tiffany Shade).
House band at CBGB From 1975 to 1977, Mink DeVille was one of the original house bands at CBGB, the New York City 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."Interviews on 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"DeVille may have been referring to these psychedelic bands: The Electric Prunes and Strawberry Alarm Clock.); 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 concerts or recordings for the nightclub. He told Music Street Journal: "The whole band only got $50 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.'"
The Capitol years The exposure eventually led to a record contract. In December 1976, Ben Edmonds (1950–2016), an A&R 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:
Working with Jack Nitzsche Mink DeVille recorded their debut album Cabretta (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 City 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 castanets; 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. The song went to No. 3 in the Netherlands. 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.
Recording Le Chat Bleu in Paris In 1979, Willy DeVille's love of art and French culture led him to relocate to Paris 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: