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THE BiTS INTERVIEW: Denny Croy

Denny Croy is a proud sideman—he even uses the word as part of his email address.
Denny has recorded with a wide range of artists, including Lou Christie, Darlene Love,
Lesley Gore, Freddy ‘Boom Boom’ Cannon, Victoria Williams, Mickey Dolenz, The
Williams Bros., The Foremen, Big Daddy, Lawrence Lebo, Brian Setzer, Keb’ Mo’, and of
course, Doug MacLeod. He has appeared on the TV shows The Midnight Special, Mad
TV, The Tonight Show, and has played on several movie soundtracks.
Denny is the partner of BiTS correspondent and interviewer. Lawrence Lebo, with whom
he lives in Los Angeles.

Ian McKenzie spoke to him on the telephone at his home.

DC: Hello, Ian.

BiTS: Hello, Denny. How nice to speak to you.

DC: It’s a pleasure. How are you?

BiTS: Let’s make a start, shall we? Tell me something about
growing up. How did you get into music in the first place?

DC: How I got into music was, well, believe it or not, 1969 I had
a friend in junior high school who suggested to me, hey you want
to go see this guy Jimi Hendrix at The Forum and I said, yeah, I
think that’d be neat. I’m not really that familiar with him. I went
there and it just blew my mind. I had never seen anything like
that.

BiTS: So you started off by seeing Jimi Hendrix and was that an
inspiration to you?

DC: That was an extreme inspiration. I was there in the audience
and I saw this guy doing that and I said, you know what, I don’t
think I could be that guy there, but I would like to be around that
kind of environment? And so I had a younger brother who I knew
he could play drums because we had a neighbour who had a
drum set and I thought well, you know what, there’s a third guy
on the stage there? I think that’s what I’m going to do and sure
enough, a few months later my folks were kind enough to buy
me a bass and there it went. I just really got committed to playing
music.

BiTS: I guess that was an electric bass. Do you play a stand up?

DC: I play upright bass as well, yes. I had played electric bass for about a year or so and I had a
friend in high school who said, hey, you know what? You play pretty good. You should go to my
teacher, my friend played piano and his teacher was an electric and upright bass player and as
I took some lessons from him he said, you know what? You could probably play the upright bass.

Why don’t you try it? And I did and there we go. That was yet another voice that just seemed to
speak to me.