Dennis The Fox

In an effort to score a record deal he cut an album's worth of tunes that represented the full range of his abilities – songs that touched on the rock, psych, soul, funk, country and pop genres.

In the meantime, whole new generations of music fans, vintage vinyl collectors – and eventually hip-hop DJs – discovered that old Mothertrucker album and found some of the funk grooves to be phat.

The original Mothertrucker album has become a valuable and highly sought-after collector's item, and was finally reissued on vinyl by Modern Harmonic records in 2017.

Caldirola started learning piano in first grade, and later while in high school in the summer of 1964 he helped form a band, the Rum Runners, that played teen dances around town, and fabled rooms including Parker's Ballroom and the Lake Hills Roller Rink.

“To our dismay,” the songwriter once recalled, “the record labels found the material ‘too versatile’ for their marketing purposes.” [2] Three months passed by, the guys ran out of money, and they necessarily returned home to Seattle.

They ordered 1,000 units from a pressing plant, and also arranged to have a similar number of cardboard jackets – which included this bold declaration: “If We Told You The Biggest Rockstar Of The Mid-70’s Would Be This Four-Eyed Italian From Seattle, Washington, You’d Laugh Your Ass Off.

Then they loaded the finished product into the trunk of a car and took the LPs around to several local record shops that accepted small quantities on a consignment basis.

Mothertrucker boasted eye-grabbing post-Psychedelic Era artwork created by Seattle's Robert Barbarus and a dozen songs featuring lyrical themes that precluded any hope of being embraced by mainstream radio.

Among the following dozen songs, Caldirola takes listeners on a mind-boggling tour of a landscape that includes vivid plotlines, sketchy characters including a mean man-eating truck-driving woman and plenty of pearls of worldly wisdom like: “When it comes to really livin’, you're just somewhere in between, there's a high-steppin’ side-steppin’ life outside, you ain’t never seen.” The songs that comprise Mothertrucker offer daring listeners an instructive glimpse into that very world.

A list of notable highlights from this period would include his time in 1976 playing keyboards with a revived first generation local band, Tiny Tony & the Statics.

Then, between 1979 and 1981, Caldirola hooked up with Thom Bell – the esteemed Philadelphia-based producer who a long track record of scoring hits for the likes of the Delfonics, Dionne Warwick, and the Stylistics.

Bell had recently relocated to Seattle where he began working out of the town’s best studio, Kaye Smith, cutting tracks there with artists including Elton John and the Spinners.

8) which featured an essay by funk music expert Dante Carfagna titled “Left-Field Americana: Private Press LPs” that included coverage of Mothertrucker.

Dante Carfagna began by riffing humorously on the tragic topic of Elvis impersonators and how so many guys are seemingly born with that “crippling affliction.” Then, before doling out crumbs of praise, Carfagna proceeds to insulting Caldirola's full mature voice – not to mention his Disco Era tonsorial and sartorial splendor – “a twenty-something Seattle native and judging by the picture on the back of the LP, surely the ‘Fox’ part of his name doesn’t come from his average looks.

He just happened to make an album that sounds as if some seedy weirdo Northwestern biker dreg made it on his way to the pen.” [7] Taking it at least a step or two further, Paul Major, simply raved: “Utterly dark and sleazy lowlife nirvana!

Like seeing God in a burst condom stuck to the tailpipe of a rusty pimpmobile, finding out Jesus stole your mama, looking for the meaning of life in a puke pile by a truckstop motel … kinda scary how real this dude is!

Totally fucked up sense of humour...If psychedelia smelled like the little bed-chamber in a long-haul semi-trailer truck loaded with a shipment of Trojans for the sleaziest whorehouse in town ... you'd get some of the music, but it's probably just another layer of illusion Dennis is screwing about with, tons of hot guitar, organ, sax, sex, trashy femme vocal accents, astonishing delivery of lyrics from a zone twilight never leaves.