Clyde McCoy

Clyde McCoy was a famous big band trumpet player known for his muting technique¹. He was a jazz trumpeter whose 1931 hit Sugar Blues popularized the wah-wah sound, the crying, vocal tone a trumpet makes when a player flutters a mute in the bell of the horn². By the mid-1960s his name was famous enough that a guitar company wanted it on a new effect, and in 1967 the first wah pedal ever sold to the guitar-playing public carried his name: the Vox Clyde McCoy Wah Wah³⁴.

The odd part of the story, and the reason players still ask about him, is that McCoy had nothing to do with the pedal other than lending his name to it⁴. He never used a Vox pedal⁵. He was a trumpet player, not a guitarist, and his place in guitar history rests entirely on an endorsement deal.

Who Clyde McCoy was

McCoy was a famous jazz trumpeter⁶, a big band player whose identity as a musician was built around the mute. Premier Guitar describes him plainly: "Clyde McCoy was a famous big band trumpet player who was known for his muting technique"¹. Guitar World's Nick Wells makes the same point in guitar terms: "Clyde McCoy was a trumpet player, well known for his use of the mute to create wah'd effects"⁷.

His most lasting musical contribution was the 1931 recording Sugar Blues. GuitarPCB's technical analysis of the Vox wah circuit notes the pedal was "called The Clyde McCoy Wah-Wah model after the famous trumpet player whose 1931 hit Sugar Blues popularized the Wah-Wah sound"². That record is what tied his name to the word "wah-wah" decades before the pedal existed.

How his name ended up on a Vox wah pedal

The wah pedal was born inside Vox's amplifier business. RockBoard's PedalPedia entry for the modern Real McCoy reissue explains the lineage: "Introduced by VOX in 1967, the Wah-Wah pedal stemmed from the Midrange Boost feature of a VOX amp design and was initially marketed as a way to emulate Clyde McCoy's trumpet mute technique"⁸. Vox's own history page tells the same story from the company side: the circuit came out of an amp feature, and the pedal "was released in 1967 with an image of Clyde McCoy on the bottom of the pedal"⁶.

The choice of McCoy as the face of the product was a marketing decision aimed at instruments other than guitar. Vox's history records that the Continental Organ Company, Vox's US distributor, "thought the Wah might work better if marketed for woodwind instruments, which was why Clyde McCoy, a famous jazz trumpeter, was used for the marketing of the new pedal"⁶. Stompbox Book's history of the Cry Baby adds that company officials initially wanted to market the pedal for keyboards, "until wiser voices chimed in that it should be aimed at guitarists"⁴.

Then came the phone call. Gearnews' history of the pedal describes it simply: "He gave Clyde a call, asked him if he could use his name on the pedal, and that's about all there is to that connection"⁹. JHS Pedals' history of the wah gives the figure behind that call: "The suits at Vox called Clyde McCoy and offered him 500 bucks (which translates to roughly $3,500 today) to put his face on the back plate of the pedal, and the first ever production models were called the Clyde McCoy Wah Wah"⁵. Guitar.com's Huw Price puts the same deal in one line: "Trumpeter Clyde McCoy was subsequently offered $500 to endorse a wah pedal he had never used, and the earliest US-manufactured Vox wah carried McCoy's likeness on the baseplate"¹⁰.

The pedal itself was built on familiar hardware. Guitar.com's Simon Bradley notes that "taking the chassis of a volume pedal as a starting point, members of the design team duly obliged and the now-legendary Clyde McCoy Wah was introduced"¹². Bradley's review also records one version of the origin, describing the first commercial wah as "a collaboration between Vox and a noted jazz trumpeter named Clyde McCoy, who'd approached the company to produce something that mimicked the tone of a muted brass instrument and could be used with a keyboard"¹², though other histories describe McCoy's involvement as limited to the paid endorsement⁴⁹.

The endorsement in brief

• Vox released the wah pedal in 1967, with McCoy's image on the bottom of the pedal⁶.
• The US distributor thought the effect would sell better marketed to woodwind players, which is why a trumpeter was chosen⁶.
• McCoy was offered $500 to endorse the pedal¹⁰.
• He had never used the pedal and had no part in its design⁴¹⁰.
• The earliest versions carried his likeness on the baseplate; later ones had just his signature¹³.

What the Clyde McCoy wah pedal does

The pedal named after McCoy is a wah pedal: a foot-operated treadle that sweeps a resonant filter across the instrument's frequency range, producing the vocal "wah" sound. Vintage Guitar's Phil Feser explains what the designers were chasing: "The 'Clyde wah,' you'll recall, was designed to help guitar players sound something like a trumpet player manipulating a mute on their horn"¹⁴. Delicious Audio describes the original circuit the same way, noting it "strove to emulate McCoy's ability to make his trumpet cry in a 'wah-wah' sound by fluttering his playing with a mute in the bell of his instrument"¹⁵.

Despite the trumpet-inspired marketing, the pedal found its audience among guitarists. Guitar.com's NAMM 2024 coverage of Vox's reissues notes that "initially created to emulate Clyde McCoy's trumpet mute technique, the pedal quickly gained popularity for its use with an electric guitar"¹⁶. The Clyde McCoy Wah was the very first wah wah pedal available to the guitar playing public³, and Guitar World's review of Dunlop's later tribute calls it "the very first production wah pedals"¹⁷.

The original late-1960s pedals are now among the most sought-after vintage effects. Vintage Guitar's review of the Fulltone Clyde describes them: "The original Vox Clyde McCoy wah pedals of the late 1960s are high on the list of soughtafter vintage effects"¹⁸. Collectors distinguish two versions: the "picture" wah, with Clyde's picture on the bottom, and the "signature" wah, with no picture and Clyde's name in italics¹⁸. Analog Man's wah authority Geoffrey Teese, asked in an interview what the finest stock pedal is, answered: "The old Clyde McCoy"¹⁹.

The name's afterlife in modern pedals

McCoy's name has outlived the original pedal by decades, reappearing on a series of tributes and reissues from several makers.

Dunlop's connection is the most direct. The company's product page states: "Years ago, we inherited the original tooling and machinery used to design and manufacture the first Clyde McCoy pedals from the Thomas Organ Company and Jen Electronica"²⁰. The CM95 manual calls the pedal "a tribute to the first production wah wah ever made"¹¹, and the product page describes it as capturing "the throaty, expressive sound of the original wah pedal, featuring a Halo Inductor and thru-hole components with a premium pot, switch, and jacks"²⁰. Operation follows the classic wah pattern: "Push the toe of the pedal down until you feel a 'click' to turn the pedal on/off"¹¹. Dunlop's history of the Cry Baby line says the Clyde McCoy tribute "synthesizes more than 30 years of Cry Baby engineering to bring modern quality and reliability to the classic Halo inductor sound of the coveted original"²⁴, and later units added an AC jack for pedalboard convenience³.

Guitar World's review of the Dunlop Clyde McCoy Cry Baby Wah Wah found the company had gone deep to get the sound right, noting the pedal "resurrects this esteemed pedal by duplicating the original Cry Baby sound to the nth degree, while improving the design with modern features and performance"¹⁷.

The wider wah market still measures itself against the 1967 original. MusicPlayers' review of the Voodoo Lab Wahzoo calls the Clyde McCoy "the original holy-grail of wah pedals" to which all wah pedals owe their existence²⁵, and Gearnews' buying guide notes that "the earliest models were marketed under the Clyde McCoy name before morphing into the designs we know today, like the Cry Baby"²⁶. MusicRadar's Cry Baby documentary coverage lists the wah among effects "evolved by Thomas Organ, Vox and Clyde McCoy"²⁷.

Why the story sticks

Part of what keeps the Clyde McCoy story alive among players is exactly how strange it is. JHS Pedals' history of the wah makes the point directly: "The Vox Clyde McCoy Wah Wah is technically the first ever signature guitar pedal ever made, which is bonkers since Clyde McCoy never used a Vox pedal"⁵. Josh of JHS puts it another way in the same series: "the first Vox Wah pedals were named after trumpet player Clyde McCoy, though a guitar pedal named after a trumpet player is admittedly a little weird"²⁸.

So the answer to the question most players arrive with is a simple one. McCoy was a trumpeter, paid $500 for an endorsement of a pedal he never played¹⁰. His muting technique gave the effect its name and its original marketing pitch⁸¹⁴, and his face and signature on the baseplate of the earliest units¹³ are now marks that collectors use to identify the first wah pedals ever made³. Everything else about the wah's development belongs to Vox, the Thomas Organ Company, and the guitarists who picked the pedal up after him.

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