Thanks for the comment, Eddie. He knew what the music business did to him and for him. "He was so talented you'd think his whole life would revolve around guitar, but it didn't," says Dave Elliott. Danny Gatton’s legacy is that he showed us that mastering your instrument is just part of being a great musician. I think Arlen fell in the second category. It was like someone frogmarched Chet Atkins, Jerry Reed, Merle Travis and a bunch of other guitar-playing 50s heavy hitters into Seth ‘The Fly’ Brundle’s Telepod. This is Danny Gatton in concert playing his Telecaster with a beer bottle and then later a kitchen towel: Here are Arlen and Danny playing together on Danny’s album “Toolin’ Around” — neither of them read music — and there is no doubt Danny is the better and swifter guitarist. Booking agent Patrick Day says he talked to Gatton "five times {on Tuesday} and there was just no clue. Gees, who cares how good he could play guitar at that point; that act shows a pretty messed up selfish person. Later in the evening, Gatton's wife, Jan, and daughter, Holly, returned from a school function and found Gatton somewhat agitated. On October 4, 1994, he locked himself in his garage and committed suicide by gunshot. Right! By Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), beer bottle and then later a kitchen towel, Bored by the Blues: Joe Bonamassa’s Black Country Communion Sin | Boles Blues. Receive mail from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors? Middle-aged, out of shape, with a 50s quiff, Gatton was an unlikely cover star and guitar hero circa 1989; hair metal was still doing brisk business that year. Please deactivate your ad blocker in order to see our subscription offer, (Image credit: Ebet Roberts / Getty Images). In a single paragraph, Steve Vai summed up everything that was remarkable, and tragic, about Danny Gatton. A years-in-the-making tribute to Danny Gatton and his distinctive sound finally hits the screen Gatton and Buchanan may never have achieved Eric Clapton … Ed Mitchell “I had a terrible time trying to get a major record deal, because I play so many different things,” he said. He did things that one shouldn't be able to do on guitar and he was learning to emote to meet his technique and that's what so sad, that we won't get a chance to hear that. Even by Gatton’s self-imposed high standards, this is breathtaking work. ", Brent Gatton said there was no particular incident that might have set his brother along the path he ended up taking. In March 1989, American magazine Guitar Player ran their now legendary ‘Unknown Greats’ cover feature. "No one. Cradled in his left arm was a beat-up ’53 Fender Telecaster. Such was Gatton’s impact that high praise arrived from even the most unexpected of quarters. You know that was a gruesome sight. Gatton always paid homage to the great guitar stylists who originally inspired him and ultimately joined them as inspiration to others. By the end of the piece, the message was clear: Danny Gatton – Jack of all trades, master of all. He left behind his own family for the sake of killing himself and did it at home for his own family to see their husband/daddy in a garage dead from a self induced gunshot wound. Tracking back to Vai’s tribute, Gatton was indeed a relentless tinkerer. Danny's whole approach didn't have anything to do with being a star -- he played for his soul and his guitar.

I think Danny just got worn down by life. In the mid-80s, guitar students would pass around a hissy bootleg tape of a 1981 gig Danny played with Robert Gordon and his band The Wildcats at the Berkeley Square nightclub in Berkeley, California. Gatton began playing at age nine, joining his first band, the Lancers, three years later. Sometime after 9 p.m., he left the farmhouse and, according to a source, said, "I can't take this anymore." No genre is out of bounds. He gave a fledgling Joe Bonamassa guitar lessons, too. Putting an obvious throwback like Danny Gatton on the cover of a magazine was a brave move. As a wise man once said, he comes closer that anyone else to being the best guitar player that ever lived. To give this some context, other Guitar Player cover stars featured that year included cats you recognised by a single name: Jimi, Keef, Satch, not to mention James and Kirk from Metallica. Previti had talked with Gatton on Tuesday and said he did not sound at all despondent. Perpetually torn between his two great loves, he eventually traded his ’53 Fender Telecaster for a ’36 Ford Coupe. "More than anything on this Earth, he loved Jan and Holly. ", For someone who had received so much acclaim, Gatton was burdened with a surprising sense of insecurity. He was a showman, a gunslinger… and he attracted attention. Why? All rights reserved. He brought tone back into fashion in an era far more concerned with technique and technology. The unknown great, the man in the mask, was a rockabilly guitar player from Washington DC named Danny Gatton. Those inspired to find out more should check out Ralph Heibutzki’s superbly researched Unfinished Business: The Life And Times Of Danny Gatton. Danny Gatton was one of the best and finest guitar players in the world.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Whether the switch was influenced by his fellow Telemaster Roy Buchanan is unclear. "We were drinking a couple of beers and talking about things in general, but when I left at around 6, he seemed fine," said Brent Gatton. When he returned to Washington, he drew attention in the 1970s as a member of Liz Meyer & Friends and other local bands. As Guitar Player had noted, Gatton was "so stylistically diffuse and so relentlessly virtuosic in styles that are usually mutually exclusive, that it may be off-putting to people to have so much coming at them so quickly. The unknown great, the man in the mask, was a rockabilly guitar player from Washington DC named Danny Gatton. Danny was so beloved by Fender that they created a special one-off Telecaster for him: That Danny Gatton guitar was a shining beacon in a dark world. His loss forever makes me sad but then as long as there’s his music he’s never far away. Friends and family were stunned by the sudden death of the internationally renowned musician, who was a longtime fixture on the Washington music scene.
… His roots were clearly in southern Maryland -- his family first settled there before the Revolutionary War -- and with his own family: his wife (to whom he'd been married for 26 years) and 13-year-old daughter. The set comprised a raft of 50s classics like Warren Smith’s Ubangi Stomp, Elvis’s Good Rockin’ Tonight and Eddie Cochran’s Twenty Flight Rock. the ‘player’s player’, a genius who mastered every genre he touched before tragically taking his own life. According to Chris Gill, an editor at Guitar Player magazine, Gatton was acclaimed for the diversity of instrumental styles he could excel in. If someone has diabetes one gets medical help…THIS is what DG required although he avoided it. The son of a rhythm guitarist, Gatton started playing at the age of nine. Middle-aged, out of shape, with a 50s quiff, Gatton was an unlikely cover star and guitar hero circa 1989; hair metal was still doing brisk business that year. Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. Robert Gordon was the star of the show, and he ran a tight ship. Danny was so beloved by Fender that they created a special one-off Telecaster for him: That Danny Gatton guitar was a shining beacon in a dark world. Unless you have verifiable proof of what you said, and you provide evidence of your real identity here, we can’t publish that sort of inflammatory statement.

“They say you gotta be characterised into one thing. ", "There was no single instrumentalist in any style, on any instrument, that did what he did," added Previti. After all, even Joe Pass, BB King and Eddie Van Halen aren’t expected to master every style. At Gatton's performances, other guitarists tended to crowd around the front of the stage in the hopes of getting a closer look at him working on his customized '53 Fender Telecaster. The opening paragraph of Dan Forte’s Guitar Player exposé of Danny Gatton made much of the now unmasked genius’s chameleonic abilities: “Imagine your all-time favourite mainstream jazz guitarist trying to perform a credible Johnny B Goode. I removed the last line of your comment about the reason for Danny’s suicide. I agree Arlen found a way to reinvent his love of the guitar while still increasing the shine of his talent. Danny Gatton, once described as "The World's Greatest Unknown Guitar Player," apparently committed suicide Tuesday evening at his farm in Newburg, Md.
One reason is that Gatton was slow to record, reluctant to travel and declined to move to such major music centers as New York, Nashville and Los Angeles, where he would have undoubtedly become a recording session superstar. Then, in October 1994, Danny Gatton threw away his life and rotted his talent by committing suicide with a gun in a locked garage. The point is, Steve Vai is about as far away from Danny Gatton in style and approach as it is possible to find – if Gatton was a 50s Ford, Vai was a flying saucer. Bath Wish he and Roy Buchanan were still alive…. Sorry but I just had to point out, that didn’t make a lot of sense…yeah it’d be nice to know what Danny’s sentiments were about that situation, but…how could Danny have possibly thought anything about Arlen’s loss, when it happened 3 years after his own demise? The magazine justified its editorial decision with the provocative line: “He’s been called the World’s Greatest Unknown Guitarist, but what famous guitarist could outplay him?” In an effort to drive the point home, the issue came with a floppy disc recording of Gatton blasting his way through the instrumental Nit Pickin’ [aka Nitpickin’], backed by upright bassist John Previti and drummer Dave Elliott. Obviously.

He'd tell me he had a hard time even facing the audience: 'They just look at me and I get nervous.' MANY people dont accept they have the condition and tend to self medicate with alcohol etc. I’m so glad we have YouTube videos of Danny in concert. Over a predominantly Sun Recordsesque rockabilly beat, Gatton unloads everything from rapid-fire Jimmy Bryant country jazz to Speedy West pedal-steel bends, melodic Les Paul-style runs and effects to sweet Lenny Breau harmonics and slide-driven blues.

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Even after all these years, Danny continued to come up with stuff I never heard before, and it was always amazing to me. There was fun Ren & Stimpy soundtrack-a-like stuff in there too.


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