Just to put a coda on our little discussion of the relative merits of Stevie Ray Vaughan the other day --
Here's Danny Gatton, sometime in the early 90s, just fooling around.
When the video runs out, after about six minutes, he still hasn't run out of ideas.
Gatton departed this world by blowing his brains out, for reasons that apparently remain mysterious. Also mysterious, at least to me, is how any guitarist can watch the above and not want to do the same.
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Breaks my heart anytime I hear or especially watch one of the many videos of Danny. What's also depressing is that, of course a great talent, he wiped himself off the face of the earth by his own hands. Unbelievable! Oh well, human nature, go figure.
I thought I had read somewhere that, according to Gatton's mother, who I think was his manager, he was growing more and more despondent over having to play supermarket parking lots and car dealership openings so late in his career, and so soon after his major label debut received such accolades.
Still, no reason to blow your brains out. Or at least not as good of a reason as say, listening to The National.
One of my favorite clips on the whole internext.
My students are constantly talking about SVR. For teenagers today he's the only name anybody knows in blues. I always felt he just hit the lottery. You do that by being quite good at something that's very easy to define because it's been done many times before and you're not doing anything to change it or make it grow. So unimaginative people know what to say when they write about you. It's... blues.
My old guitar teacher knew Gatton personally. As he put it, Gatton was a master at blues, country and jazz and you often got all three in the same solo. Case in point here.
This clip is insane. What a shame. And to think of all the shopworn blues hacks without a tenth of Danny's innate skill who made millions. (Mr. Clapton, I'm looking at you.) Sigh.
I was spending a week at the beach in Ocean City, MD in the early 90s and he just happened to be playing down the road. He had that icepick tele tone, my ears rang for days, but I didn't mind.
That lick he plays around 2:10 makes me dizzy.
He was known for playing LOUDLY.
I was too busy earlier making my snide little comment about The National to say how much this clip blew my mind.
I am planning to spend the next month learning the little descending chordal figures he plays coming out of the first or second verse.
I'm not guaranteeing my success, I should add.
OK, maybe I'm being a little heretical here...
but if I asked a guitar genius if he could play like Danny Gatton, could he?
I mean, you could ask Danny Gatton to play like Jimi Hendrix or Wes Montgomery or Speedy West or Richard Thompson or Charlie Christian or Neil Young or whomever and he could turn out an amazing facsimile. From what I've been able to hear from him (and I'm not a guitarist, so I could well be totally wrong), aside from his mind-bending technique, there's just not that much "there" there.
If by "there" you mean a style so utterly personal and idiosyncratic that you could tell who it was almost instantly, like some of the players you referenced?
Maybe not. In the case of playing this inventive and accomplished, however, I don't see that as a problem.
Woody Herman heard Mr. Gatton play one night and offered him a job on the spot but Danny didn't want to go on the road. Oh, and there's plenty of "there" there.
Neil Young? are you fucking serious? I love Neil but come on.
there's a great Danny Gatton book and the consensus is that he felt getting signed to a major label after laboring in the shadows for so long would be the answer to his prayers. Of course it wasn't.
Saw Danny Gatton several times at the old Lonestar Cafe on 13th and 5th. He was always amazing and lots of fun.
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