The Steel Guitar Forum

Danny Gatton on an Emmons. Don't know what the Jack on the key head side is for...
9 pedals and his Les Paul is in his lap.

IMAGE REMOVED by b0b

He's using a flatpick...

Danny played flatpick and fingers on everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7kXyVkzBHo

Wow, great picture!

I recall in one of Danny's videos he mentioned that he "used to be a steel player". Anybody know of any recordings of his steel playing?

I can tell you one thing... He was absolutely the best I've ever seen at playing "slide guitar" (lead guitar with a slide). In that same video, he draped a glass Alka Seltzer bottle over the top of the neck and played some very fast single note lines that rivaled some of my favorite non-pedal players. I would love to hear what he was able to do on an "actual" steel guitar!

There is one cut of his steel playing an "Unfinished Business". I forget the name of the song, but it's there.

Danny was my favorite guitar player of all time; right up with Roy.

Here's Danny playing a little slide guitar with a Heineken beer bottle...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AZo0u3HoV4

Danny was my favorite! When I heard Elmira Street, I was profoundly embarrassed by my laziness. I sat down and started leaning songs on that cd. Elmira Street Boogie is a complete compendium of Rockabilly. Learn it!

That's a great CD, John. My second favorite is Danny's "Cruisin' Dueces" CD with Harlem Nocturne, Sky King, and the Sun Medley. What a fantastic guitar player...RIP Danny.

Here's a live version of Harlem Nocturne
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_2D7p2zYfQ

Yeah, John. Glad you mentioned Elmira St. That's my favorite Gatton album also. I feel like his playing relaxed and matured, and i like his tune selection. What a great talent. Part of that DC scene.

SKY KING
I play it bottleneck.

I love the two Redneck Jazz Explosion live albums. The way he and Buddy Emmons play off of each other is like Leon Rhodes & Buddy Charleton on steroids!

Danny's improvisation was simply never-ending. That guy could just play and play and almost never repeat a lick!

Rich Upright wrote:There is one cut of his steel playing an "Unfinished Business". I forget the name of the song, but it's there.

Was it "Lappin' It Up"?? I always liked that and "Homage To Charlie Christian".

Here are some Danny steel cuts:

Sax Fifth Avenue and Sailing On (1976, Redneck Jazz) - I believe this is a pedal steel

Lappin' it Up (1987, Unfinished Business) - 50's Champ steel

Tragedy (1993, Cruisin Deuces) - National D8

Little Jonah (1980's, "Runnin Wild" LP by Leslee "Bird" Anderson)- sounds like a 50's Fender lap steel to me

One day I took my tele over to his house, as he was gonna refret it. Just as soon as I got there he said: I want to show you something. We went into the spare room, as he was real excited and said "look what Buddy just sent me"! Sitting there was a REAL NICE D10 Emmons. He sat down to it, with a teardrop flatpick, and told me "I can't really play it yet", then knocked out a killer up the neck run that blew me away! I just said "can't play it huh"! Right!
Knowing Danny, that was't much to him, but to me it was amazing!
This was after the photo here, as he was playing his tele by then.
Oh, and of course the fret job was the best!
We all still miss him!
Pat

I remember the first time I saw Danny play, with Liz Meyer at Woodlawn School in Arlington, VA, sometime in 1973 I think. I had picked up my first PSG a few months before, and had figured out a thing or two, but here is this guy tearing it up playing badass steel licks all night long, on a telecaster with no whammy bar. Gave me a complex for a while that did...

Thanks Pat, it's been a long time gone...

I clicked on youtube for elmira and about the 6th-7th picture is Danny with Bill Kirchen (Commander Cody) in the background.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSwsiD4cVH4

Hey Dave,
He was with Liz Meyer & Friends.
Pat

Jeff Harbour wrote:... I would love to hear what he was able to do on an "actual" steel guitar!

Jeff, from Danny's Cruisin' Dueces album, I believe he plays some steel on his instrumental adaptation of the 1959 Thomas Wayne recording, "Tragedy".

Listen for his nod to Emmons' "Night Life" intro at about 2:42:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkWFk0-R5v0

Keep on pickin'
Glenn

One of my favorite Gatton cuts comes from his duet album, Relentless with B3 maestro, Joey DeFrancesco: Thelonious Monk's "Well You Needn't"

Check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeOfhuT_kc0

Keep on pickin'
Glenn

A long, long time ago I attended a Jeff Newman/Buddy Emmons seminar in Grand Rapids MI. During the question/answer portion I asked Buddy, of all the great guitarists he'd played and recorded with, which ones did he think were really something.

He thought a bit, said he had played with many, but that a "guy named Danny Gatton" was pretty good on 6-string. He then told a story about doing a gig with him in Redneck Jazz Explosion. Seems they were going back and forth endlessly matching each others' licks during a tune. Gatton was tearing it up (I'm sure Buddy was, too.) Then, after repeating a Danny lick, Buddy looked up and saw Danny standing there with his arms folded across his chest, even though another Tele lick was being played! Buddy said he lost it at that point. Seems Gatton had used his Echoplex to record the lick just moments before.

Skip Edwards wrote:He's using a flatpick...

When I was around watching Rose Maddox cut her album on Takoma Records in 1978, I met Wayne Gailey, who Rose brought from Albuquerque specifically to paly steel on her album. She could have had an pedal steeler in the LA area, but she wanted Wayne. He had played with a lot of Bakersfield bands, and he was a master of West Coast steel. He played some incredible Mooney-like solos using a flat pick. He told me that he lived in New Mexico because he hated the life style in LA and also life on the road. I wonder what became of him?

I have this wierd feeling that if he had hung on long enough for the internet he might've had a better time of it. A lot of what he did was labled "self-destructive" and surely the drinking was, but he liked to sleep in HIS bed in HIS home with HIS wife - and that's "wrong" careerwise. So he ended up sitting around his garage with his buddies saying "I'm the greatest!" and they say "You're the greatest!" - and hair-band guitarists are millionaires...

Perhaps instructively(?), shortly after he died somebody was putting together a "Danny Gatton tribute" show, ostensibly for his daughter's college fund. They had Albert Lee and James Burton and Bill Kirchin and Warren Haynes etc etc.; but the only one who could actually PLAY THE LICKS was Scotty Anderson. WE may know about him, but out in the real world it's an even bigger WHO-DAT??? Well, he's the guy from Kentucky who lives in Cincinnati AND: he likes to sleep in HIS bed in HIS home with HIS wife. So career-wise it's pretty much the same story, except substitute "God" for "beer" so he's still with us. Teaching guitar via "Skype", but I have NO idea what I could ask him that would make any difference!

"Beer" didn't kill Danny.......so please stop making those kind of unfounded, unfair insinuations.

Jim Fogarty wrote:"Beer" didn't kill Danny.......so please stop making those kind of unfounded, unfair insinuations.

I agree!

I really enjoyed this mini-documentary on Danny G. I never got a chance to meet him but I know he would have been an extremely cool guy to have as a neighbor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbNKMlrkHMc