Danny Gatton: World’s Greatest Unknown Guitarist

More than a guitarist, Danny Gatton was a one-of-a-kind instrumentalist. Refusing to conform to the star-making norm hoisted upon him and even detesting categories and genres that would make it easy to find him, Gatton simply played everything.

His unique gifts are now on view in The Humbler – Danny Gatton, a documentary that brings together not only the people who he touched but examines how his art and style can reverberate out and influence a generation since his untimely death in 1994.

Director Virginia Quesada spans 30 years and showcases her interview with Gatton that grounds the basis for his life story. His enthusiasm for vintage car restoration is but one of the sides that the press labeled “The World’s Greatest Unknown Guitar Player” and adds poignancy and pain in his unique approach to performing and recording.

The ongoing debate, back and forth during his lifetime, was couched in his outlier status. Born in 1945 and growing up in Washington, D.C., his talent sprang from his musician father and the melting pot for the genres that coalesced around him. Even tunes that weren’t yet formed on the guitar caught the young Gatton, as he stuck his arm out of his parents’ 1956 Victoria, thrumming the chrome panel to some imaginative backbeat only he knew.

He started on the banjo with its simpler chords, became a sheet metal worker, and married his wife Jan at 21. As someone continually tearing apart cars coupled with a growing love of the guitar, he became known to locals as someone who could also fix up instruments. This fed into his knowledge of the D.C. music scene, and after quitting his day job he played in his first group The Offbeats from 1960-64. Former Jefferson Airplane member Jack Casady (a Washington, D.C. native) recalls in the doc, Gatton could “pick apart genres to make his own.”

Getting his foot in the door in Nashville proved revelatory, even without him being aware of how he was turning heads in the bigger world of pop music. The Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian saw Gatton play in the bar basement at a local Holiday Inn and was flabbergasted at his guitar virtuosity. Very soon after, he composed “Nashville Cats,” inspired by what he heard and saw that night.

Gatton’s musical influences, Scotty Moore and Les Paul, heavily leaned to his choice of the Gibson guitar. Yet Gatton was taken with Roy Buchanan’s work on the Fender Telecaster and decided he’d build his own, saying in the film, “I’d find ways to make it better. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.”

However, Gatton was able to meet the legendary Paul in 1974 at D.C.’s Cellar Door and was overtaken with the emotional high, watching his hero onstage, that “I was falling off of my stool.” His band Danny Gatton and The Fat Boys released their debut American Music in 1975 and then in 1978 his own band released Redneck Jazz on the NRG label, started by his parents. Both albums were not spectacular sellers outside the D.C. region as Gatton defied the labels of what was jazz, country, or rockabilly. He wanted to do everything all the time.

Gatton was still upgrading and repairing guitars for locals, most unaware of his prowess or reach as a musician, so low was his profile. But in 1979, he put his right hand through a window, severing tendons so badly it would take a year for him to convalesce. His solace was the birth of his daughter Holly Anne in October of that year.

During 1981, Gatton went ‘back to basics,’ picking up the Telecaster and playing with Grammy and Tony-award-winning superstar Roger Miller. Of this iteration in his performing career, Gatton admitted that it “felt like family.” But touring was difficult on his wife and daughter – “road-fried” as he called it – and in June of that year, his close friend Dick Heintze died at 42 from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

The uncovering of a suicide attempt by Jan put a stop to playing, as he spent the next year under the radar, building hot rods at his Maryland home. While he considered retirement, by 1983 he made the decision to start performing again, as Jan succinctly put it in the film, “It seemed he wanted to get away from the music and yet, he couldn’t.”

His life appeared on the upswing when he purchased a farm in 1988 and started to recognize his influence on other up-and-comers by inviting a 12-year-old guitar sensation named Joe Bonamassa onstage to play his ‘53 Telecaster, a milestone that Bonnamassa never forgot in later years and is preserved for posterity in the film.

Surprisingly, he had decided he was ready to get serious and focus on making a name for himself. That included an auspicious performance on the daytime drama The Guiding Light, sitting down for an extensive interview with CBS News and after all his hard work, was signed to a seven-album deal with Elektra Records that culminated in the 1991 Grammy-nominated 88 Elmira St.

That kind of mainstream exposure fueled a non-stop schedule of performances, working with Vince Gill, Albert Lee, and Delbert McClinton and the release of Cruisin’ Deuces in 1993. However, it wasn’t enough of an impact on the record-buying public, and he was dropped from Elektra.

1994 didn’t start off well for Gatton, as word reached him that his vocalist, rhythm guitarist and right-hand man Billy Windsor died of a heart attack in early January. As Jan noted with sorrow in the film, “Things were really never the same after that.” Gatton had returned to session work to pay the bills to cover renovating his farm and restoring his cars and released a jazz-inspired album Relentless with multi-instrumentalist Joey DeFrancesco in February.

His guitar playing became erratic that summer, as he noticed that his left side was going numb. Gatton was having a series of small strokes that left him unable to play the music he loved and as one who cared for him, Jan revealed that during his last gig, he “faked it.”

The guitarist who was coined “The Humbler” and “The Telemaster” retreated to the garage on his farm in Newburg, Maryland where on October 4, he died by suicide from a gunshot. He was 49.Gatton played outside the box and was brave enough to work in any genre and quite rightly make it his own. In The Humbler – Danny Gatton, Albert Lee enthused “He took it to another level.” His infectious joy of playing continue to inspire musicians and fans alike and as Jan poignantly recalled, “He should be remembered as someone who never held back.”

-Amy Hughes

Fair use image from The Humbler