A guitar entered his life at the age of nine when the family moved to the suburb of Anacostia. The Strat? “No – the middle pickup gets in the way.” DC chargeīorn in September 1945 in Washington DC, Gatton came from a musical family: his father had played in a dance band while his mother Norma was a country music fan. A Les Paul? “Too many volume knobs, too many tone knobs, too much crap – plus you can’t bend the strings behind the nut,” Gatton opined. He chose the utilitarian Tele as his adult workhorse because it came with no preconceptions. Just as he’d often be found with his head under a car bonnet, he would hot-rod his guitars, starting with a 1956 Gibson ES-350 purchased for him by his father for $375 (Danny Senior was not amused). Gatton, whose love for cars ran parallel to his music, was a tinkerer who was fascinated by how things worked. Yet since his death in 1994 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of just 49, his reputation has continued to grow. He was dropped by Elektra Records two albums into a seven-disc deal precisely because his inability to limit himself stylistically (biographer Ralph Heibutzki called it ‘genre-hopping’) made his music tough to market in a category-obsessed business. Danny Gatton performing with Robert Gordon at The Ritz in New York City on 4 June 1981.
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