Underrated electric guitar hero Danny Gatton is set to be honored with Danny Gatton and Funhouse Live at the Holiday Inn 1987 – the first new music release linked to the late guitar great in nearly 20 years.
Captured in one of the most unlikely places for a live album, the record finds the underrated six-string slinger at his best, tearing through 11 jazz standards.
The performance has been fully remastered by revered engineer Greg Lukens (Rush, Nils Lofgren, The Kennedys), and showcases Gatton’s genre-bending talents and the sound of his iconic 1954 Gibson ES-295.
Though not half as championed as other players in his field, those familiar with Gatton’s work often deem him the best rockabilly guitar player in the world.
According to the album's accompanying liner notes, the guitarist was once a regular at D.C. venue Gallagher's, but was sacked for drawing in too many people each night. Waitresses are said to have struggled to wade through the crowds he attracted.
He first came to former Guitar Player scribe Dan Forte's attention in the late 1970s.
“For the annual Readers Poll, we got a slew of ballots listing someone named Danny Gatton in every category. Best Rock Guitarist, Best Country, Jazz, Steel, you name it – all coming from the D.C., Maryland, Virginia area,” he recalled.
“We figured it was some local yokel whose buddies were stuffing the ballot box, and of course, we tossed those votes. [Later] I discovered that those fans knew something we didn’t.”
When Forte eventually witnessed Gatton's talents in 1981, his set was “truncated when the fire department made the club owner cut Gordon off because the joint was double its capacity.” Word of mouth around Gatton was fierce, even if the wider world never quite fell for his chops.
And so the guitarist wound up playing a Holiday Inn during brunch nearly a decade after his shock love-in in the Guitar Player Reader's Poll. It was an opportunity for a guitarist who “couldn’t get the hillbilly out of my jazz” to play without a filter.
His take on Quincy Jones' Killer Joe is “like switching Jones’ original LP from 33 to 45 [RPM],” Forte says. Benny Goodman's A Smooth One features several “Gatton-ized” double-time choruses, and One For Lenny, serves as a homage to one of Gatton's greatest heroes, Lenny Breau.
Gatton-ites will recognize this performance from bootlegged YouTube videos. On one, a commenter waxes lyrical of the set, saying, Iit’s like walking in to a Walmart to see Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads politely sharing Hendrix riffs while you shop.”
But those recordings were blighted by technical faults.
“The source recording of Danny's performance was distorted due to the misalignment of the recording tape heads inside the video camera it was captured on,” Lukens explains.
“With that knowledge, our restoration team was able to take a targeted approach towards delivering the most immersive experience possible – which is something completely new for fans of Danny's who may have encountered this recording in untreated format.”
The album releases this Friday, August 29th, and will exclusively available from the Danny Gatton website.
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