Danny Gatton

Bob-Dubery

One of the great unknowns, one of those players where there is a large gap between commercial profile and musical ability. To me his playing sounds like the bastard offspring of jazz and rock-a-billy. The guy had chops to burn.

Part two is here

singemonkey

I did a little experiment, listening to all the virtuoso guitar players I could find on youtube. While Vai, Malmsteen, and Satriani did nothing for me at all, Danny Gatton really made me smile. Just an insanely skilled guitar player, and an interesting one too.

But realising the versatility of hybrid picking with all fingers has left me with a slightly heavy heart - like thinking you're home and then finding the trail is 5km longer than you thought. My pinky on my picking hand is so absurdly weak. But there's no doubt that picking his way is the single most versatile approach there is.

I guess he's not as popular as the metal/fusion style virtuoso guitarists. Kids probably find the redneck vibe a little harder to swallow.

Bob-Dubery

singemonkey wrote: But realising the versatility of hybrid picking with all fingers has left me with a slightly heavy heart - like thinking you're home and then finding the trail is 5km longer than you thought. My pinky on my picking hand is so absurdly weak. But there's no doubt that picking his way is the single most versatile approach there is.

I don't think the pinky comes into play. Richard Thompson, who plays hybrid 95% of the time doesn't use his. I doubt anybody does unless the pinky is unusually long relative to the others. You could do what Chet Atkins does and use a thumb pick with index, middle and ring fingers. But then you don't get the upstrokes with the pick, unless you re-assign your index finger.

I'm practicing it. Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage" is a handy practice piece. I think the real trick, and it's what all the best guys have mastered, is to integrate completely into your playing. Watch close ups of Thompson soloing, you'll see him switch between pick, pick-and-fingers, and just fingers. Sometimes he will use the pick to set up a drone or simple bass line and play the actual solo with ring and middle fingers. But it looks like he's got that all happening automatically now. Poor saps like me have to think about it all the time.

Jerry Donohue is another guy who uses this technique. Knopfler has a variation on it. Quite a lot of country players use this to varying degrees. James Burton has a regular pick held the regular way and a pick like a pedal steel player would use on his middle finger.

I guess he's not as popular as the metal/fusion style virtuoso guitarists. Kids probably find the redneck vibe a little harder to swallow.

Well I think he's in danger of being forgotten. He was one of those guys who was well regarded by his peers but the man in the street knew little about. Wasn't the first and won't be the last. He'll fade away into obscurity - a fate that, I think, awaits the majority of guitar players. It's just that the people who knew of him and/or saw him are now mostly either dead or on the wrong side of 50. The same fate may be awaiting, say, Guthrie Govan in 30 or 40 years time.

Memories of Roy Buchanan, a contemporary of Gatton's and also a fab player who was a little better known, are also slipping away now.

singemonkey

That's the thing though. Not using a thumb pick, you only have two fingers of the normal three left. Look at Gatton closely, you'll see he puts one back by employing the pinky. The thumb-pick is really easy and nice, but not so hot for switching to picked single note lines. But Gatton gets the best of both worlds. He's playing with the pick but still has three fingers over.

In some ways I think people like him are in less danger than some people who've made it really big, and then sink into oblivion. Gatton will always be a source for people interested in a certain kind of music - a cult figure. I don't want to compare him to Robert Johnson because Johnson was an astonishing song-writer as well as a magic guitar player, but it's similar in the way that they inspire the people who make the music that a lot of others listen to.

Bob-Dubery

singemonkey wrote: That's the thing though. Not using a thumb pick, you only have two fingers of the normal three left. Look at Gatton closely, you'll see he puts one back by employing the pinky. The thumb-pick is really easy and nice, but not so hot for switching to picked single note lines. But Gatton gets the best of both worlds. He's playing with the pick but still has three fingers over.

I need to find some more clips then. You can't see much of his right hand in the one that I've posted.

In some ways I think people like him are in less danger than some people who've made it really big, and then sink into oblivion. Gatton will always be a source for people interested in a certain kind of music - a cult figure. I don't want to compare him to Robert Johnson because Johnson was an astonishing song-writer as well as a magic guitar player, but it's similar in the way that they inspire the people who make the music that a lot of others listen to.

The thing is that at some point the record companies will stop issuing his stuff. A big factor in Nick Drake's late popularity was that when Joe Boyd sold his label to Island he put a clause in the contract to the effect that Island could never drop Drake's albums from their catalog. (That clause apparently still applies after Chris Blackwell sold Island to Sony-BMG.) So when the world finally started turning on to Drake (because of the use of one of his songs in a VW advert) the albums were available and nobody had to do a lot of tracking down.

OK... so we have the Internet now and MP3s will be doing the rounds. So maybe that will help to preserve some memories (as long as MP3s get recoded into MP99 or whatever else comes along).

Bob-Dubery

Well I found this instructional clip

Haven't got to the end of it yet, but just the introduction had me holding onto my jaw.

Bob-Dubery

And part two of the instructional clip

So cool. You get all of Danny's tricks in about 10 minutes.

Yeah right.

singemonkey

X-rated Bob wrote: OK... so we have the Internet now and MP3s will be doing the rounds. So maybe that will help to preserve some memories (as long as MP3s get recoded into MP99 or whatever else comes along).

It's the sharing that will do it. It's not just a case of people having ancient mp3s. People will have CDs and Vinyl that they'll share at the highest resolution. I predict that CD audio quality files will be shared as frequently as mp3s are now within eight years.

If people like it it will survive. Hell, people will still be sharing obscure Hawaiian lap-steel guitarists way more obscure than Danny Gatton.

singemonkey

Holy crap...

And I was just busy trying to work out how to play "Mystery Train," as it happens, so this is a real score. It just didn't occur to me that you could do it without the echo ???

I did once here Chet Atkins do that. He didn't realise Les Paul had this device, so he assumed he was playing all the echoed parts - worked his ass off to learn to play it, then got a shock when he realised it was an echo device. But amazingly, he'd learned to do it.

Was I mistaken about the pinky? It seems maybe I was. Those rolls are a really interesting technique.

Bob-Dubery

singemonkey wrote: Was I mistaken about the pinky? It seems maybe I was. Those rolls are a really interesting technique.

A lot of the time the pinky is moving in time with the other fingers but doing nothing. Same happens with Richard Thompson.

But Gatton does use it occasionally to pluck a chord. But it's just that, not picking. Even so... it takes a lot of work and skill to integrate that into your playing.