Page 25 - BiTS_01_JANUARY_2025

Gate made his final recordings for Peacock in 1960, and, true to form, he came up

with something different. Three of those songs featured him playing violin; one of
them being the classic ‘Just Before Dawn’, which is now thought to be about the
earliest example of ‘fusion’ music, ten years or so before the style became more
widely known.

He left Peacock after a massive ‘falling out’ with Don Robey, and Gate mentioned in
some later interviews that Robey’s business connections rendered it almost
impossible for him to work as a musician

for much of the 60s. Bizarrely, at one
point this resulted in him obtaining a job
as a deputy sheriff in San Juan County,

New Mexico for a while, at the end of the
1960s.

Prior to that he had moved to Nashville,

and found work leading the house band
for the R&B television show ‘The Beat’,
which was hosted by the eccentric DJ
Hoss Allen. I have a wonderful DVD of

Freddy King’s 1966 appearances on The
Beat, with Gate fronting the house band,
and even doing a little guitar duelling

with Freddy.

After the difficulties of the 1960s his
career was revived through appearances
Don Robey
in Europe, where there was a growing

interest in blues music, initially in France
for a tour in early 1971, and subsequently
for further tours of Europe, almost a dozen in total. During those tours he also

returned to recording, producing 9 albums. The best cuts from three of those albums
were released on the Alligator label as “Pressure Cooker”, which received a Grammy
nomination for the best blues recording in 1986.

In the late 1970s Gate moved to New Orleans, and signed with a new manager, Jim

Bateman, and his Real Records production company. He felt comfortable enough at
this point to return closer to his blues roots. Incredibly, it took until 1978 for his first
American album to be released - “Blackjack” on the Music is Medicine label.

A subsequent appearance on the prestigious TV show Austin City Limits resulted in
him returning to touring in the US, and in 1979 he recorded an album (on MCA) with
country singer Roy Clark, called “Makin’ Music”. Interest in the album resulted in an

appearance on the television programme ‘Hee Haw’, and a second date on Austin
City Limits.