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By the age of 15 he knew he wanted to play music for a living, and subsequently
moved to Los Angeles. He became friendly with R&B legend Johnny Otis, who took
him under his wing, and also learned from two other residents of the city - Johnny

Guitar Watson, and future James Brown guitar player Jimmy Nolen. By the mid to
late 1950s he had his own band, The Heartbeats, and later worked in the backing
band for Dale Hawkins (he of ‘Suzy Q’ fame), replacing a certain James Burton, after
which he had a stint of around one month in the backing band of Hawkins’ cousin

Roy. His job during that time was effectively to teach permanent guitar player Robbie
Robertson what he was supposed to be playing, and his view of Roy was unequivocal
- “he was really very, very good. The most remarkable guitarist I had seen”.

Eventually, of course, Robbie, and the others, left to form their own group - called
The Band.

By the end of the 1950s Roy Buchanan was already starting to try to make a career
in his own name…

H ere we switch to the early days of Danny Gatton, who was born on September

4th 1945 - almost exactly 6 years after Roy.

Daniel Woods Gatton was born in Washington, to a mother who was a country music
fan and a father who had played guitar in a jazz
band - although apparently not on a

professional basis, and anyway he stopped
doing so (and got rid of the guitar) when
Danny was a young lad.

However, this young lad appeared to have a gift
for music, and graduated from a cheap Stella
acoustic to a rather more expensive Martin by

the time he was 11 years old. The following
year he traded that model for a semi-solid
Gibson ES350 (as used by Chuck Berry), by
which time he had been performing in public

for a year. That’s two pretty serious guitars for
a lad of that age, but his playing skill bore no
relationship to his age. He had, like Roy

Buchanan, also learned steel guitar, and used
this technique (with the slide over, rather than
under the guitar neck) to play incredible slide
guitar, with anything that came to hand,

including an amplifier tube, but more often
than not a half empty bottle of beer!