Page 25 - BiTS_11_NOVEMBER_2024

“finally, after all these years, I did something I like”, but neither album was much of
a seller, and “Redneck Jazz” was actually financed by his Mother. Instrumental jazz
based albums no longer sold as they had in the era of such artistes as Dave Brubeck.

Danny Gatton said he classed his music as ‘Redneck Jazz’, although he was also known
as ‘The Humbler’ - the reason for that was because every guitarist who got on stage
with him was indeed ‘humbled’! Summing up his own skills, he said “I can’t come on

as Mister Showbiz, ‘cause I’m not. I’m the local guy next door, you know, that just
happens to play better
than most people”!

Both Gatton and
Buchanan hated the
way that record
companies tried to

push their music into
a particular genre, in
order to make it

marketable. As Gatton
said in a later
interview, when
complaining that his

eclecticism resulted in
his failure to secure a
good record deal - “we

just weren’t content
playing what people
wanted to hear. We
figured we could educate them into something more. Wrong”!

Incredibly, he actually did achieve a deal with a major label, when Elektra decided
to offer him a 7 album contract, starting with “88 Elmira Street” in 1991, and
following it with “Cruisin’ Deuces” in 1993. The 2 albums got good reviews, but didn’t

sell well, and he was released from his contract.

In between those albums he had recorded ‘New York Stories’ for Blue Note, which
was a contemporary jazz album, and in 1994 came ‘Relentless’, on the small Big Mo
label, which featured jazz, blues and shuffle music.

But his heart wasn’t really in it. In a familyvideo recorded at Christmas 1993 he said
he had “had it with the business”. His daughter, Holly, who was keen on music, was
told by him in no uncertain terms that she should, under no circumstances, get

involved with the music business. Even more worrying, according to his wife Jan,
was the fact that he would periodically lose the feeling in the left side of his body,
and his hand, or his entire arm, would go numb. She thought he had had a number

of small strokes.