Anacostia Delta: The Legacy of DC's Telemasters

Funding for Anacostia Delta The Legacy of D.C.'s TeleMasters is provided in part by...

In 1958 my grandparents opened a music store in the Washington D.C. area.

Today the Charles and Margaret Levin Family Foundation helps to inspire the love of music through the support of programs in the Mid-Atlantic.

And by the following... [Radio tuning various music] [slow rock] [upbeat guitar plays] RADIO DJ: Live at five on WPFW at 89.3, your station for jazz and justice.

Steve Hoffman here, live in the studio with this bunch of musicians.

They are part of a big event called Celebrating Danny Gatton and the music of the Anacostia Delta, which is a show this coming Saturday at the Birchmere... [talking fades] TOM PRINCIPATO: Every now and again I hear from-- JOHN PREVITI: We were talking about Danny one day and how important he is to us as individuals and to the D.C. scene and we realized well there are people that influenced Danny and there are people that he influenced and he's sort of in the middle of the whole thing.

[soft strumming] We have about 30 musicians, everyone involved will be playing music that they played with Danny or learned from Danny, because one of the things we've realized over the years is that his music, the tunes he played have become part of our repertoire.

DAVE CHAPPELL & JIM STEPHANSON: Yeah, man.

Let's try it again-- [murmur of the crowd] PREVITI: All these people are bringing something to the music that's very significant, it's very much a D.C. phenomenon uh, the way we approach things.

So we're trying to represent that.

[clapping and whistling] INTERVIEWER: One sentence answers, real quick answers and things, you know-- DANNY GATTON: Whatever.

INTERVIEWER: What kind of musical styles were you influenced by?

DANNY GATTON: Just about everything that happened in the '30's, '40's, '50's, '60's, '70's, and '80's.

[laughs]... short answer but it's true.

INTERVIEWER: That's alright.

What kind of music do you like to play best?

DANNY GATTON: Anything as long as it's done well, doesn't matter.

INTERVIEWER: What do you see from the stage when you, like here tonight at 8 by 10, when you see people out there, how do, what do you, you know, what are you after as far as your communication to the people?

DANNY GATTON: I don't see them very much, I'm usually watching what I'm doing.

I'm actually very shy.

INTERVIEWER: So your main concentration is just on the guitar and playing.

DANNY: Yeah, it always has been.

Can't dance, can't sing.

INTERVIEWER: What do you like people to get out of your music?

DANNY: Goosebumps.

[Playing "Funky Mama"] [crowd cheers] [applause] VINCE GILL: I've always known of Danny, you know, his nickname was the Humbler, you know, and everybody would come to town with a Telecaster and get humbled by Danny, me included all those years ago.

ALBERT LEE: I knew him by reputation, what a monstrous player he was.

He was a rock and roll player but he really masters the jazz idiom as well and so you, he covered a lot of ground.

[Applause] MIKE STERN: Danny was a major kind of influence on me without being really into his music.

Just hearing him as a guitar player, I heard him at this little place on M Street, very first time, and I couldn't believe what I heard.

It was amazing.

Amazing cat and amazing player.

STEVE HOFFMAN: And just before we get to another tune here, John, what is this term Anacostia Delta?

PREVITI: I think it was an effort that Danny was making to explain the phenomenon, he used to call it a regional phenomenon, the way the music's played here, the Telecaster, the way the Telecaster is used certainly was a regional phenomenon, but the way the music seemed to start in Washington D.C., notably southeast, and empty into Southern Maryland, P.G.

County, you had the hillbilly music and you had soul music and gospel, blues, and jazz, it all started to run together and became a sound uh, that's very identifiable.

[Playing "Pretty Blue"] TOM COLE: D.C. is the first big city on the road north for a lot of people looking for work after the Second World War, I mean my dad was one of them, he's from North Carolina, he came up here.

You know, he was like a lot of people, they came up here, the government offered jobs, and even if you were a musician, I mean musicians need a day job lots of the time and you could find a place to play and also find a place to work outside of music and I think that was important for a lot of people.

You know, culturally it's very interesting, D.C. after the Second World War and until, unfortunately, fairly recently, was a very segregated city and yet you know, musicians tend to break those barriers.

RON MACDONALD: You had the influence of the Black jazz musicians, rhythm and blues, what they called rhythm and blues back then, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, you know, that kind of thing.

You had country which was big stuff and D.C. was known as a country music town, a lot of country clubs.

But the combination of all those different genres, that's what kids were listening to and so you could hear, and that's why Danny, when you listened to him play, you could hear him play country licks, jazz licks and everything, because we all grew up around all of this different kind of music and it was a very unique area in that respect.

[Playing "Pretty Blue"] ANTHONY PIROG: Almost everyone's playing this, they knew Danny Gatton, I really wish I had had the chance to see him.

My parents kept saying they would take me and then I just, the opportunity was gone.

I have no idea why this kind of guitar playing came from this area, but I'm glad it did and I mean, it's important to me, being from here.

["Pretty Blue" continues] [Applause] TV CO-HOST: You just got signed with Electra?

DANNY GATTON: Yeah.

My first album is out right now, doing very well.

TV CO-HOST: Tell us the name of that album.

DANNY: It's called 88 Elmira St., which is named after the street that I lived on from '51 to '61, where I learned how to play.

And it was a very musical street; there were a number of musicians all over the place, different kinds of musicians, you could walk up and down that street and hear all kind of things.

MARK OPSASNICK: Danny was born in 1945 and he grew up at 88 Elmira St., which was actually in Southwest Washington, D.C., across the street, at 89 Elmira St. Southwest, was a guitarist named Jack Reid who was a couple years older.

Jack Reid had a quartet known as the Thunderbirds, which had formed in the summer of 1955.

JACK REID: I was 15, I guess Danny was 11.

During the week we would rehearse on say a Tuesday night or a Wednesday or something, and in those days we had a window well with a window that looked down into the basement and quite often we'd be down there practicing, banging away, and I'd look up and Danny's at the window looking in and you know, needless to say, he's interested, he wanted to play, wanted to learn and he was just excited to have somebody in the neighborhood he could learn from.

He would pick up different riffs that I had picked up from Roy Clark or I'd picked up from somebody else that I'd seen on the television, Dub Howington or whomever the guitar player may be and you'd learn how to do something and of course if he would hear it, he'd say, well how do you do this or what's that, and you know, I'd show him and he'd pick up on it and I'm sure he went home and practiced the hell out of it like we all did.

OPSASNICK: Danny Gatton said that those experiences watching Jack Reid and Gene Newport play guitar and of course Dick Grimes who was also there, it really made him want to start playing guitar as well.

As a teenager he went through a series of rock and roll oriented bands before settling with a group called The Offbeats or Ronnie and the Offbeats.

ERNIE GOROSPE: We all enjoyed music.

You know, just kind of came-- it was like a neighborhood thing it started out, you know, Jerry and I lived in Anacostia in Southeast Washington and and Danny lived close by.

JERRY WALLMARK: We put a small ad in our teen newspaper, Danny answered it, we made arrangements to come Saturday for practice.

And as we were coming in the door of Ernie's house, we heard Bill Doggett playing.

We looked around at each other and says, who's playing the records down there?

So we walked down there, it was Danny, he was playing a blond big F-hole guitar that was bigger than he was.

And he played that and couple other songs and we just stood there in amazement of a 13 year old kid doing this well, this type of music well.

And it was just phenomenal from then on out.

MACDONALD: We started playing uh, at clubs and teen clubs and things of that nature and that's when we did our first recording as well, and that was in D.C. and was a tune called Beggarman and the other side was Trouble In Mind.

Because Danny's got his little guitar solo in here, but at 14, BARRY HART: Oh yeah-- MACDONALD: Neat little solo for a 14 year old-- I remember they put it on WPGC and they had a thing called rate the record back then.

They were going to play your record, rate it against the other record they were going to play and the kids would call in and see.

We went up against Elvis Presley's newest release, so needless to say, Elvis Presley's record won and our record never got much play at all.

[guitar solo plays] JIM STEPHANSON: Fourteen.

RON: Yeah.

["Beggarman" plays] ["Beggarman" continues] I'm just a beggar... like you- RON: I'll never forget, we were playing in Georgetown at a place called Tom Sayer's Orleans House.

A lot of times during the week there were four or five people, you played so soft, the people eating dinner, they could care less whether we were there or not, so one night, Danny said let's do this and we played the song, Misty, which is Johnny Mathis' hit at the time.

We played Misty the entire set, for 40 minutes at seven or eight different tempos, we did it as a swing tune, we did it as a rock tune, as a ballad, as a Bossa Nova, a Cha Cha, nobody ever looked up, nobody ever knew the difference.

By the time that set was over, we were in hysterics we were laughing so hard.

Never knew the difference, played one song for 40 minutes, true story.

MACDONALD: Yeah, alright!

Been a long time.

- A long time.

You guys remembered that.

ERNIE GOROSPE: 1962.

What's that, 53 years ago?

DANNY: Alright, here we go.

Train I ride STEPHEN WINDSOR: My connection to Danny um, from the beginning was my dad, one of Danny's best friends, his lead singer towards the end there, his manager, he wore a lot of hats and you know, I remember him coming to me before I even got to see Danny, and talking to me about him and just saying that you know, this guy, when we were kids he sounded like he was two guitar players playing at one time and no one could play like that, of their, you know, era.

[Playing "My Baby Left Me and That's All Right"] Yes, my baby left me and never said a word Was it something I done or something that she heard My baby left me and she left me Yes my baby left me and never said a word Well I stare out the window hang my head and cry Was it something I'd done, never said goodbye My baby left me, she left me Yes, my baby left me and never said a word Come on baby Well now,that's alright with mama That's alright with you STEPHEN WINDSOR: In the '50's when that Anacostia Delta thing was brewing, everybody knew one another, they could sit in with one another and have fun and I think that still exists today.

[Applause] PREVITI: Danny used to tell me, it doesn't matter what kind of band you were in back then, you had to be able to play everything.

If you were in a country band, you still had to be able to play Duke Ellington tunes or standards, and vice versa.

I don't know anybody of Danny's age that only plays one style.

I've never met one, ever.

Even if they said they were a country guy, they could play everything.

PREVITI: You look at someone like Chick Hall Junior, he got that from his dad, Chick Hall Senior, who was an influence on Roy Clark and people like that.

[Playing "Working Man Blues"] It's a big job just gettin' by with nine kids and a wife I've been a workin' man, dang near all my life but I'll keep on workin' CHICK HALL JR.: Danny used to go listen to my dad.

A lot of people did, Buchanan had been in to hear him too.

Some of his contemporaries around that time were Jimmy Dean, Roy Clark, and Link Wray, as a matter of fact, Link Wray came to D.C., my dad told him to because he was from Portsmouth, Virginia and he used to hear my dad on the radio when he was back in Norfolk playing and they were good friends.

CHRIS HALL: When he came to Washington and it was a lot of work, he started calling back down towards Norfolk and that area and bringing musicians up and telling them there was work up here and helping them find stuff.

And then what he played, musicians would want to come hear what he was doing.

Back then I think when you heard somebody that was good, everybody tried to steal everything they could from them.

PREVITI: I heard a wire recording of Chick Senior that they'd transferred to CD and it's like Les Paul, George Barnes, Django Reinhardt, it's like all that going on.

He was a great player.

Ooohhh... RACHEL HALL: My grandfather was one of the, probably one of the first people around that was playing an electric guitar.

He played with the Glenn Miller Band for the Air Force and electric guitar was still kind of a rare thing back then.

[Guitar music playing] OPSASNICK: Chick Hall started developing a reputation as a great player.

Connie B.

Gay picked up Chick Hall to play guitar on his large, Town and Country Jamboree Shows on Friday and Saturday nights.

RADIO HOST: Well it's guest time here on Town and Country Time and our guest is a mighty pretty girl that sings a real fine song.

OPSASNICK: At one point, Chick Hall was backing up a young female singer named Patsy Cline on every one of the shows.

RADIO HOST: Patsy, what you going to sing for the folks?

PATSY CLINE: I'm gonna walk a little bit of dog.

RADIO HOST: That's fine.

I'm a carefree gal that's seen the light and I'm walking that dog all the day and all night TOM COLE: He had his own trio and opened the Surf Club and pretty much all of the big country stars came through there and it was, you know, one of those road houses along Bladensburg Road that, that whole that area right there became sort of a nexus for this kind of blending of music.

CHICK HALL, JR.: My dad's favorite players were Charlie Christian, Les Paul, Merle Travis, Hank Garland and he would show me licks from each of those guys and I would learn to play them, then I heard Danny and he's playing the same things, of course he's playing them like he's got three hands and [chuckles] fast as can be.

And I was just knocked out and uh, he reminded me of my dad in so many ways with his choice of guitar players that he emulated and it made me realize then how good my dad was too.

DANNY: You know, I've been influenced by a lot of things, a good bit of what I play did not come from guitar players, it comes from organ players and sax players, bass players, just about any instrument.

1,2,3... PREVITI: You know when I was a kid, if you went down 301 it looked like Las Vegas, you know, there was the Desert Inn and all these neon lights going around, it looked like you were in the movies.

It was just like that.

[Playing "When You're Smiling"] PREVITI: They had people that would play with the different bands that would come into town.

They'd play at the Stardust, playing behind these different acts that would come in.

And they'd have to play their music, learn their tunes and those same people would go to New Jersey and play at the Wildwood and play those clubs and play opposite Louie Prima, whenever those-- you know, Louie Prima was really big in D.C. [Playing "When You're Smiling and Sheik of Araby"] The whole world smiles at you You tell 'em Joe.

I'm the Sheik I'm the Sheik of Araby with no pants on Baby, we're gonna rule this world with me With no pants on SAM PALADINO: Every band had to have a floor show at the time, too.

You couldn't just get up there and play songs, you had to have a show and do comedy, you know, bits and stuff like that.

You know, maybe a guy would dress up in drag with balloons [laughs] and stuff like that.

FRANKIE SHEGOGUE: We'd do this song, he used to have these eyes with the springs on 'em and we would sing, 'don't roll those bloodshot eyes at me', them big ole eyes going around and around.

It was, and we all did, I mean we all did choreography.

[Playing "All of Me"] I said all of me - All of him Why not take all of me?

- Why not Joe?

Can't you see I'm no good swinging without you PREVITI: There were some people in town that Danny could never say enough good about.

One of them was Frankie Shegogue, and the other was Joe Stanley.

His band, The Saxtons, was apparently the baddest band going.

OPSASNICK: Joe Stanley was one of the great musicians out of the Washington D.C. area.

Joe was a singer but mainly a saxophone player, and in early era rock and roll the lead, or primary instrument, most of the time was the saxophone.

So he was in demand and he played with a lot of great different musicians at the time.

He did work with Link Wray, he did work locally with Charlie Daniels and the Jaguars in clubs like the Dixie Pig on Bladensburg Road.

He played in versions of the Rainbows with Marvin Gaye.

In 1956, when he was about 21 years old, put together his own band, Joe Stanley and the Saxtons, and again, he always had talented musicians and guitarists like Frank Shegogue in his band and later on, Roy Buchanan.

Joe always was the leader and the focal point of those bands.

PREVITI: Joe Stanley um, in a lot of ways, epitomizes the D.C. sound as much as Danny does in a way.

So why not, why not blow your saxophone?

BRUCE SWAIM: I was introduced to that whole Southern Maryland scene and I guess you could call it roots American music which was still very much alive within those- all the roadhouses and everything that was still happening down there and these guys were still doing it for real.

It wasn't like a retro thing, I mean and as far as sax players go, the king of all of them was Joe Stanley, who I learned a lot from listening to him.

JOE MAHER: I mean I've been all over the world man, I've been all over the country, in Nashville and New Orleans and Chicago and overseas.

Something came from this town that only these cats got.

And I'm not just saying that because I'm in it, but because, you know what I mean, Ron?

RON: Yeah, it's in the water.

JOE MAHER: I mean it's Rhythm and Blues and Gospel and Country and Rock and Roll all in one.

Made into something that only we made.

[Guitar plays] PREVITI: The great Frankie Shegogue, another prince, a great musician.

Danny always said, quote unquote, Frankie Shegogue was the... [Playing "Summertime'] OPSASNICK: Frank Shegogue is a very interesting study because he had actually been playing music since he was 12 years old, in local nightclubs.

Well after he got out of high school in '53, that summer, he basically became one of the very first guitarists in the D.C. area to actually play rock and roll and have it advertised as rock and roll.

["Summertime" continues] [Clapping] PREVITI: Danny always said in particular it was Frankie's chord work that made him, set him apart, and uh, I now, when I'm playing with Frankie, I hear him do things, I can- I can hear Danny and so I can say oh, that's something Danny got from Frankie.

So that's really interesting.

JIM STEPHANSON: What I dig about playing with Frankie is his approach, like- like Danny's, is very organic and not schooled.

So they're not coming from that angle, you know?

There's certain things you can learn that are guitar things and then the rest of it is just, you know, putting the time in.

["Summertime" continues] [Applause] [Rock and Roll music] OPSASNICK: Roy Buchanan was a part of the Washington D.C. area music scene throughout the 1960's and his legend as a great guitarist began to grow.

He settled in at the Crossroads in 1969 as the lead guitarist for Danny Denver and the Sound Masters.

A local journalist had written an article on Roy Buchanan for the Washington Post and it spread his popularity.

He became known as the world's greatest unknown guitarist.

MIKE STERN: I was one of the first guys that actually started playing jazz with a Telecaster, because I grew up listening to Roy Buchanan, not playing jazz but Roy Buchanan playing what he did with more rock and blues.

ROY BUCHANAN: People ask me like uh, what style of guitar do you play, ya know?

I play a little country, I play a little blues, a little jazz, basically I'm just a blues player that got interested in a few other things.

[playing guitar] NILS LOFGREN: I would go see Roy play at the Crossroads in Bladensburg all the time and I was just blown away by his style, his sound, just the commitment and soul and the preciseness of what he did.

At a very young age he mentored me in a way, even though you know, he'd come and play with Grin a little bit and sit in with us.

Um, and he was one of my heroes and still is, and really uh, learned a lot from him.

Roy called me and said hey, they're doing a PBS special on me up in New York, I want you to come and sit in with me as a guest.

I look back on it now and I mean, I was just so overwhelmed and nervous and honored to be Roy's guest, I just started playing and I was just playing as fast as I could, non-stop.

I never stopped.

Roy Buchanan's right there and you know, I look back and like, you idiot.

Why didn't you just play a lick and shut up and let Roy answer, but I was just too nervous.

So Roy knew that I knew how great he was, and he knew that I knew and believed, rightly so, I was not in his league, right?

So he knew what was happening and so finally, realizing I really wasn't going to allow for anything for him to do except, you know, play chords, rhythm, he just started detuning his E string, bowowowow-- like a sound effect, right?

And I look at that now and I'm like, hey, Roy, thanks for not walking over and slapping me and saying hey, shut up for a minute kid, I want to play something.

[Playing "Messiah"] ALBERT LEE: I saw Roy in London a couple of times and another monster, you know, just what he got out of the guitar and the bends that he did.

He was doing like country bends that were in tune and a lot of people don't manage to be able to do that.

And just getting that powerful sound out of that guitar with just a small amp, you know, and he'd crank it up to number ten and he'd turn it around the other way so it would face backwards so it wouldn't feed back and you know, another great influence on me for sure.

["Messiah" continues] R. HALL: Roy Buchanan, to me, was the pioneer of making sounds with the guitar that had never been made with a guitar before.

He could do the sound of water dripping, he could do a cat meowing.

TOM PRINCIPATO: Roy was the beginning, he was the first guy that I, that played the style, I call it Telecaster on Mars.

STEVE WOLF: Roy Buchanan was always one of the guys that we talked about and we'd go sit behind the fan at the Crossroads and listen to him because we weren't old enough to get in.

Kind of listen to him through the fan wall and try to get some of those vibes until we were old enough to get in.

PREVITI: My friend was at My Mother's Place, sitting at the bar and he turned around and Clapton and Beck were sitting right behind him, watching Roy Buchanan play.

DAVE CHAPPELL: Roy would do this thing where he would sweep his volume knob, and all I'm hearing is these soaring sounds that sound like ghosts are flying up through the rafters, that's all I know and I'm going where is that even coming from?

I have no idea what's, what's happening.

By the end of the night you know, your molecules were rearranged, you were just like, oh, my God, what just happened?

This is a crisis or something, it's like thinking the world is flat and then discovering oh, it's round.

ROBBIE MAGRUDER: We were at the Back Alley Lounge which was an addition to the Crossroads, and we're playing in there one night and Joe turns around and says, hey, see that guy over there?

It was kind of shadowed and he says, that's Roy Buchanan.

And Roy walks in, he's got his guitar in a paper bag and Joe says, come on, play something Roy.

So he plugged into something, I don't know if he had an amp, I don't remember, but he turns around and he looked and he said slow blues, in whatever key it was.

And he turns around and looks at me and he goes, one-- two-- three-- and I'm like, ehhhh, bang, and then we did this thing you know, and then he got his beers or whatever and left.

[Playing "Messiah"] JAY MONTEROSE: For me it's all about the tone, and he did something that was just so unique.

When we heard him play, you know, I'd go down to the music store and I'd look up and see a Telecaster guitar hanging in the case and just thought it, didn't know what to really think about it because it wasn't the cool Gibson's that we were playing, just like Danny growing up playing the nice Gibson's, they're built like furniture, they have all the aesthetic appeal and all the detail, the binding and the nice pearl inlay and all that stuff, you know?

And here's Roy with this plank, killing everybody.

["Messiah" continues] ROY: It's out as far as like using other the guitars on the stage 'cause the public just don't go for it.

It's so strange because even people who don't play guitar, they wanna, you know, see my old Telecaster.

I guess maybe it's because it was on all my albums, album covers and in the papers and things, you know that Buchanan plays the rattiest guitar around, you ought to go see it, you know?

MONTEROSE: Whatever was inside of that cat's head.

Whatever was going on with him, he expressed it through that instrument.

We all appreciate the fact that he was able to express that and it made sense to us when we heard it.

[Playing "Roy's Blues"] STEVE LARRANCE: One evening I wound up working with Roy Buchanan and I remember the manager of the club coming up to the edge of the stage, he says Roy, you have a phone call, you may want to take this.

And Roy comes back about 5-10 minutes later and we asked him, is everything alright?

He says yeah, it was a phone call, it was the Rolling Stones and they're looking for a guitar player for their next tour.

And we went, what?

Really?

You're going to do it right?

You're going to take it and he's, nah, I don't think so.

No, I told them no, I don't like traveling.

I've done it, I like going home, sleeping in my own bed.

And we looked at each other in amazement like, you've got to be kidding.

That was that.

["Roy's Blues" continues] MAGRUDER: Went to New York and recorded at The Record Plant and John Lennon was there, wanted to play on Roy's record and Roy says, let me finish this track and then you can come on in we'll, you know.

Lennon was in there mixing one of his Yoko things, we heard all this caterwauling coming out of the neighboring studio.

So we finished this track and then Roy decides he's had enough and goes back to the hotel.

Kind of left, stood up John Lennon for Pete's sake, you know?

["Roy's Blues" continues] [Applause] CHAPPELL: Danny was working in a guitar shop in College Park and my buddy, Jimmy Lawrence, he'd just got a guitar refinished there and we went to pick it up and the guy at the counter who I don't remember his name, and we never saw him again, but he just kind of pointed to us and said, see that guy in the back?

It was Danny, with these big, truck driver sideburns and he was working on a guitar, very stern.

We go yeah?

And he goes, he's probably the best player in the country.

And Jimmy and I, being young, dumb clucks, we were just like, I don't think so, you know?

We didn't know.

But we saw in this magazine they had a local magazine that talked up music called the Unicorn Times.

I said oh, that's that guy, let's go see him, he played at the Psyche Delly.

And it was these guys right here, Danny and the Fat Boys, Dave Elliot, Billy Hancock, and Danny.

And they played swing and they played country and they played rock and roll and rockabilly and they were all over the map and we just didn't know what, again, another one of those mind-blowing events where you just sit there and you just sort of sink lower and lower into your chair.

TOM COLE: I mean they were fat.

[laughs] They were all fat, and kind of scary too in a way, you know?

I had never heard anything like that before really, I mean that was my introduction to that kind of music.

PRINCIPATO: I'd never seen anybody that had so much command over the guitar and do things that I'd never, I just thought were, in a way, he recreated some of the prerecorded tricks that Les Paul did, he did them live, plus a whole lot more.

It was just like, it was kind of overwhelming in a way.

LOFGREN: I remember being at the Childe Harold once at a Danny show, I'm like well, I think he's doing three completely different interdependent melodies; one of them seems a little rockabilly and I'm kind of hanging with that one, the other two I don't know what the hell he's doing but it's all weaving together in a tapestry that I would never even imagine, but he was doing it and he'd kind of bring you along for the ride.

You got the feeling the audience was there too.

BILLY HANCOCK: Thank you very much, goodnight.

DAVE ELLIOTT: Back then my goal was to get to Georgetown, I mean Georgetown was elbow to elbow every single night of the week.

I mean it's hard for people to imagine now.

But M Street was just, you know, two or three clubs on every block.

And as much as I loved what I was hearing in Georgetown, I would go every now and then by myself, over to Southern Maryland and they weren't playing the same stuff.

The music was just different.

I just can't help thinking of you BILLY HANCOCK: It's a melting pot.

It wasn't just one music, it was like white gospel, black gospel, bluegrass, a little jazz, some honky tonk and some real blues.

So you know, with all that going on, it naturally evolved into what we call the D.C. sound.

JOHN: Billy is a truly legendary guy, I mean he'd go to Europe, he's well-known in Europe, he's a rockabilly guy over there.

Working with him, you're always on the edge of your seat because in a similar way to Danny, Billy will go into tunes you've never heard of before, in the set and he just counts them off or doesn't even count them off, just starts playing and you're playing an obscure B-side to some 45 you never heard, he's something.

I mean he's the real deal.

HANCOCK: Believe it or not, I started playing the accordion.

Wasn't my idea.

ELLIOTT: I was coming out of Georgetown one night and I stopped at a place call New Mac's, right at the end of Key Bridge, and I went in and there's this band playing and there's this great big guy on stage with Captain America clothes on, you know, the stars and stripes and the whole bit.

And he was a big dude, you know?

And he had hair down to here and this full beard and just singing his butt off and he was so good.

And I went up to him and told him how much, you know, how much I enjoyed his singing.

And he's such a big guy and such a character on stage, plus he had the voice and everything.

Two or three years later, at Hillbilly Heaven, he shows up with Danny to put this you know, band together for a couple weeks.

Well Billy remembered me because I weighed 360 and I had the long hair and a beard, and um, they were looking for a drummer.

They'd been auditioning drummers to put a band together and like I said, I didn't know who Danny was.

I didn't even known who Roy Buchanan was, I was in a whole different circuit.

HANCOCK: We played there for a few weeks and the gig came with a drummer and when we left that place, we took him with us.

ELLIOTT: Danny and I had a telepathy that, neither one of us figured out where it came from, it was magical.

HANCOCK: It wasn't like he started and somebody else fell in and then I said, oh, and then I fell in.

No, that's not the way it was at all.

We looked at each other and we had this thing.

We knew exactly what was going to happen just by a look.

ELLIOTT: Both of those guys were so strong, tempo-wise and groove-wise, it was like being, being in a flooding river and if you could play at all, you couldn't get out of the river, you had to go with the flow of the music, you know?

It just captured you and it carried you along.

2,3,4... [Playing "You're Still My Baby"] You've... gone away left me alone, I ain't got nobody to... call my own good bye, baby, yeah lots of luck, darling You're still my baby I told you I love you, time and time again ELLIOTT: We played at a place called Ernie's Place, it was above a topless joint and Ernie Bird owned it, he was a big criminal uh, element in D.C. that owned a bunch of topless joints and ran prostitutes and drugs and stuff like that and it was just a dirty old dump.

Somehow we got booked there like once a month.

Nobody ever came there you know, so one night Danny got tired of playing, we're keeping the song going and I don't know what he's doing, he's noodling around with something.

Well what he did was take an extension cord and cut the end off and wrapped the wires together and he got tired of playing so he plugged it into the wall and it blew all the fuses in the place, so we'd just take a break because there was no electricity.

He called it the magic rope.

Goodbye baby, good luck to you darling You're still my baby (Audience screams) Give it to me!

ELLIOTT: Ernie Bird, couldn't happen to be a nicer guy, had that whole building rewired.

So then Danny took a Fender foot pedal and he wired that into the regular extension cord and it was just laying in front of his amp where you would naturally have one, the pedal, and he had it shorted out inside.

And all he had to do was step on one of the buttons and it would short out.

Next time we played there, all the power went out again and Ernie Bird couldn't figure out what was going on, he was furious.

But I think that's the only place we ever used it.

That's the magic rope trick.

["You're Still My Baby" continues] HANCOCK: Joe Kogok.

You may be miles away, HANCOCK: I just love entertaining people.

It's what I've been doing all my life.

it's the only thing I know how to do.

What did I do?

Why, did you put me down Lord... have mercy my heart's in pain, Oh, I'm sorry baby, I just can't play your game Goodbye baby Lots of love darling You still, you still, I can feel you right here, cause you still my baby [Applause] HANCOCK: Oh, you're too kind!

[Audience cheers] Let's bring on Dave Chappell up here.

CHAPPELL: I heard those girls screaming, Billy.

[Laughter] HANCOCK: It...wasn't the pretty ones here that was screaming, it was that bunch of blue haireds over there.

[Laughter] I'm just kidding.

HANCOCK: I'm a blue hair too, you just don't know it.

[Playing "Harlem Nocturne"] PREVITI: Every instrument has a song that, it's like for tenor players it's learning Body and Soul, or, or something like that.

For Tele players around here, I would dare to say that it's Harlem Nocturne, the tune written by Earl Hagen, who also wrote the Andy Griffith theme.

And he wrote it as a tribute to Duke Ellington.

And Danny introduced that in 1975, around then, on the American Music album, it was a 45.

That tune, the way Danny plays it, really instigated an awful lot, you know, now because of that, the rest of us will think of other tunes that we can do like that.

["Harlem Nocturne" continues] CHAPPELL: Well I played something one night, and I was always helping him take his stuff out to his van, and he goes, what are you doing tomorrow?

Come over to my house at 12 o'clock.

And I was like, are you kidding?

He goes no, I'll show you some stuff, you played something tonight that was pretty good, you might have stolen it from me, but it was pretty good.

[laughs] And I'm sure I did.

So I went over there the next day, I'd just gotten lucky enough to get in some country band and I said, can you just show me any sort of basic, 101, country stuff you know?

And he just did chords after chords for like 20 minutes, and he goes, there's your basic redneck stuff right there.

I'm just, again, just astounded with all the different ideas and the stream of consciousness of one idea leading to the next idea, and now it kind of sounds like a banjo and now it sounds like a little Chet Atkins and now he'd doing some jazzy take on it and it's just astounding.

How lucky for a budding musician could I be to know this guy and have this guy lay that much stuff on you, and I'm not the only one he did that for.

He did it for lots of us, you know, just would take you wherever you were and lift you up to another place and then he'd go, there you go.

What a guy.

["Harlem Nocturne" continues] HANCOCK: Thank you!

[Applause, Whistling] ["Rock Candy" plays] DANNY: The best musical experience I ever had was the Redneck Jazz Explosion with Buddy Emmons.

That was the thing for me.

INTERVIEWER: How did you and Buddy Emmons get together?

DANNY: I met him in Nashville, hired him to do a demo and we played Rock Candy, the old Jack McDuff tune.

And he had fun and I had fun and I asked him if he wanted to play and he said, sure, so we started throwing things together.

Didn't rehearse much but we had a lot of fun.

-Ha ha, you can't do it slow, can you?

[Laughter] WOLF: The term, Redneck Jazz, as far as I know, Evan Johns came up with and he wrote the song, you know, Redneck Jazz.

But out of that idea came a moniker if you want to call it that, so when he started a band that was an instrumental band, he called it the Redneck Jazz Explosion, because it was primarily a jazz group with a country flair and everything else thrown in.

We would play a lot of old jazz standards like Dizzy Gillespie's Night in Tunisia, for example.

Except somewhere in there there'd be some uh, country picking, [laughs] you know Carl Perkins would be in there, all kinds of different people were in there um, in the middle of these jazz songs but at the same time, he'd turn around and sound like Wes Montgomery or a lot of other great jazz guitar players; Charlie Christian.

So he kind of mixed it all in a pot and stirred it up and it came out Redneck Jazz.

We were all in school all the time.

He didn't ask you if you knew a song, and you're playing in a room full of guitar players and he counts it off, you listen and you learn and you play right now.

And the people paid a big cover charge to be there and you had to step up and you had to grow as a musician.

And I have to say... it was really great to be a part of that.

STEVE WOLF: The actual, the original, and I didn't use it to change my oil in my car either.

But anyway.

DAN HOVEY: The back looks, yeah.

ROBERT SPATES: I like it better with the K dropping-- WOLF: makes it more-- DAN HOVEY: Redneck.

ROBERT SPATES: Gives it that air of trailer park authenticity.

DAN HOVEY: Exactly.

[Playing "Rock Candy"] WOLF: Some people ask me why did Redneck Jazz Explosion break up?

You know, he had Buddy Emmons in the band, he was being courted by Atlantic Records, but during the year before the band broke up, first his father died and he was very close to his dad, second, his mentor and best friend, Dick Heintze died and then Danny had been talking to Lowell George of Little Feat, so they did an interview when Little Feat was in town on WHFS, and during the interview, Lowell George asked Danny if he wanted to play with them in Richmond the next night.

And he said sure.

That morning they found Lowell George dead in his hotel room.

So all of those things happened within months of each other really, and it wasn't long after that that Danny just decided he didn't want to play anymore.

I think it really set him back.

["Rock Candy" continues] [Crowd cheers] [Applause] [Music plays] [talking in the background] COLE: One of the things, you know, particularly with Danny, was that he played when he wanted to play and he played with the people he wanted to play with.

Whenever he could put a crew together, I mean Funhouse is a good example of that where you've got a big band, they're not paying you a lot of money, so you've got to be doing it for fun.

PREVITI: I met the manager at this place, Gallagher's on the Hill, and said hey, I play with Danny Gatton, I could bring him in here, we just can't advertise it, we'll just show up and play.

He said, that'd be great.

ELLIOTT: He wanted a place he could go and play with his jazz buds, and believe me, these were friends you'd want to play with, I mean, it was Don Stapleson and Bruce Swaim and Chris Battlestone, and John and Danny, and it was just killer, I get goosebumps talking about it.

BRUCE SWAIM: That was the weekly gig and it became quite a scene because a lot of people came out and uh, that gave Danny a real- a real big opportunity to really stretch on a weekly basis.

Chris Battlestone, the trumpet player, was contributing you know, arrangements and there again, talk about the stream of consciousness thing, I mean, and we would be starting out doing... a Wayne Shorter tune and by the end of it it might have morphed into Orange Blossom Special.

So, it was a musical adventure, to go and follow this path that we would go down from time to time which is was what made it great.

PREVITI: One set we would just play as fast as we could for an hour and a half and I'm not kidding, it was as fast as we could play.

Which for Barry and Danny was, they could do it, for me, I almost always come out of there with my right arm in a sling.

It was so demanding, it was great fun you know, but you know, you're playing as fast as you can and you've got three horns and then Danny and everyone's blowing as long as they want to.

One, two, three.

COLE: You know, tiny stages with all of these musicians you know, crammed on just like laughing and playing some amazing music and not worried about how long each tune was going, I mean you know, tunes would last 20 minutes.

ELLIOTT: After the first week, you couldn't get near the place, word got out real fast.

It was on Capitol Hill there.

PREVITI: It was so full of people just sitting on the floor down the aisles that the waiters had to step over people you know.

ELLIOTT: That jazz band, they would get some great reviews in some great uh, music mags and stuff.

The ironic thing is... they, the owner tried to fire Danny, are you ready for this?

For drawing too many people.

PREVITI: We were all standing there, I remember the owner was here and I was here and Danny was here up on the little stage, and the owner basically said, you're bringing in too many people and he looked at Danny and said, I'm going to keep the band but you're fired, to Danny.

And uh... And um, I had never heard anything like that before or since.

You're bringing in too many people.

And so Danny looked at him and said, well I think you're a [silenced]!

And my [silenced] ascended.

I was afraid and he wasn't even mad at me and I was like, I was afraid for my life.

Danny gets very quiet when he's mad and the guy looked at him and said-- 'I'm an [silenced]?'

and then not only did we keep the gig, we got a raise.

[Playing "Chess Players"] SWAIM: Danny had the uh, cover story in Guitar Player Magazine, which drew a lot of attention to him and uh, he started getting more gigs out of town, he started going to New York, Toronto, Chicago, places like that.

I guess the word had gotten out because everywhere he went, the places were packed and we'd play big clubs in New York City and they'd be packed.

David Sanborn came out and was hanging out back stage, Axl Rose came out and was hanging out back stage, Malcolm Forbes showed up on a motorcycle and parked the Harley out front and was hanging out and it was kind of a thing.

["Chess Players" continues ] RICK WHITEHEAD: These are tunes that Danny liked to play, it was his own style, you know, he had his own fingerprints on this thing.

["Chess Players" continues] CHUCK UNDERWOOD: Oh, I met Danny when I was 16 and would get snuck into a bar to go see him play.

So Danny was a huge influence on me as all these all these Washington guitar players.

Actually it's a little intimidating, not only the Danny Gatton thing but playing with this young man right here.

["Chess Players" continues] [Applause] [Guitar plays] PRINCIPATO: That was a typical Danny-ism.

PRINCIPATO: It's funny, if you were participating in a music scene, playing guitar where Danny Gatton was playing too, that's a pretty serious measuring stick to be measured up against and I think Danny was responsible for a lot of guys going home and practicing.

Because he would have that effect, you'd go watch him play and it's like oh man, I'm going to go home and give up, but for the serious guys, see somebody like Danny play, I'm going to go home and practice.

PRINCIPATO: I don't remember seeing that Tele Dan.

Wow, that's a nice one.

DAN HOVEY: I have left it in the closet a lot.

PRINCIPATO: Yeah.

HOVEY: For this, I got to bring it out... PRINCIPATO: Exactly.

Bring out the good [silenced] PRINCIPATO: We're sitting in the basement of the house that I grew up in and right here is where I used to practice with my high school bands.

And this, you know, this was a pretty musical neighborhood, there were a lot of guitarists and uh, we all played together in different combinations.

My first real guitar was a Sears Silvertone guitar, that my father helped me buy, then when I put in money from my paper route.

And uh, that was really a big thrill.

[Playing "Honey Hush"] PRINCIPATO: In the early '80's, around '83-'84, Danny went into one of those periods of semi-retirement where he just sort of got frustrated I think, with the music business and gigs and you know, lack of progression in the music business.

So, I thought it would be great to do some gigs with Danny and try to coax him out of semi-retirement and all he really had to do was to just add on to the band that I had just started as a band leader and uh just really not plan very much and get on stage and see what would happen.

INTERVIEWER: And what happened?

[laughs] PRINCIPATO: Danny would play the hell out of the guitar and I would struggle to keep up.

[laughs] That's usually what happened.

["Honey Hush" continues] I can't eat, I can't sleep, I can't rest in peace be better off walkin the streets you don't need talk so much talk too much Just listen to that conversation just about to separate us [Applause] PRINCIPATO: Aw man!

[Playing "Back again and Gone"] PRINCIPATO: When he passed, I started getting calls from Washington and one of the first calls I got was from Evan Johns and he was crying and uh, it was very upsetting and very disappointing.

PREVITI: You know, part of me was just wondering, well what do I do now?

Because I was always Danny's bass player, even if I did other things.

I didn't try to replace it with anything, I wanted to be a good musician, I tried to freelance and I tried not to talk about him too much, you know?

It's just, you can't help it, it's just there, like talking about your dad, you know?

In a real way, you know, he was um, that kind of influence, that kind of mentor.

["Back Again and Gone" continues] SWAIM: Other than the immediate effect his death had on musicians that played with him, just the fact that he existed still affects the scene, I mean, there's still a lot of players that are very influenced by him.

["Back Again and Gone" continues] PREVITI: I think it's just in the last ten years where we've thought, well what do we do with this, in a conscious way?

You know, we're all getting more experienced learning how to play better and now these tunes are popping up in our repertoire, you know?

It's kind of cool and not in a kitschy way.

It's not uh, we're not being nostalgic, it's an active part of our lives, you know?

[Applause] [Playing "The World is Waiting for the Sunrise"] Dear one, the world It's a waiting for the sunrise And every rose is colored with dew the thrush, up high my sleepy mate keeps calling me, yet my heart it's calling you it's calling you OPSASNICK: When you're talking about Washington D.C. guitarists and names come up like Roy Buchanan and Danny Gatton, these guys really took music to a whole different level.

COLE: Their music was theirs and they were part of a community that was welcoming and supportive and allowed them to create their own sound.

["The World is Waiting for the Sunrise" continues ] MONTEROSE: Washington is just as well-deserved to be recognized as having its own sound and its unique sound.

And the fact that Danny was a part of it just helps bring the rest of us to the surface and into view a little better.

[Playing "Sleepwalk"] VINCE GILL: I think a lot of people would perceive this to not be a hotbed of a music community like Nashville or Austin or L.A., or New York, but it was, it was every bit as good as anywhere else in the country you could ever go.

Tons of great musicians from around here and all the musicians knew it, maybe the rest of the world didn't, but we all did.

LOFGREN: Looking back and having traveled extensively, I still feel like Washington had one of the better music scenes in the country and I think still does.

HANCOCK: Nashville's got you know, a lot of good players, but the best ones they have come from here.

WOLF: You look at the lineup for the show and there's almost no one in the guitar lineup that wasn't influenced by Danny Gatton or Roy Buchanan.

Like when I, I still play with Tom Principato a lot and right away I know where the quotes are coming from, I can hear it.

I can hear that he grew up in this musical environment in the way that he plays.

But I'm working with some younger musicians that are really good musicians who are listening to some of that music and I think they're making it their own and Danny is part of that patchwork.

Roy Buchanan is part of that patchwork.

PIROG: There's something about this place that just feels very comfortable.

I can play any type of music in this area.

I just feel really free to do whatever I want.

["Sleepwalk" continues] CHAPPELL: I think there will always be an audience for this kind of music, regardless of the trends.

It's been here this long.

That's amazing.

[laughs] ["Sleepwalk" continues] [Applause] ["How High the Moon" plays] CHAPPELL: As nights go for a player that was kind of a Cinderella night I think for a lot of us.

MONTEROSE: Look who I get to play with, all these folks here, they're my heroes.

HART: I mean I've played here with Buddy and Danny and we played that.

This is just the same honor to me.

[Applause] DANNY: Ha cha cha.

A DVD of this film including material not seen on public television is available online at MPT.ORG/SHOP or call the number on the screen.

Funding for Anacostia Delta The Legacy of D.C.'s TeleMasters is provided in part by...

In 1958 my grandparents opened a music store in the Washington D.C. area.

Today the Charles and Margaret Levin Family Foundation helps to inspire the love of music through the support of programs in the Mid-Atlantic.

And by the following...