re: Greatest Blues Guitarist of All Time?

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Don't think he's gonna smoke anyone now, as far as a rock-blues guitarist yea he is top notch. As for the "any style" comment, get real, Buckethead would shred him at shredder style guitar.

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Forgive me for not explaining that I was talking about styles of blues and not genres of music in a thread entitled "Greatest Blues Guitarist of All Time". And if you really want to go there, Richie Kotzen, Guthrie Govan, and Paul Gilbert are considerably better players than Buckethead, although he's a great player in his own right.

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Ironic that you replied to me with that take b/c I'm a huge Gatemouth fan and have seen him many times. If you asked him he wouldnt' say he was a blues player but an american music player. He pretty much covered it all. Blues, swing, big band, cajun, R&B, country & western...

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Also heard he wasn''t just a good guitarist ,but played piano,fiddle, mandolin,etc..... & was just as happy or happier playing Country music on Hee-Haw as well as blues.


Heard he was relatively cranky & didn't like to be 'labeled' as a a Bluesman ,but his "Pressure Cooker" album is /was my introduction to Gatemouth.(Cold Strings,Pressure Cooker,etc....good stuff).


As a Gatemouth fan could you recommend some more of his better Blues work ?


He sounds nearly like a T-Bone Walker clone to me .

On a side note it's really sad that this is not even close to true anymore :

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Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, big league ball players, the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost, and will never lose a war... because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.

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What part of my post are you laughing at?

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Pressure Cooker

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Ain't nobody here but us chickens!

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Heard he was relatively cranky

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Not really. He would always visit with you after his show. he would set up a chair and autograph and chat. Very relaxed and always smoking a pipe. I think he's signed about every ticket stub of mine if the shows had them. He would play small bars in Mandeville/Covington area. I've seen him at the Varsity a few times and over here in Houston.

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As a Gatemouth fan could you recommend some more of his better Blues work ?

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A lot of his albums tend to have a blues song here and there but even his other stuff will have his bluesy style tones. He had more Texas style blues than Delta or chicago. No Looking Back is similar to pressure cooker. Standing My Ground. But they're all over the place in style. A Long Way Home he did a song with Eric Clapton & Leon Russell.

Actually his last one Back to Bogalusa is pretty good but it has a lot of mix to it. Cajun, swing, blues. He had one of the best Saxophonist play for him, Eric Demmer, and he contributed a song on there but on Gate's American Music Texas Style, swamp ghost, Demmer goes off.

His live shows he'd have a backing Sax,bass, and piano and usually a horn section and they would just end up taking turns jamming in a blues style or jazz type session. He could flat make a fiddle sing.

Worked for Gatemouth Brown for 3 1/2 years after college in the late '90's.

He was the most impressive musician I've ever seen live.

"He could do more with a guitar than a monkey with a peanut." -- Lonnie Brooks

@Sugar71 - for his early 50's stuff that he did on the Telecaster, check out The Original Peacock Recordings.

Atomic Energy and Pressure Cooker are great as well.

Blackjack and The Man feature a mix of the different styles that he played. Mixes in a bunch of fiddle.

And Gate's on the Heat is an interesting collaboration between Brown and Canned Heat.

I was his tour manager from 1997-2001.

I've got a million Gatemouth stories. But a good, quick one is that we crossed over into Canada at Vancouver and, when we got to the checkpoint, the officer was going to keep us delayed so he could inspect the tour bus. Gate stepped out and flashed his St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's badge, which seemed to impress the officer, so he waved us through. He never knew that Gate had his revolver on his hip under his jacket and a bag of weed in his breast pocket.

And yes, he had a crack band. Harold Floyd on bass. David Peters (from Louisiana's Laroux) on drums, Joe Krown on piano/organ, and Eric Demmer on sax. That was one of the tightest backing bands working at any level. Every musician wanted to sit in with Gate and his band, but few tried. All they had to do was kick into one of those fast tunes like "Take the A Train" or "Pressure Cooker" and I never saw a guitarist that could hang at that tempo.

I remember that show. We had gone to Japan with Dr. John a little while before that. Some Japanese millionaire loved Gate, so he had that blue guitar made for him. The Japanese guy had a silhouette of Gate in mother of pearl made on the headstock. But the jewel was always the '66 Gibson Firebird non-reversed with the custom leather pickguard.

He was a true musical genius, and i'm not just throwing that word out there. I saw some lady hand him an old beat up fiddle that looked like it hadn't been picked up in three decades. Gate tuned it up in literally like five seconds and then made it sound like Dewey Balfa. Dude's fingers were made of magic.

That's awesome yall danced to "What am I Living For." Great tune.

Furry Lewis

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Has Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins name been dropped yet, because his brand of blues is as good as it gets in my book.

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Drove several hours to see him play at Jay's Lounge in Cankton LA, was around 1974, it was the real deal!