Hole in the Wall
Remembering Dan Del Santo
RECEIVED Tue., March 24, 2009
Dear Editor,
Re: Dan Del Santo [AMDB]: I met Dan in 1978 straight out of North Texas State as a sax player who would soon be a Professor of Pleasure. Dan hired me to write down some 500 tunes he had swimming in his head for a new band he was forming. Dan couldn’t read or write music and was with one of the craziest cats I would ever encounter! He had just finished living the life of a Delta blues man with Alligator Records, I think … but by the time I met him, he was drawing back on his Italian roots and was starting to “fuse” Italian, blues, jazz, reggae, New Orleans, and Texas swing. Crazy stuff! Totally impossible to write down because he was not only jumping styles but jumping meters and tempos. He got the “Professor” part from Professor Longhair and got the “Pleasure” part from King Pleasure. But looking back, Dan was sort of a pioneer of world beat. I would have to say that we never really “fused” styles, but the music was much more like shifting gears without a clutch. He turned me onto the Meters and reggae and Fela Ransome-Kuti. We (his sidemen) were basically jazz cats trying to keep up with this madman! He was nonstop music and could go days straight. I had heard a rumor that Dan skipped town and was on the run from the law years ago. Not surprised. Dan was a bigger than life guy. When I met him, he was so against alcohol and would lecture that that stuff would kill you. Dan loved milk, and I would literally watch him down a gallon of milk at a sitting. He was the original “Got Milk?” guy … maybe because he had a bad stomach. He never told any of us about his early years. I knew he was from New York but not much else. He also loved Southern culture and so revered the old black cats like Lightnin' Hopkins and Robert Shaw. He also so much wanted to be counted in those ranks. I left Austin for a lot of reasons and never kept up with Dan, not that he would be the kind of person who would keep up with folks. I suppose he could have coined the term “world beat,” but I don’t think his music was world beat. It was a grand sampler of styles – very angular like a modernist painting with hard edges. Yet Dan had this amazing Texas Bob Wills side to him where he would “slide into” his notes as he sang with a yodel. I never liked the name Professor of Pleasure as it was a pretty dumb name but none the less a tribute to the old school of territory musicians. We only did original music … nothing else. So I guess I'm proud I made my living with Dan as a Texas Outlaw, too.
Re: Dan Del Santo [AMDB]: I met Dan in 1978 straight out of North Texas State as a sax player who would soon be a Professor of Pleasure. Dan hired me to write down some 500 tunes he had swimming in his head for a new band he was forming. Dan couldn’t read or write music and was with one of the craziest cats I would ever encounter! He had just finished living the life of a Delta blues man with Alligator Records, I think … but by the time I met him, he was drawing back on his Italian roots and was starting to “fuse” Italian, blues, jazz, reggae, New Orleans, and Texas swing. Crazy stuff! Totally impossible to write down because he was not only jumping styles but jumping meters and tempos. He got the “Professor” part from Professor Longhair and got the “Pleasure” part from King Pleasure. But looking back, Dan was sort of a pioneer of world beat. I would have to say that we never really “fused” styles, but the music was much more like shifting gears without a clutch. He turned me onto the Meters and reggae and Fela Ransome-Kuti. We (his sidemen) were basically jazz cats trying to keep up with this madman! He was nonstop music and could go days straight. I had heard a rumor that Dan skipped town and was on the run from the law years ago. Not surprised. Dan was a bigger than life guy. When I met him, he was so against alcohol and would lecture that that stuff would kill you. Dan loved milk, and I would literally watch him down a gallon of milk at a sitting. He was the original “Got Milk?” guy … maybe because he had a bad stomach. He never told any of us about his early years. I knew he was from New York but not much else. He also loved Southern culture and so revered the old black cats like Lightnin' Hopkins and Robert Shaw. He also so much wanted to be counted in those ranks. I left Austin for a lot of reasons and never kept up with Dan, not that he would be the kind of person who would keep up with folks. I suppose he could have coined the term “world beat,” but I don’t think his music was world beat. It was a grand sampler of styles – very angular like a modernist painting with hard edges. Yet Dan had this amazing Texas Bob Wills side to him where he would “slide into” his notes as he sang with a yodel. I never liked the name Professor of Pleasure as it was a pretty dumb name but none the less a tribute to the old school of territory musicians. We only did original music … nothing else. So I guess I'm proud I made my living with Dan as a Texas Outlaw, too.
John Eric Cathcart
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.