Danny Joe Brown, (August 24, 1951 – March 10, 2005) was a member of the Southern rock group Molly Hatchet, and singer and co-writer of the band's biggest hits from the late 1970s.
He was born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1951 and graduated from Terry Parker High School in 1969. Shortly after graduating, he enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard and was stationed in New York for two years. Once he left the Coast Guard, Brown's focus turned solely to music and joined Molly Hatchet in 1974.
He is best known for writing and singing on such songs as "Flirtin' with Disaster", and "Whiskey Man"; he was also the vocalist on "Dreams I'll Never See", a faster tempoed cover of the Allman Brothers song. The band's sound was immediately recognizable by Brown's distinct voice, a deep, raspy, throaty growl.
Brown left Molly Hatchet in 1980 because of chronic diabetes and pancreatic problems, but soon started his own band, The Danny Joe Brown Band, which released a single studio album in 1981. He later rejoined Molly Hatchet in 1982, only to leave again in 1995 after suffering a stroke. He died at his home in Davie, Florida, at the age of 53, in March 2005. His obituary attributed his death to renal failure, a complication of the diabetes he had since age 19.
Famous quotes containing the words joe and/or brown:
“This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true, the accusations that we were lower types of human beings. Only a little higher than apes. True that we were stupid and ugly and lazy and dirty and, unlucky and worst of all, that God Himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever, world without end.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)