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:
“While we were thus engaged in the twilight, we heard faintly, from far down the stream, what sounded like two strokes of a woodchopper’s axe, echoing dully through the grim solitude.... When we told Joe of this, he exclaimed, “By George, I’ll bet that was a moose! They make a noise like that.” These sounds affected us strangely, and by their very resemblance to a familiar one, where they probably had so different an origin, enhanced the impression of solitude and wildness.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“His reversed body gracefully curved, his brown legs hoisted like a Tarentine sail, his joined ankles tacking, Van gripped with splayed hands the brow of gravity, and moved to and fro, veering and sidestepping, opening his mouth the wrong way, and blinking in the odd bilboquet fashion peculiar to eyelids in his abnormal position. Even more extraordinary than the variety and velocity of the movements he made in imitation of animal hind legs was the effortlessness of his stance.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)