American Danny Toan's Big Foot from 1979, Bonus: First Serve from 1977

From my friend:

"Danny Toan (born in 1951) is an American Fusion guitarist.
One can call his style in the farthest sense 'jazz rock.' His publications under his own name date from the 1970s; he was introduced to the German professional audience by an interview in the contemporary publication "Fachblatt Musik Magazin",in about 1980.  From this some name recognition resulted as a so-called ''Musicians' Musician'' a musician who was known particularly to insiders of the music scene. In 1976 he belonged to the volume Fuel of Larry Young (Spaceball) and to Larry Coryells Eleventh House (Aspects). In 1978 he was involved in the recording of the albums Me, Myself and Eye the Charles Mingus Band and Sunbelt by Herbie Mann.
The other destiny of Danny Toan and his today's stay are unknown to date."


A few comments.  There is a track that is utterly magnificent for those who like me essentially grew up listening to Jimi Hendrix, old enough to remember him as the master of the Fender Stratocaster, it's called "Dreams Come and Go Away" appropriately enough.  I beg you, if you love music (as I know you must if you are reading this and looking for the kinds of sounds I present on this blog), listen to this track all day long, turned up nice and loud as Jimi would have wanted it, perhaps leave out the heroin or LSD he probably would have reached for, and just admire the proficiency of this amazing, forgotten artist, who perfectly captured not just the basics of the Hendrix style such as the fourth intervals going up and down, the reverbed solos played in octaves, the melancholy progressions, the slides with his super long fingers, that syncopated way of playing chords slightly behind where they are supposed to be that is his main hallmark, but furthermore get a sense of how he captured his soul, that yearning that went so deep:  "When I'm sad, she comes to me, with a thousand smiles, she gives to me free... take anything you want from me, anything, fly on, little wing..." 
Incidentally, this song was composed by Alex Blake.





Please note when you see the credits for this particular record, the presence of some very famous names. First of all you have J. Kuhn on piano whose own discography is the size of a phone book, but the rhythm section is John Lee and Gerry Brown, how can you go wrong with those two behind you?  They contributed compositions on side one as well.

Absolutely a magnificent, not at all expensive, completely lost masterpiece of electric guitar fusion-- sometimes to me recalling the other great American guitarists Coryell in his fusion phase, Tony Palkovic (featured once on prognotfrog), Tony Dupuis (pnf as well), etc.

As a bonus I have a quick rip of the first album-- not quite as good in my opinion, too easy-funky, for those who, like me, were blown away by the second one and need to hear more from this artist.