DAN GELO

Dan Gelo has been exploring music on stringed instruments for over 50 years. Growing up in the New York City suburb of Livingston, New Jersey, one of his earliest memories is the twang of the low E string on his father's old archtop. Like a million other guitar players, he was inspired by the Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, along with TV appearances by the Monkees, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Buck Owens, and Creedence Clearwater Revival, and his parents' eclectic record collection. He began guitar lessons at age eight with the highly respected composer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist Eugene Ettore, another Mel Bay author. He was also fortunate to study for six years with the veteran big-band guitarist John Pariso, who appeared in the 1939 Gibson catalog as one of the first endorsers of the Super 400 guitar. During high school and college Dan got heavily involved in bluegrass music and Irish traditional music, taking every opportunity to play and hear these styles live in the city and in Appalachia. He taught himself five-string banjo and mandolin, then spent two years learning to play the fiddle from Gene Lowinger, who had been a member of Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys. His interest in "roots music" and the music of other cultures led Dan to the study of anthropology, and he pursued advanced degrees in the subject. During graduate school Dan gigged weekly, played festival contests, did studio work around the New York area, and authored his first of three Mel Bay books, Fiddle Tunes and Irish Music for Mandolin, which was one of the very first Mel Bay publications to explore Celtic music. He also completed several summers of field work with the Comanche Indian people of southwest Oklahoma and began publishing a long series of articles and books about Plains Indian culture and history. He then embarked on a 31-year career as an anthropology professor and college dean at the University of Texas at San Antonio.