Danny Joe Brown, the lead singer of the Southern rock band Molly Hatchet, died last Thursday of complications from diabetes, his family said. He was 53.
Brown died at his home in Davie, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, his sister Lyndia Brown said. “He had been in the hospital for about four weeks before he died, and he wanted to come home and he was home for 30 minutes when he died,” she. “He was surrounded by his children and his wife.”
In 1975, the Jacksonville native joined Molly Hatchet, named after a Southern prostitute who allegedly beheaded and mutilated her clients. Brown was frontman for its self-titled 1978 album and the band’s 1979 breakthrough, “Flirtin’ With Disaster.”
Brown left the band in the early 1980s because of his diabetes. After creating his own group, the Danny Joe Brown Band, he rejoined Molly Hatchet in 1982 to participate in the album “No Guts … No Glory.” The group eventually disbanded, then reunited and toured in 1996 for release of the album “Devil’s Canyon.”
Brown ended his career after a stroke in 1998, according to reports.
“Danny was way more than a singer for a rock’n’roll band. He was a great brother, a wonderful son,” Lyndia Brown said. “He is going to be missed terribly by everybody.” 
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