Roy Buchanan – The Best off Music

Roy Buchanan (September 23, 1939 – August 14, 1988) was an American guitarist and blues musician. A pioneer of the Telecaster sound, Buchanan worked as both a sideman and solo artist, with two gold albums early in his career, and two later solo albums that made it on to the Billboard chart. Despite never having achieved stardom, he is still considered a highly influential guitar player. Guitar Player praised him as having one of the “50 Greatest Tones of all Time.”

He appeared on the PBS music program Austin City Limits in 1977 (season 2). Leroy Buchanan was born in Ozark, Arkansas, and was raised there and in Pixley, California, a farming area between Visalia and Bakersfield.

His father was a sharecropper in Arkansas and a farm laborer in California.^] Buchanan told interviewers the fiction that his father was a fiddle-playing preacher, which was repeated in Guitar Player magazine but disputed by his older brother J.D. Buchanan told how his first musical memories were of racially mixed revival meetings he attended with his mother, Minnie. “Gospel,” he recalled, “that’s how I first got into black music”.

He in fact drew upon many disparate influences while learning to play the guitar (though he later claimed his aptitude derived from being “half-wolf”). He initially showed talent on steel guitar before switching to guitar in the early 50s, and started his professional career at age 15, in Johnny Otis’s rhythm and blues revue.
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