A Brief History of the Blues #8:Roy Buchanan

When he was asked where he learned his almost vocal like playing technique on the Telecaster, Roy Buchanan responded, more than once, that it was because he was "half-man, half wolf". Even though Roy was a notorious story-teller, there were certain wolf-like aspects about him from his almost painful shyness to a stalking stage presence and an attitude that seemed to roll from docility to a ferocity like a flipped switch, none seemed to lend as much credence to his story as the hooded eyes that peered out from under his cabbie hat. To listen to Roy Buchanan wail and howl on his Telecaster is to get a real feel for true primordial blues plugged in and amped.

Roy Buchanan was born in 1939 in rural Ozark, Arkansas to a sharecropper (and not a Pentecostal preacher as Roy was known to say. When one writer asked Roy's brother J.D. if their father had ever been a preacher, he responded "If my father ever went into a church, the roof'd fall in on him"), he was third of four children. Two years after he was born, the family moved to Pixley, California where his father worked as a farm laborer. At the age of nine, Roy's parents purchased a red Rickenbocker lap steel guitar and lessons for him from a local music teacher. The young Buchanan took lessons for three years. At the end of that time, his teacher learned that Roy never learned to read music but rather had learned his lessons by ear and repeated them back note for note. Although she was heart-broken that Roy refused to learn to read the music, she left him with a lesson that he never forgot and used to forge his own sound. "If you don't play with feeling, don't play". He played in local bands during his teenaged years in and around nearby Bakersfield, which at that time was creating it's own sound with the likes of Buck Owens and Roy Nichols. In 1952, Roy picked up a standard flat top guitar and taught himself to pick in the local style.

At the age of 16, Roy left Pixley with a Martin acoustic and a hollow body Gibson heading to Los Angles to stay with his older brother and sister while seeking out work as a musician. In 1956 Roy was brought into a rock and roll orchestra in Hollywood called the Heartbeats (with drummer Spencer Dryden, later of Jefferson Airplane and New Riders of the Purple Sage). As a bunch of green kids, they were used up by an unscrupulous manager and eventually abandoned in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. At this point, each member of the band was essentially alone. Buchanan faired well securing a gig on "Oklahoma Bandstand" as a staff guitarist. Following an appearance on the show, Dale Hawkins of The Tornados (supporting his hit record, "Suzie-Q") met up with Roy. When Hawkins left for Shreveport, LA, Roy followed him. In 1958, Hawkins and Buchanan recorded Willie Dixon's "My Babe" at Chess Records in Chicago that became Roy's first commercial success.

Over the next few years, Buchanan toured the country with Hawkins and found himself in and out of various road outfits and playing as a studio musician. He had also traded in his Gibson for the Telecaster that was to become his trademark for the remainder of his career. In 1960 Buchanan and Hawkins were playing in Toronto, Canada, the home of Dale Hawkins cousin and fellow musician, Ronnie Hawkins. Ronnie was quite impressed with the licks that this stage quiet – road wild kid from California could put together with relative ease. According to the stories, Ronnie wanted Roy for a particular reason; he wanted Roy to tutor his own guitar player, a young, talented and yet undisciplined kid by the name of Robbie Robertson who was playing bass for Ronnie. The mentoring went very well. Robertson is quoted as saying of Roy, "He did all these tricks, weird sounds, and bending things down and bending the neck and playing with the volume control. It was a very frightening experience".

Roy's tenure with Ronnie Hawkins outfit (The Hawks which was later to become the now legendary 'The Band') was relatively short-lived. Ronnie once said of Roy, "He was too much of a free spirit for the time … You didn't know if he was super intelligent or just out of this world", and Roy took off on his own.

Through the early to mid-sixties, Roy was living the life of a blues man, on the road, working his way east, as a sideman and session guitarist for groups and artists as diverse as pop musician Freddie Cannon to country star Merle Kilgore. His work on Bobby Gregg's "Potato Peeler" was the first recorded showcase of what later was to become the Buchanan trademark, ear-piercing pinch harmonics. Settling in the Washington D.C. era, Buchanan now married with a growing family played constantly in the local clubs in and around the D.C., Maryland and Virginia areas with his skills gaining an almost legendary status. By this time, a young, local guitar hotshot named Danny Gatton began to show up at Roy's gigs and the two developed a friendship and rivalry. For several years, it was a friendly battle between the two as to who was the hottest picker in the area.

Roy Buchanan continued to toil in relative obscurity through out the late 60's, during the days when Hendrix and Clapton ruled. There was a story circulating that Roy had attended a Hendrix show and was so dismayed that Hendrix had grown so famous making the same sounds with a wah-wah pedal that Roy had been doing years before with only his hands, his guitar and a Fender amp cranked up to 10 that he eventually moved away from the more rocking blues to a more American roots sound. He had even put down his guitar for a few years and enrolled in a barber college in an attempt to find a skill that would allow him to feed his growing family.

Although the details are somewhat murky, at one point, Roy had been signed by Charlie Daniels to do an album in Nashville. Roy was so disappointed with the over-all sound of the album and with what he felt was the "difficult" direction provided by Daniels, the album was never released (although a few tracks have shown up on the myriad of compilations that have appeared since Buchanan's untimely death).

Here is another example of the breadth and width of Roy's story telling; it is a fairly common rock and roll tale, Roy was found of telling journalists that he was asked to join The Rolling Stones after the death of Brian Jones and turned it down. His claim was that he was too disinterested in fame to join up with The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World. It is an interesting story but one that has never been confirmed by anyone, including the Stones.

An article in the Washington Post in 1971 was picked up by Rolling Stone magazine that heaped praise on Buchanan for his guitar skills. The Rolling Stone article caught the attention of documentary film maker / television producer John Adams who filmed a PBS documentary entitled "The Best Unknown Guitarist In The World" which eventually led Roy to a contract with Polydor. This brought his name to the attention of blues fans and was strengthened on the word of mouth of several other famous guitar players from around the world including John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Merle Haggard and Jeff Beck.

Although Buchanan had achieved success under Polydor (five albums with one going gold) and Atlantic (three albums with one going gold), he quit recording in 1981, disgusted by what he said was "lack of control over his music", he vowed never to enter the studio again. He maintained a relatively low profile until 1984 when he was coaxed back into the studio on the Alligator label by owner/producer Bruce Iglauer. Given complete artistic freedom, Buchanan cut loose on "When A Guitar Plays The Blues" which remained on the charts for 13 weeks. It was Buchanan's first pure blues album and it seemed to hit home for him. His next release for Alligator, "Dancing On The Edge", won the College Media Journal Award for Best Blues Album in 1986 and featured vocals on three tracks by blues mainstay Delbert McClinton. His last studio album, released in 1987, "Hot Wires" is still considered his best effort and is often times lauded amongst blues fans the world-over as one of the finest examples of contemporary blues guitar playing caught in recent memory.

On the verge of superstardom, Buchanan's life ended tragically in a jail cell in Fairfax County, Virginia on August 14th, 1988. Roy had been battling his demons of substance and alcohol abuse since he was a teenager but it caught up to him. Arrested on a public intoxication charge, he was left in a cell for a few hours at the Fairfax County jail. When officers went back to check on him, they found him hanging, dead, at the end of his own shirt that he had strung up over a pipe. Even in death, the stories of Roy Buchanan continue to circulate, some suggesting that when he was being prepared for burial that deep bruises were found on his head leading some to speculate that the "The Greatest Unknown Guitarist In The World" may have met his end by something other than suicide. But for all intents and purposes, Roy left the world in the way that he lived in it; by his own rules, his own desires and his own hand.

Buchanan was known for his use of his Fender Tele-caster (that he affectionately called Nancy), his Fender amp and his seemingly almost mysterious ability to achieve violin swells and a 'wah-wah' effect using nothing more than double string bends, a flair for rather unconventional solos, technique and a "butterfly" type of right hand flourish with the tone and volume knobs. One of his band mates once described his right hand technique as "dancing spiders" and even though it has never been confirmed by any particular source, Buchanan was one of the first players to utilize and popularize the use of pinch harmonics.

Les Paul recalled the first time he stumbled upon Buchanan at one of Roy's standing gigs at a bar (Dick Lee's Musical Bar in Belmawr, New Jersey) in 1961, "We never heard anything quite like what Roy was doing. He interested the hell out of me. He's not playing an arpeggio the way you learn an arpeggio. If you had studied the instrument you played straight on, the chromatic scale you're taught in school (sic). This guy was anything but conventional – he was just out there. He was unrestricted, as far as what he played. If he felt like getting from here to there, it didn't matter how he got there. If he didn't pick it, he plucked it with his fingers. There were no rules with Roy. He was cruising down his own lane".

If you listen to Roy's recordings, the truth to this statement will be crystal clear. Roy was his own man, just not long enough.