Roy Buchanan
American blues musician
Who was Roy Buchanan?
Leroy "Roy" Buchanan (September 23, 1939 – August 14, 1988) was an American guitarist and blues rock musician. 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. 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).
Historical significance
A pioneer of the "Telecaster sound", Buchanan worked as a sideman and as a solo artist, with two gold albums early in his career and two later solo albums that made it to the Billboard chart. He never achieved stardom but is considered a highly influential guitarist. "Gospel," he recalled, "that's how I first got into black music".