WEEKLY SOUTHERN ARTS
"Sometime the boogaloo 
  • Home
  • Guns, Faith and Murder
  • The Million Dollar Store
  • Artistic Con-cepts
  • Judy Garland - "Soul Singer"
  • Robert & Jimi and the Twenty Seven Blues
  • The Great Pretenders
  • Imagine
  • Me and Junior Parker
  • The Republican
  • Sweet Home Chicago (The Obama Shakedown)
  • The Ballad of Hunter & Joe
  • The 22-yr-old Bottle Blonde
  • Is It Alright...To Be White?
  • Resist the Devil and He Will Flea
  • Music & Reminiscence
  • Lowell George searching for authenticity
  • A Telling Lie
  • Part One: The Monster Is Summoned
  • Like Billy Eckstein Singing to an Empty Club at 1:00 AM on a Saturday Night in 1975.
  • Bent
  • Kelly Joe Phelps
  • Why The Devil Don't Come Around No More
  • Hearing Junior Wells “On Tap'' one more Time
  • Muddy and Me
  • Unwitting Hypocrisy is The Best Kind of Hypocrisy
  • Excess Baggage
  • Excess Baggage pt. 2
  • Fake News Is The New Real News
  • The Death of Billy Graham and Manufacturing Consent
  • American Youth: The Rise of The New Media
  • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Talk About Slavery and Shit
  • Just Smoke
  • Monkey in a Box
  • How The Children of Sal and Dean Destroyed The World
  • On This Cold Winter's Morn
  • The Crime of the Century
  • Evidence: What The Hell Is It?
  • They Were Pissed: America, Jack Kerouac, and the Beats
  • Negotiating The Maze Of Life and a Blues Shuffle.
  • Everyone Is Hitler (In their own Way)
  • The Mystery of The Giant Balloon Shark
  • Subterfuge and Its Discontents
  • God Debunks Global Warming
  • Day Two: God Continues To Debunk Global Warming
  • Strzoking Russia
  • The Al Franken Effect. Or, How to Destroy America and Lose Elections
  • The Big Maybe
  • The News Apocalypse
  • The Guitarticle (Guitar article)
  • The Nation of Lucifer
  • Slurring Pocahontas
  • Why Everything Good Said About Net Neutrality is a Lie
  • .....and behold, The Cause of Your Demise Is Upon You
  • The Trans-boy That Cried Wolf
  • Believe Nothing
  • Donald Trump Blasts The Heads Off Of Tiny Woodland Creatures
  • The Problem of Hypocrites
  • Roy Moore: Serial Pervert
  • I'm So Frustrated
  • The Devil's Whisper
  • Science Can't Dance
  • You're Gonna Have To Serve Somebody
  • Louie C. K.
  • Common Sense
  • Hunting For Witches
  • Living in The Age of "tRump"
  • The Devil is a Hustler
  • The Skinny
  • Eric Dolphy
  • ISIS Rode in On a Donkey
  • "The Manafort Indictment"
  • The Truth About the Middle East
  • Dennis Budimer's "Alone Together" Revisited
  • The Halloween Edition
  • The 20th Century Was Groovy
  • The Salesman
  • The Dossier
  • Elmore James
  • Isle of The Poor
  • The Patriarchy is Alive and Well
  • Moving Napoleon
  • Guns and Guerrillas
  • Playing Four
  • Hollywood and Scumbags
  • Why Everything You Think, Is Wrong
  • Killing Yourself With Terrorism
  • Being Liberal
  • Laced With Hate
  • A Message From Occupy Democrats
  • A Taxing Dilemma
  • What Really Happened with Aid in Puerto Rico
  • Colin Kaepernick and Beyoncé are geniuses. Part 1
  • When the Levee Breaks
  • The Second Coming of Anthony Weiner
  • How to Never Lose a Fight
  • Creating Chaos out of Meaning
  • Crime and Punishment
  • The Man in the Mirror
  • Guitar Gods of the Sixties
  • Entopy: A Play in One Act
  • The Ragged Tale of a Poverty Stricken Economic Genius
  • The Dreamers
  • Hey There Georgy Girl
  • This Is Not a Defense of Joel Osteen. Or is it?
  • The Ballad of Poindexter Glockenspiel
  • The Big Dummy
  • More Florida in Pictures and Text
  • How Do I Hate Thee
  • Florida in Images and More Images
  • "How To Solve The Healthcare Crisis and Why It's So Damned Hard To Fix"
  • The Big Lie
  • The Demise of the West
  • “Good Times! Good Times! You know, we talkin’ bout Good Times!”
  • "Justice My Ass!"
  • Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
  • The Coming Apocalypse and How to Avoid it: a Historical/Biblical Perspective.
  • "Muthafuckin' Chains!"
  • Lies Our Father's Told Us
  • Poetry and Politics - a few mixed verses
  • The Inner Man
  • The Vampire and The Carpet Salesman
  • Comey Speaks!
  • A Word From Nostradamus about the Comey Hearings
  • The Towering Babble
  • Chain of Fools
  • I Got Ramblin' on My Mind
  • Telling Ourselves Stories
  • Shit! Make Me Wanna Holler!
  • Even More Reasons Why The Paris Accords are Total Horseshit.
  • When Life Imitates Satire
  • Jethro and Becky Sue Come To America
  • Random Apocrypha
  • Why The Paris Climate Accords Are Total Horseshit
  • Urban Stories
  • The Kingdom of God: a personal rant
  • Urban Week @ South Beach
  • Serpico Revisited
  • The Road To Surf-dumb. Or, is it The Road To Serfdom?
  • This is Not a Political Article
  • My Hometown
  • What Does This Mean?
  • We're All Fools Sometime
  • One Pill Makes You Larger
  • "What a Maroon!"
  • Secrets and Lies
  • A Tale of Wine and Murder
  • "White House Under Siege!"
  • The Amateur Narcissist
  • Like a Rock
  • The Greatest of Ally of a True Idiot is.....
  • How To Prove someone's a Witch
  • Jesus Was a Sly Dog
  • An Open Letter From The Democratic National Committee
  • The Power of Language
  • The Existential Croûton
  • Random Facebook Thoughts
  • A Play "The Poverty Racket"
  • The Demise of the 4th Estate
  • Love To Hate My Enemies
  • Feelings, Oh, Oh, Oh, Feelings
  • Art or Reality
  • The Prison Yard Blues
  • Who is Richard Spencer and Why Does He Matter?
  • __an excerpt from "The Power of Voltron "
  • A Plea From a Progressive
  • ANTIFA - The Anti Fascists, Fascists
  • Conspiracy Theory
  • 4 More Poems, 4 More Pictures
  • "Are You Freaking People Insane?"
  • 4 Pictures 4 Poems
  • The Ballad of Carlos Slim
  • Pretending What's in Your Head is True
  • The Cognitive Dissonance of a Faithful Democrat
  • The Human Snakepit
  • George Freeman - Unsung Master of the Jazz Guitar
  • The Price of Milk
  • Suspicious Minds
  • Bill O'Reilly Sexual Predator?
  • The New Soldier
  • Orwell Revisited
  • Larry Coryell - The Godfather is Dead
  • A Tiger Beat
  • South Florida - HOT & COOL
  • Jean Paul Sartre & the Existentialist Mojo
  • Culture Matters, Immigration Matters, Sharks Matter
  • Thomas Sowell
  • A Tree Falls In Central Park on a Gay Banker
  • Black Codes From The Underground
  • Does an Idiot know they're an Idiot?
  • A Poem for Pooh
  • It's All or Nothing Baby!
  • Racism is Alive and Well
  • "Shut the Hell Up!"
  • Jerry Seinfeld - Social Pariah
  • A Man Must Nurture His Pet Peeves
  • Not the Usual Immigration Article
  • Man Talk, with Donald Trump pt. 1
  • Man Talk, with Donald Trump pt. 2
  • The Bad Seed
  • Dogma Never Sleeps
  • Trump and Clinton Debate
  • Was Jesus a True Pacifist?
  • Brexit Was the Shot Heard Around the World
  • Obama, How Great Thou Art
  • War is Good
  • The Willful Ignorance of Intellectual Children
  • What about All Those Peacful Muslims?
  • Terror! What Terror?
  • Biff and Shorty Play The Blues
  • Forty Miles of Bad Road
  • How Obamacare Became the law of the land: And Other Fairytales for Adults
  • Genteel Republicans vs The Alt-Right
  • Should Drugs be Legal?
  • The Prophet Speaks
  • The Dream Sequence
  • Voting 3rd Party and the Moral Low-Ground
  • Sayonara America
  • What does Never Trump Mean?
  • Barack Obama is the Most Brilliant Man Ever to be President?
  • If God Created War, Does That Mean That War is Good?
  • Never Let Your Enemies Define You
  • Facebook, Science & Religion
  • Bullshit by the Numbers
  • Bullshit by the Numbers - part II
  • The Heated Quest for the "No Information Voter"
  • I Love The Dead
  • Those Who Lurk
  • Battered, Bruised and Beaten
  • Trump and Hitler
  • America in Black and White
  • Trans-Athletics
  • Playing a Rigged Game
  • Who was that Mass Murderer?
  • The Kidnappers
  • The Game
  • Terror in Nice: A Variation on a Theme
  • The Idiots Guide on How to Destory the World
  • Terror in France
  • A Fictional Conversation Between a Pastor and a Historian About the Bible
  • The Immoral Necessity for Scapegoats
  • Who Really Shot Those Eleven Cops? Was It Donald Trump?
  • Killer Cops and Cop Killers
  • Happy 4th of July
  • How Do You Cast Your Vote When You've Only Got a Few Bullets Left?
  • "Yes, She's a Lying Sack of Shit....but She's our Lying Sack of Shit."
  • All Apologies
  • Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up
  • Goodbye Scotty Moore
  • If a Bluebird Plays the Blues Why Can't it Play Free Jazz
  • Terror in Turkey
  • When David Slew Goliath
  • The Life & Death of a Global Fat Cat
  • Intentionally Censoring the News
  • The Brits Leave the EU
  • Chick, Christian, Roy & Kenny G
  • Who Really Committed Mass Murder in Orlando
  • The Tale of the Prince and the Shrew
  • A Dying Father's Last Father's Day
  • Mass Murdering, Terrorist's Father is Obama and Hillary's Best Friend
  • Why Cream still Matters 50 Years Later
  • Misguided Anger and Partisan Politics
  • The Deep Guilt of the Religious Left
  • Radical Islam! What Radical Islam?
  • Denial is a River in Egypt
  • A Response to all the Haters
  • Why Muhammad Ali was my Hero (in spite of being a Racist)
  • Why Trump Matters
  • The New Progressive Racism
  • A Tragedy in Cincinnati
  • The Evil that Men do (Women too.)
  • Differences? What Differences?
  • Racism Revisited
  • Battling Immigration Straw Men
  • Blood Quantum
  • Fighting Transgender Straw Men
  • Logical Fallacies about God and Money
  • Progressive Straw Men
  • Everybody is Robbing You Blind
  • On The Road To El Donaldo
  • Dear Mark: About Donald Trump
  • Identifying the Enemy
  • Why I Will Vote For Trump
  • I Totally Agree With Myself
  • Teaching Americans Where to Pee
  • Goodbye Lonnie Mack
  • Bernie Wants You To Pay His Fair Share
  • Bruce Springsteen vs. North Carolina
  • Mr. Smiley Is an Idiot
  • Why Does College Cost So Much?
  • Black Power and Bad Vibes At Whiteness History Month
  • How Facebook Showed Me That We're Doomed
  • Muslims kill Muslims by means of White People
  • The Slap
  • America Wants a 3rd Party Candidate
  • Jesus Loved Everybody
  • Call it what it is.
  • Belgium vs. Turkey. Which One is Worse?
  • Barack, Fidel and Che
  • How He Gonna Get His Money pt. 2
  • How He Gonna Get His Money
  • The Turn of The Screw
  • Dear America: Now, about Trump....
  • The Attack of the Anti Trumpers
  • Did You Know that America is Socialism....and boy, ain't it Swell
  • Trump - Prophet or Blowhard?
  • Black Lies Matter, All Lies Matter
  • The Donald and the Debate
  • Leonardo and The Bear
  • The Thunder Rolled and the "Trump" Blows em all to Hell
  • Fragmented Fairytails
  • Cars That Never Were but Should've Been, Part 6
  • Building The Perfect Beast
  • America: A Tale of Two Cities, Part 1
  • Uncle Bernie in New Hampshire
  • The Big L
  • The Diary of a Former Leftist
  • Free Speech not Hate Speech?
  • State of the Union
  • Losing My Religion
  • Don't Take Our Guns Away Until We Kill Those Honky Bastards
  • Bye Bye Europe
  • "Trump is a Racist!"
  • "Hell Yeah! I've Got Obama Care!
  • Trumponomics
  • Woman of the Year
  • Malicious Intent and the Art of the Microaggression
  • Muslim No-Go Zones - Myth or Reality?
  • Donald J. Trump and the Muslim Migration to America
  • There Is No God But Allah?
  • Roadhouse - The Reboot
  • Sometimes You Just Can't Win
  • A Few Thoughts Regarding Trump
  • Cars That Never Were But Should've Been, Part 5
  • You Can Have My Steering Wheel When You Pry It From Cold, Daed Hands
  • The Great Debate
  • Al, Thomas and Paul - Malthusians Then and Now
  • A Prophet Debates Global Warming and other retated Dogma
  • Memes, Scapegoats, Propaganda
  • Little Hillary and Her Monsters
  • A Prophecy for America
  • The Basketball Metaphor
  • Vladimir Putin: An American Hero
  • Little Things
  • The Democrats Debate
  • It's All Ablout da Benjamins
  • Remember When?
  • Mass Shooter
  • Cars That Never Were But Should've Been: Part 4
  • Should A Muslim Be President in America?
  • The Strange Case of Ahmed Mohamed
  • Debt and Other Devious Angels
  • Bernie Sanders is Caesar not Jesus
  • An inconvenient Truth
  • Who's really a Native American?
  • The Rebirth of the Silent Majority
  • Money That's What I Want!
  • The Syrian Crisis and the Memeing of America
  • Why Societies Have Generally Valued Men More than Women
  • The Problem of Evil
  • A few Thoughts on a Few Things
  • The Authentic pose of a Black White Man
  • Sweden: Socialist Utopia or Progressive Madhouse?
  • Why Dogs Matter
  • Guilty Until Proven Innocent
  • Was Jesus a Socialist?
  • "The Donald" A Man for the Ages
  • Harvesting the Wheat - or - Karma's a Real Bitch
  • Cecil The Lion
  • Cars That Never Were but Should’ve Been, Part 3
  • Secrets and Lies
  • Can Minorities Be Racist?
  • I Was Just Thinking....Hmm?
  • Iran Deal - Good or Bad?
  • Jihad or Not Jihad? That is the Question.
  • "Let's Do Lunch" with Planned Parenthood
  • America The Contemptible
  • Marriage, Bigotry and Cooties
  • The Things We Care About
  • The Simplicity of it All
  • A Dissenting Opinion
  • Cars That Should've Been, But Never Were: part II
  • Live Now, Pay Later
  • I Am, Whatever I Say I Am!
  • Bernie Sanders is the Dumbest Bastard on Earth
  • Cars That Never Were But Should've Been
  • Bruce Jenner
  • The Good Society
  • A Personal Jesus For My Own
  • Take a Ride on a Hell Bound Train
  • Requiem For a Car Show
  • Obama Channels Neville Chamberlain in Dealing with Iran
  • The Short Life of a Political Lemming
  • The Strongman
  • The Broken Window
  • The Selective Outrage of The Anti Israel Left
  • When the Blind Lead the Blind
  • Top Brass With Class
  • Living In A world On Fire
  • Lying Liars and the Lies They Tell
  • What The Hell Is Esotericism?
  • Unicorns, Free Healthcare and other Mythological Creatures
  • Heroes and Dunces
  • A Few Thoughts On a Few Things
  • The Return Of Super Fly
  • Should You Ever Bet On A dead Horse?
  • Money For Nothing
  • Across The Great Divide
  • Tom, Jerry, Eddie & Sydney
  • The Folly of Foibles
  • Who really killed Eric Garner?
  • The Art of The Sale
  • Political Bullshit and All That Jazz
  • Oh, The Horror of It All
  • To Torture or Not To Torture, That is The Question
  • Selective Justice
  • Executive Action
  • Give Us Your Tired, Poor and Ambitious
  • Johnny Winter, Ahhh-Yeahh!
  • Homeless and Transgender "Let My People Pee!"
  • Are We Insane? You Betcha!
  • Ebola and Racism
  • You're a Racist, Just Admit It!
  • To Discriminate or Not to Discriminate, That is the Question
  • The Life of an Imaginary Historian
  • Why Most Debates About The Minimum Wage are Bullshit
  • The Return of the Infinite Monkeys
  • Politically Correct Genocide
  • Language and the illusion of Meaning
  • Obama vs. Reagan
  • Is Barack Obama our Most Successful President Ever?
  • White Racism Black Racism
  • The Race
  • Should People Be Free to Discriminate?
  • Science, Religion and Brother Neil
  • Welcome To America
  • The Reincarnation of Jimmy Carter and the Return of Scarface
  • SCOTUS, Condoms and Collateral Damage
  • The American Dream
  • Attack of the Bloated Leeches or "Why Does the Economy Suck pt. II"
  • Why Does the Economy Suck?
  • Jaco Pastorius - A Passage in Time
  • How can we save the world, from people who want to save the world?
  • A Short Political rant: pt I
  • Jerry Reed, Tom Jones and the Original Guitar Heroes
  • Part Two: The Politics of the Eloi and the Morlock
  • Angel: part 7
  • Wayne Cochran "Going Back to Miami"
  • Matt Damon & the Teachers Union vs. the Capitalist Pigs
  • The Last Damned Healthcare Article You'll Ever Need
  • The Gospel According to Mark
  • Angel: part VI
  • Ted Bundy & The Hunt For The Devil
  • Charlie & Clint: Dead & Deader
  • Trayvon & George : An American Hate Story
  • Jury Duty
  • Little Tommy & The Blues Kings
  • Kayaking "The Big Cypress" with Crocodlies
  • The Birth of The Jazz Guitarist
  • Gay Marriage
  • Garage Band - The 1960's
  • King Arthur, Pelagius and Original Sin
  • The Story of Ricky
  • In the News and on the Web
  • When is a Horse not a Horse
  • Hidden Miami
  • I Hate the 60's: A Personal Rock Odyssey
  • Crocodiles and Alligators in Florida: Monsters in our Backyard
  • The Legend of Robert Pete Williams
  • Saturday Night At Big Tinys
  • The Mad Hatter and the Tea Party
  • The Case Of The Infinite Monkeys
  • The American Heritage Series
  • Here Comes the Sun
  • The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
  • Blue And Green
  • Mundi's, a Love Story

Jimi Hendrix Was The Roy Buchanan of Rock & Roll...and other rural American stories

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“Jimi Hendrix Was The Roy Buchanan of Rock & Roll & Other Rural American Stories"

Roy Buchanan never really fit. He was an old man in rock & roll terms by the time anyone really knew who he was. This was when the saying went “Never trust anyone over 30”—when Vietnam and the anti-war movement were raging, the civil rights movement was in full swing, and various other rebellions were in their infancy, from Woman’s rights to Gay rights. The world separated into two camps, then, the old and the young, a generation gap that was more a yawning chasm, than a cultural disagreement. Much like today. The difference is that today, we see mostly manufactured outrage, which transcends age. In that sense, it is very different than the segregated world of the 194os and 50s when Roy Buchanan was growing up.

Roy Buchanan wasn't a 1960’s rocker. Not really. He wasn't a hippie. In 1971, when the PBS documentary “The World's Greatest Unknown Guitarist” was released, Buchanan was a 32-year-old, six foot one inch, 210 lb. Southern man, with an extended comb-over and goatee. Roy looked more like a Beatnik hold-over from the previous decade, meets country music outlaw, than Eric Clapton or The Rolling Stones. Although, both images of Roy—the contemporary of Elvis and Fats Domino, or a fellow traveler of a younger generation of players like Hendrix and Jeff Beck, were both slightly out of focus. Roy fit in either camp, but never completely.

In terms of time and place, Roy Buchanan was a 1st generation, Elvis-era rocker, having begun his major recording career in 1958 with Dale Hawkins. He also recorded with country artist Merle Kilgore, among others, and performed with pre-rock & roll, R&B pioneer, Johnny Otis, when the word “Rock & Roll” barely existed, except as a sexual euphemism.

Johnny Otis was the White son of Greek immigrants who lived his adult life as a Black man. Demonstrating, even then, that multiculturalism and identifying as something other than what’s on your birth certificate, isn't really new. Otis began his career in the 1940s, playing with some of the most influential Black R & B and jazz bands of the time. He was a singer, songwriter, bandleader, and talent scout. The man who discovered Jackie Wilson, Little Willie John, Big Mamma Thornton, Little Esther, Big Jay McNeely, and Etta James, among others. In 1950, Johnnie Otis won R & B artist of the year, when R&B was thought of as “Race Music,” which was another word for segragated “Black Music.” He was accepted as “High Yellow.” Meaning, a Black man with a cracker in the woodpile. In reality, Johnny Otis was a White man whose immigrant family moved into a Black neighborhood when he was a boy, bought a small grocery store. No different than immigrants today. The one big difference, Otis never left the segregated neighborhood. He married a Black woman and lived his life as a Black man, until the day he died.

Like Johnny Otis, Roy Buchanan wasn’t easy to define, at least, artistically speaking, even if his racial designation was obvious.  And, like a lot of gifted musicians living in the legally segregated South, he absorbed the scope of American popular music and culture, both Black and White, including jazz, country, rock a billy, R&B, and, especially, the blues, all played with something of a psychedelic edge, even if nobody would've understood what the word “Psychedelic” meant, back in 1961 when Roy recorded “Mule Train Stomp.” Or, a year later when he recorded “The Potato Peeler.” Even then, you could hear all of the essentials of Buchanan’s style. The sustain, the lightly over-driven telecaster tone that was his trademark, the volume swells, the pinched harmonics, and the tonal quality of Roy’s guitar were genuinely unique. So much so that recording technology would have to advance another 6 or 7 years to begin to effectively capture what Roy was doing. In other words, if country music ever produced its own version of Jimi Hendrix, it was Roy Buchanan, whose arsenal of innovative techniques were as radical to country music, early rock & roll, and
rock-a-billy as Hendrix was to the rock music of the late 1960s. The difference being that Roy got there first, years before Jimi Hendrix, during a period when sidemen and session players seldom ever got public credit for their work.


Musicians have long ignored artificial barriers, in an effort share their common language. Most of those barriers tend to be about marketing, more than music. Some barriers, like racial segregation, were moved aside as far back as the 1920s, nearly 100-years-ago, decades before the earliest stages of the civil rights movement. Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden became musical soul mates, in spite of the potential negative career ramifications. Another extraordinary interracial duo from the same period was the innovative Black guitarist and singer, Lonnie Johnson, and the equally innovative Eddie Lang, who was White. Lang was forced to use the pseudonym Blind Willie Dunn to avoid legal issues. It should be remembered that segregation was the law. Disregard it at your own peril. But many musicians did. Red Rodney—Charlie Parker’s young, White, red-headed trumpet player, during the 1940’s, was passed off as a Black man named “Albino Red” when Parker’s band toured the South, where institutional racism was enforced by local and state governments. It wasn't some ragtag group of toothless Southern crackers that kept racism alive and well in rural America. It was politicians who maintained the feudal system that benefited the large plantations. They were the ones who gained the most from the cheap Black labor. Apartheid in South Africa, was initially driven by labor unions, as well, who understood that allowing Blacks to compete in a free and fair labor market would be a problem for Whites, who were outnumbered 10 to 1, all in the wrong direction.

Even today, music is segregated, primarily, for marketing purposes. It’s easier to corner a niche market by finding an underutilized audience than it is to throw your musical net to wide and miss a chance at a neglected market. Chess records did this in the late 1940s and 1950s, almost by accident, when Leonard and Phil Chess recorded Muddy Waters and found out just how many Black migrants leaving the South were thrilled to hear their down-home music alive and well in a big city like Chicago.  The Chess brothers weren't alone, small independent labels sprang up all over the U.S., as far back as the 1920s, recording jazz, country, blues, bluegrass, and eventually, R&B and Rock & Roll. It was America’s booming economy that drove change, in the form of jobs, jobs, and more jobs, giving poor Blacks and poor Whites their first taste of real economic freedom. With money in their pocket, there was always some entrepreneur, regardless of race, who was eager to meet their demands.  Roy Buchanan, the son of poor White sharecroppers, was as much an expression of that cultural and economic revolution as Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden were 30 years earlier.

In 1955 and 56, Martin Luther King’s Alabama bus boycott coincided with the release of Chuck Berry’s “Maybeline” and Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel,” featuring what was essentially a Black country/R&B artist, and a White R&B/country musician, integrating musical forms. Radio, records, and television gave them a platform from which to express this new integration. A burgeoning post-war economy facilitated the process, which actually began two generations earlier, as the U.S. emerged as the greatest industrial power on earth by the beginning of the 20th century.   It was the politicians that did as little as possible to push the pace of racial change, until it became safe to do so, and only then.

By 1971, when the PBS documentary about Roy called, “The Greatest Unknown Guitarist in The World,” was televised, the world culturally and technologically caught up to Roy, enough to make his story worth telling. The documentary took a journey across America, giving Roy a chance to exhibit his distinct artistry, as he performed with Johnny Otis, Merle Haggard, as well as the great jazz guitar virtuoso Mundell Lowe. It also showcased Roy’s startling technique as he sat and played alone at his parent's house, where Roy was reunited with his family and treated like a prodigal son.

This initial burst of interest in Roy led to an extensive solo career, where he played music by Jimi Hendrix, Hank Williams, Errol Gardner, and Elmore James, in equal measure, with the same psychedelic edge, mystifying technique, and relentless creativity. The records were a mixed bag of what was basically his live show, performed with his backing band, recorded quickly and on the cheap. This was typical of jazz and blues, but very different from the rock music of the period, where bands like The Rolling Stones were expected to spend a fortune, living in European chateaus, waiting until they found their muse. In that sense, “Roy Buchanan & The Snake Stretchers” were a tough act to sell to a young audience who expected their guitar heroes to be like Cream-era Clapton or The Jimi Hendrix Experience. They weren't supposed to play Hank Williams “Hey Good Lookin’.”

But the guitar freaks bought the records, regardless, and the reigning rock guitar gods made the necessary pilgrimage to hear Roy play in a local bar in Washington’s more rural area, even before Roy was really known. Jeff Beck went. So did Jerry Garcia. So did Les Paul, the guitar deity of a much older era. He too was a Roy fan who laughed about Roy’s idiosyncratic ability to get from point A to point B on the guitar neck, using the road less traveled by more conventional guitarists.


Roy Buchanan was never much of a singer or songwriter. He wasn't a thin, cute, teenage-looking boy like Ricky Nelson or The Beatles. He was like Lonnie Mack, another roadhouse guitar legend. Neither man was ever going to appeal to an army of pre-teen girls, which is what the big record labels wanted. Both men were stunningly original guitar stylists, though.  Both men fell between the cracks of popular culture and fame, although, they remained legends and major influences on other guitar legends, who kept their names alive. They even toured together with another 50’s blues guitar deity, Albert Collins, as a reminder of America’s deeply rooted, but not so-distant musical past—all three alive and picking, and playing with as much fire as ever.

Everything, however, has a time and place, especially in the constant changing framework of American popular culture.

On August 14, 1988, following a night of heavy drinking and public unruliness, Roy Buchanan hung himself in his jail cell. If I said it was a cruel but fitting end for an itinerant, 1st generation American rock & roll musician, born dirt poor in the Ozarks, it wouldn't be entirely inappropriate. We almost expect our rural American heroes to die the hard way. The same way they lived.

It should be remembered that Roy Buchanan was born within the familial memory of both Jessie James and Abraham Lincoln, when the South still lived with the sting of the Civil War, where bullets and cannonballs from that war could be found in the fields like artifacts of a lost world. One that still existed, but just barely.  

Coda: Sometime, probably in 1961 or 62, a 17-yr old hotshot guitar-slinger named Robbie Robertson was playing with rock-a-billy star Dale Hawkins, Roy’s former boss. Robbie was at this earliest stage of his career, meeting Roy on the musical battlefield, guitar in hand, cocky and sure, but also wary, having faced Roy under similar circumstances once before. After playing a torrid solo, where Robertson staked his claim, Roy began to manipulate his guitar like a necromancer, creating the sound of runnaway trains, helicopters landing, screeches, squeals, bell-like chimes—all, unrecognizable as a guitar—at least, as anyone else played it. When Roy began to attack his guitar in a more or less conventional way, even then, nothing was as expected. It seldom is when genius is involved. Later, Roy cryptically told the young Robertson that he was part wolf—“That’s why I can do, what I do."  Although skeptical, the younger protege listened carefully. A half century later, Robbie Robertson recounted the story with the same mystified sense of awe that he felt at the dawn of his lengthy career. In the case of Roy Buchanan and other mythic figures of popular culture, the facts alone are seldom ever enough. In such cases, the myth may not be specifically true, but, sometime, it’s as close as we ever to get deciphering the enduring mystery of talent.

​Meaning, “Half wolf,” as a description for Roy Buchanan’s legend, seems as good an answer any.

Mark Magula