Roy Buchanan - Roy Buchanan

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Music reviews of Roy Buchanan

Music Review: Blues Country Fire
Rating: 4 Stars

Plenty enough did try, of course; this recluse was influential beyond his self-imposed scope. (Consider: Jeff Beck, for one, dedicated "Cause We've Ended as Lovers" on his resurrective "Blow By Blow" to Buchanan, whom Beck admitted emulating for his sleek but soulful excursion on that much-admired track.) His first official Polydor album (the label had rejected his first try at a first album, spurning his wish to pump it like he loved it on his home turf, rejecting the obvious call for guitar-slinging strut and jive; in fact, the label actually contemplated suing him for breach of contract over it) delivered the goods for the most part and then some, though Buchanan sometimes gets in his own way. When he doesn't it's exhilarating music even with that trebly-to-the-third-power sound of his worn Telecaster: "I Am A Lonesome Fugitive" could have been (and still seems) at least as autobiographical as Buchanan's near-signature, haunted-mountain blues lope, "The Messiah Will Come Again," which is itself a stop-the-clock proposition even if Buchanan's vocal recitation sounds more like he's trying to convince himself.

But "John's Blues" is downright shattering, Buchanan crunching one after another line of pure deep emotion with such commitment that even when he's only too obvious (his one wounding flaw: he had superlatively advanced technique and often could not resist letting it ride over pure music feeling; granted, he would find himself often enough in imposed music settings which must have felt suffocating or insane,even if he could and usually did hold his own) the soul overcomes.

That tension, plus his sometimes-inability to decide his music (he often seemed as though he couldn't make up his mind whether he was a bluesman, a country picker - though you'd take on the dichotomy, too, if you could wring out as gripping a version of "Sweet Dreams" as Buchanan's - or a kind of fusionesque nomad) would stay with Buchanan throughout his life. But in due course he would recover his truest root and make music equal to that root's best exercises here. By any accounting - of his style or his life - Roy Buchanan was born to play the blues.

Description of Roy Buchanan

Blues CDs

• Music > Styles
• Pop
• Rock