Music of the Week — November 12, 2006

Roy Buchanan: Sweet Dreams: The Anthology (Disc 1)

Like many other guitar heroes, Roy Buchanan never really put the whole musical package together. He was too much of a virtuoso to be a sideman, but he doesn’t seem to have had the broad musical vision, not to mention the singing and songwriting skills, needed to lead and mold a band into a distinctive identity. The lineup on these tracks, mostly recorded in the early and mid-‘70s, shifts constantly. The rhythm sections, while always capable, never seem to have the fire that Buchanan himself does. Without his spectacular guitar work, most of the music here would be lackluster.

But what guitar playing it is. As with Eric Johnson, reviewed here recently, anyone who loves electric guitar should hear Buchanan. His style is bluesy with a country accent, rich, soulful, and not infrequently mind-boggling in its technical skill. If he didn’t invent, he apparently brought to some kind of peak the use of harmonics to get a sudden high, wild leap of pitch and tone. He uses wide bends and some knob twiddling to get a strange crying sound that I’ve never heard from anyone else. My only reservation about his playing in general is that his tone gets kind of squawky and thin when it’s at its loudest, but that’s not most of the time.

This is the first disc of a two-disc set, and includes mostly studio performances. The second disc favors live recordings (review forthcoming in the next week or so). The set includes material from the solo albums he released on Polydor and Atlantic, plus some unreleased material. To my taste the four tracks from the early unreleased album, The Prophet, are not that interesting—Buchanan doesn’t play that much on them, although what he does play is impressive. Although it was to be billed as a Buchanan solo album, it also involves, very heavily, Charlie Daniels, singing, playing guitar, and writing songs. I didn’t know Daniels had a hippie period, but his “Black Autumn” features portentous lyrics along the lines of early Simon and Garfunkle and that fast-echoing fade—I’m sure there’s a name for the effect—on the vocal to make it psychedelic. Or something. You can also hear Daniels sing “Story of Isaac” here, which is interesting.

The fun really starts with track 5, Don Gibson’s “Sweet Dreams.” It’s a sweet distillation of pure American soul, as is the last track on this disk, “Wayfaring Pilgrim.” Both are Buchanan at his absolute best, rich, sweet, soulful, and sometimes fiery. Most everything in between is in the same class, although the hard rocker “My Baby Says She’s Gonna Leave Me” doesn’t do much for me. Most of the others are blues or blues variants, and all have great moments, at least. “The Messiah Will Come Again” in particular, something of a Buchanan signature piece, is a powerful voice of religious yearning.

Most listeners will probably share my opinion that Buchanan overdoes it sometimes, but I find it very forgivable. It often sounds like an understandable result of the skill and emotionality of his playing. Take “Five String Blues,” for instance. The crying thing toward the end is overdone, I admit. But when the entire lyric of a song is as follows:

Oh oh oh Jesus
This is my final plea
You know I’m still begging you
Don’t let the devil get the best of me

some weeping is probably appropriate.

Buchanan died in 1988, in a jail cell, an apparent suicide, after being picked up for DUI. I hope the devil didn’t get the best of him.

Here’s “The Messiah Will Come Again” on YouTube. No pyrotechnics, but what feeling. For fireworks—in fact for a pretty complete technical inventory—try “Roy’s Blues”, part 1 and part 2. Catch the harmonics about thirty seconds into part 2.

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