Roy Buchanan Fender Telecaster Suicide

Roy Buchanan never attained any real fame or fortune during his lifetime. These days he’s as infamous for apparently turning down an offer to join the Rolling Stones and his mysterious death in a Virginia jail cell in 1988 as he is for his music. Yet Buchanan’s legacy as a guitarist punches way above that of many of the rock stars who held him in such high regard. Born in Ozark, Arkansas in 1939, Leroy ‘Buch’ Buchanan was a master of the Telecaster who elevated Leo Fender’s humble “working man’s” electric guitar to the level of a Stradivarius violin. It was Buchanan, along with fellow doomed genius Danny Gatton, who seeded the ongoing obsession with Telecaster tone. He pioneered the use of Fender’s first-born six-string’s volume and tone controls as on-board effects. Despite the massive developments in guitar technology in the 70s and 80s, Gatton and Buchanan proved that the most versatile solid-body electric guitar ever designed just happened to be the oldest and simplest. #roybuchanan #blues #bb