Roy Buchanan - Hey Joe (Live From Austin TX)

"Hey Joe" from  Buchanan's 'Live From Austin TX' performance.

Leroy "Roy" Buchanan (September 23, 1939 – August 14, 1988) was an American guitarist and blues musician. 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 he is still considered a highly influential guitar player.^[ 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

Death[edit]

According to his agent and others, Buchanan was doing well, having gained control of his drinking habit and playing again, when he was arrested for public intoxication after a domestic dispute. He was found hanged from his own shirt in a jail cell on August 14, 1988, in the Fairfax County, Virginia, Jail. According to Thomas Hartman, who was in a cell near Buchanan's, the deputy sheriff opened the door early in the morning and found Buchanan with the shirt around his neck.^[ His cause of death was officially recorded as suicide, a finding disputed by Buchanan's friends and family. One of his friends, Marc Fisher, reported seeing Roy's body with bruises on the head.

After his death, compilation and other albums continue to be released, including in 2004 the never-released first album he recorded for Polydor, The Prophet.

Roy Buchanan is interred at Columbia Gardens Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.