Roy Buchanan - The Prophet (1969)

Prior to garnering notoriety as 'The World's Greatest Unknown Guitarist', Roy Buchanan spent the 50's and early 60's as a band member for a number of R&B outfits, and served stints in both Dale Hawkins' and his Canadian cousin Ronnie Hawkins' respective combos. He even released a couple of singles in 1961, but it was during his time touring with Dale Hawkins that he first came to the attention of another rising performer named Charlie Daniels. They remained friends, and by the late 60's the two crossed paths professionally as Buchanan was placed in the care of Daniels, whose recent roster boasted production credits for the likes of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Buchanan's great love was playing live, but wasn't that interested in recording, and it wasn't until Polydor Records offered an advance large enough to cover the cost of recording an album that he agreed to do it. Even then he was happy just to turn up and play his guitar, with Daniels either composing or selecting all of the songs, as well as arranging them and even choosing the local musicians to accompany him. Because of Buchanan's reluctance to travel away from his regular club gigs in and around the Washington area, Daniels was only able to corral him long enough for a handful of studio dates in Nashville, but in that time he did record enough songs for a prospective album, although sessions dragged on until 1971, when the project was finally abandoned. The following year Buchanan tried again, and this time an album was released, to great acclaim, and his career got a second wind. The 1969 sessions were consigned to the vaults, until they turned up in 2004 as an archive release, which has now become quite hard to find. For this post I've taken the 1969 recordings and housed them in (I think) a better sleeve, and have kept back the 1971 songs for a later post. So here is what should have been Roy Buchanan's debut album in 1969, and it's good enough for us to say that if it had come out at the time then his solo career could well have started a good three years earlier than it did.

Track listing

01 Funky Junky
02 Black Autumn
03 Day And Age
04 There'll Always Be
05 Billy Joe Young
06 The Story Of Isaac
07 Baltimore
08 Sign On The Window
09 Humbug Down On The River
10 Pain
11 Desire You