Roy Buchanan “You’re Not Alone” « Cool Album of the Day

Roy Buchanan “You’re Not Alone”

Posted 21 May 2011 in 70s, Albums of 1978, Albums of the 70s, Blues, Blues-Rock, Concept Album, Experimental, Rock + Roll

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#381 in the Series) is Roy Buchanan, You’re Not Alone.

Many of you are aware of Roy Buchanan. In fact, we’ve featured him once before. You probably know him as this guitar slinging blues player with the fastest licks in the business. This would be true, but this album is a little different. Yes, he still plays those killer notes. The music still has some blues base to it, but this was still quite different.

OK, what makes it different? Firstly, Roy tackles some pretty well known cover tunes on this record. He plays Neil Young’s” Down By the River” and Joe Walsh’s “Turn to Stone.” Another interesting aspect here was the use of some pretty big named studio musicians. Andy Newmark is on drums, Willie Weeks is on bass, and Ray Gomez is on guitar. What I just found out when I was putting this together was that Luther Vandross is on backing vocals. This was 1978, one of his earlier appearances.

The other thing that is different about this disc was that it had this odd “spacy” sound to it. “Turn To Stone” even has a nice jazz feel in parts. That was the entire theme of this project. Look at the cover, look at some of the song titles, “Miles From Earth”, “ Fly.. Night Bird”, “Super Nova” and of course, “You’re Not Alone.”

I’d really try and give this one a listen. You’ll love it if you like killer picking, You’ll get a kick out of it if you’re a Neil Young or a Joe Walsh fan. The versions of those two songs by these writers were quite good. Two of the best tracks on the album. You’ll like it is you’re just in the mood to hear something a little off the beaten path by one of the best blues guitarists to ever pick up a Telecaster.