There's a Roy Buchanan in every corner of America, a virtuosic player who entertains in bars and roadhouses because that's his thing. It costs a lot of money to become a pop star, ask anybody who's tried. If you've got a wife and kids, you're likely to do better commuting a few minutes to the neighborhood nitery, and later for the limousines.

Every once in a while one of these local heroes gets heard, pounced on, recorded. He starts taking off weekends at the bar to play Carnegie Hall. Roy Buchanan is making the transition. He is a less-than-passable singer, his band is roadhouse-ordinary, but he sure can play that guitar. People go to hear him for just that reason, and they never come away disappointed. Buchanan's strong suit is his tactile sensitivity to the nuances of his instrument. His execution of even the fastest passages is exemplary, and his tone and touch are something to marvel at. He is supremely creative within the idiom he has chosen. But the idiom of Second Album is the blues, plain and simple, and the blues can become deadly dull even when played by a master.

There's nothing dull about country blues. There's always a skipped beat, a surprising inflection, a ragged irregular cadence. And the black blues masters can even make the standard 12-bar form interesting if they put some sweat into it. Buchanan put some sweat into this album, and it shows. On "After Hours" (the old Avery Parrish evergreen), he applies himself to the task of making an endless (6.13) slow blues interesting by getting into something distinctly different on each and every chorus. The sheer monotony of that familiar old I-IV-V change overwhelms him in the end, but he demonstrates along the way that Clapton and Alvin Lee and even Henry Vestine are going to have to get up early in the morning to equal Roy Buchanan.

Second Album is superior to Buchanan's first largely because of its instrumental character. There are only three brief vocals and the guitar is up front most of the way. Buchanan's touch, his control of texture and inflection, has never been more evident than on "Five String Blues." He "cries" without using the mechanical wah-wah, does what he wants with the texture of his sound using minimal amplification, and generally plays his axe like nobody else. But five out of eight tunes are 12-bar blues. On his NET special Buchanan played solo blues, jammed some mainstream jazz with Mundell Lowe, got off in a congregationalist church, got into some shit-kicking C&W. If he could assemble a band, or program an album, capable of touching more of his bases he would be superb. As things stand, Second Album is a must for fans of contemporary electric blues guitar. The rest of us will have to wait. (RS 132)

BOB PALMER