Live: Amazing Grace

As a boy, Roy was first influenced by the sanctifyin' gospel music that poured out of the windows of the Pentecostal church near his home. In his early years, he was also exposed to the crackling electrified country music later dubbed the Bakersfield sound pioneered especially by country legends Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. Roy left home in his mid-teens and journeyed to Los Angeles where he absorbed deep blues and the sparkling jump sound of the west coast cool rhythm and blues music being played in black clubs. Johnny Otis' two guitar sensations, Jimmy Nolen and Pete Guitar Lewis, had a big impact on Roy's creation of his own sound. For thirty years Roy played the best bar blues in the country. Guitar players from all over the area, then from all over the country, and eventually from all over the world, migrated to the clubs to hear him coax astounding rhythms and unimaginably brilliant leads from his battered, but ever faithful, Telecaster. This CD allows you to go back in time into those clubs and hear Roy as he was meant to be heard. It is a great gift to US all. - Alan Scheflin San Francisco, California, May 2009.