James Buchanan

1941 - 2026

Country Music Hall of Fame...FB

From the time he wasn't much bigger than a fiddle stand, Jim Buchanan was on the road. The bluegrass fiddler, a much-admired musician and veteran of many bands and tours, died on March 4 at the age of eighty-five. He played professionally for more than seventy years. Born in 1941, he left home in Morganton, North Carolina, in 1953 to join Joe Franklin & the Mimosa Boys.

In the early 1960s, after the departure of fiddler Vassar Clements, Buchanan joined the influential band of Jim and Jesse McReynolds, the Virginia Boys, when Jim & Jesse were at their mid-1960s peak. It was also a time, as Buchanan happily noted, during which four core members of the Virginia Boys were all actually North Carolina boys.

In the mid-1960s, bluegrass was reaching beyond the rural South, connecting with the folk music revival and a growing national audience. Buchanan was with Jim & Jesse when they played the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, a moment he remembered as one of the highlights of his life.

It was also during his tenure with Jim & Jesse that he and Jesse McReynolds were invited to play on a West Coast session for the Doors' rock album "The Soft Parade," in 1969. Both contributed to a song written by Doors guitarist Robby Krieger, "Runnin' Blue."

Buchanan left and later returned several times to play with Jim & Jesse and also performed and recorded with the Greenbriar Boys. Buchanan played mandolin and guitar as well, and would go on to perform with George Jones, Tompall & the Glaser Brothers, and Mel Tillis. Buchanan recorded with Dolly Parton, Ronnie Milsap, and Ringo Starr, and appeared on a 1983 Rounder album, "Here Today," that featured him alongside Vince Gill, Herb Pedersen, David Grisman, and Emory Gordy Jr., mingling the streams of bluegrass and newgrass. He again played with Grisman as well as Jerry Garcia, Red Allen, James Kerwin, and others on the 1991 album "Bluegrass Revival."

"With great sadness I received the news that my dear friend, band mate and violin hero, Jim Buchanan, passed away peacefully last night," Grisman wrote on social media. "Jimmy was one of the bluegrass and dawg greats."