Terry "Buffalo" Ware spent more than five decades as one of Americana music's most respected session guitarists - the kind of player whose name rarely made the marquee, but whose fingerprints are on records by some of the genre's most beloved songwriters. He died August 5 at 76 after a battle with cancer, and in the days since, tributes from the musicians who knew him best have painted a picture of a man defined as much by his character as his craft.
Ware grew up in Woodward, Oklahoma, teaching himself guitar at 14 after a decade of piano lessons. After graduating from the University of Oklahoma, he moved to New Mexico in 1972, where he met songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard and formed Ray Wylie Hubbard and the Cowboy Twinkies, touring nationally alongside acts like Willie Nelson.
Ware and Hubbard reunited in 1986, and Ware's guitar work became a defining feature of Hubbard's acclaimed 1990s albums, including Lost Train of Thought and Loco Gringo's Lament. In 1999, Buddy Magazine named him a "Texas Tornado," an honor reserved for the state's most elite musicians.
From 2000 on, Ware built a career as a freelance guitarist backing artists including Wanda Jackson, John Fullbright, and Eliza Gilkyson, while continuing to write and produce his own music. His story was chronicled in the 2024 documentary Ware the Buffalo Roams, and earlier this year he released a memoir, Man with Guitar and Amp: A Sideman's Memoir.
But it's Ware's character that friends have returned to most since his passing. Hubbard called him "a remarkable life... a remarkable man... a remarkable friend." Longtime friend Chris Buhalis remembered him as "an amazing musician, friend, husband." The Depot, an Oklahoma venue, wrote that Ware was "one of the kindest and most humble men most have ever met."
Others close to him have pointed to his quiet Christian faith and grace as central to who he was - a legacy, friends say, they hope carries forward in how they treat one another and the music they make.
