Robbie Basho, born Daniel R. Robinson Jr. in Baltimore in 1940, became one of the strangest and most visionary voices of American steel-string guitar before his death in Berkeley in 1986. The Robbie Basho Archives describe an orphaned child adopted into the Robinson family, later transformed by Ravi Shankar’s recordings, Berkeley spiritual searching, North Indian music study, and the name Basho, taken in honor of the Japanese poet. Berkeleyside places him inside the American Primitive guitar movement, emphasizing his raga-influenced 12-string style, small local renown, deep spirituality, and later influence on guitarists and labels. Contemporary obituary coverage and music references record the same bleak ending: at forty-five, a chiropractic treatment accident caused a fatal stroke. His achievement was not celebrity. Basho made the acoustic guitar feel like pilgrimage: American loneliness, raga-like form, grief, and prayer vibrating through one body of wood and wire.