SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU

FALL, 2015

VOLUME TWO NUMBER ONE

JIMI HENDRIX

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

LAURA MVULA
October 10-16

DIZZY GILLESPIE
October 17-23

LESTER YOUNG
October 24-30

TIA FULLER
October 31-November 6

ROSCOE MITCHELL
November 7-13

MAX ROACH
November 14-20

DINAH WASHINGTON
November 21-27

BUDDY GUY
November 28-December 4

JOE HENDERSON
December 5-11

HENRY THREADGILL
December 12-18

MUDDY WATERS
December 19-25

B.B. KING
December 26-January 1

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/from-howlin-wolf-to-hendrix-the-life-and-times-of-buddy-guy-20151104

From Howlin' Wolf to Hendrix: The Life and Times of Buddy Guy

"He's the top honcho now," says Keith Richards of 79-year-old guitar great

by Patrick Doyle
November 4, 2015
Rolling Stone

"When B.B. passed away, I kind of woke up and said, 'I'm the last one here,'" says Buddy Guy of his unique status in the blues world. Danny Clinch

When Buddy Guy is in town, he leaves his house in Orland Park, Illinois, around 7:30 p.m. and makes the 26-mile drive up I-55 to downtown Chicago, listening to B.B. King's Bluesville station on satellite radio on the way. He drops his big white Lexus in his usual prime parking-garage spot, then walks down the block on Buddy Guy Way to his club, Legends. Tonight is a little slow; just a few people from the Hilton across the street, eating at scattered tables on the checkerboard floor.

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Buddy Guy on the Rolling Stones: 'They Were So Damn Wild' »

Wearing a white Legends baseball cap, a Hawaiian shirt and a bracelet engraved with "Nothing but Blues," Guy stops and looks around for a minute, flashing a big grin, his gold-and-diamond-capped teeth sparkling. He takes a seat at his stool in the corner of the L-shaped bar. The waitress already has his Heineken with a glass of ice ready; it's his regular drink, despite the fact the staff are wearing T-shirts advertising Buddy Brew ("The Damn Right Beer"). "When I go home tonight, I don't wanna be caught drunk," he says by way of explanation. "The Buddy Brew is a little stronger. That's why a lot of people like it, man — you get your money's worth."

At this point in his life, Guy is the greatest living Chicago bluesman, and one of the most influential guitar players ever. But for more than 50 years, he's also been a club manager. He started managing in 1961 at Club 99 in Joliet, Illinois, where he once booked Little Walter for a 90-cent bottle of Seagrams gin. The Rolling Stones and Muddy Waters came to play Guy's tiny old club the Checkerboard Lounge in 1981 (although their entourage filled up 55 of the club's 65 seats — "I didn't hear my cash register ring once," said Guy).

The walls of Legends are covered in guitars donated by visitors: Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan. "Eric don't come around anymore," Guy says of Clapton. "He can't even look at whiskey." The Stones will still visit, though — all four band members enjoyed a rare night out together at Legends in June. ("Keith hasn't slowed down nothing," says Guy. "He drank everything I was selling in the club — moonshine, gin, whiskey, everything. Son of a bitch is made of iron, man.")

Sometimes Guy sticks his head in areas the staff thinks are below his pay grade — he gets testy when drink lines get too long, or when bartenders leave the cash register open. He proudly notes that merchandise sales increase 90 percent when he's in the room. "Most clubs are not surviving because of DUI and non-smoking," he says, "but they come see me sitting at the bar and take pictures."

Legends is one of the few major Chicago blues clubs standing. "I think if I closed my club, there might be two left," says Guy. When he first arrived here, in 1957, "there wasn't even space to have another club, there were so many. You could work Chicago seven nights a week. They were small, 40 to 50 people. But Muddy was playing, Sonny Boy Williamson, all of 'em. No cover charge."

"They come see me sitting at the bar and take pictures," says Guy of his Legends patrons. Paul Natkin/WireImage

Guy's real career began not far from here at the South Side's 708 Club, where he developed his unhinged live show — playing overdriven licks behind his back, or with his teeth. His first night there, Waters stopped by, inviting Guy into his car for a salami sandwich and convincing him not to return home to Louisiana. Two decades younger than players like Waters and Howlin' Wolf, Guy would become the heir apparent to the greatest generation of blues and R&B players. "He was a younger blues musician in a field totally dominated by much older guys," said Clapton. "He was standing with the masters, holding his own."

"He just blew my head off," says Jeff Beck, who saw Guy on his first English tour in the mid-Sixties. "He came off the stage at the end of his act and walked through the crowd, playing one-handed, the guitar above his head. I'd never seen anything like it. He walked through the crowd, and it was like a bunch of disciples following him out of the building. Then he came back and finished his act. This was pre-Hendrix, pre-everybody." Jimi Hendrix would watch Guy from the crowd at the Newport Folk Festival and Manhattan clubs. And when Clapton saw Guy in 1965, he remembered, "I wanted to do what he was doing — a blues trio! I would be the slick frontman, a white Buddy Guy."

At the age of 79, Guy still plays more than 150 shows a year — blues cruises, casinos, state fairs, even, ironically, a Hendrix tribute tour. But after the death of his friend B.B. King earlier this year, somebody has to keep doing it. "When B.B. passed away, I kind of woke up and said, 'I'm the last one here,'" says Guy. "It's a little scary."

"He's the top honcho now, you know?" says Keith Richards. "He's the godfather now."

This morning, like most mornings, Guy wakes up at 4:30 and is at the supermarket by seven. When I show up at his bungalow-style suburban home, he is simmering ribs in garlic, onions and bell peppers, as his mother's sauce recipe cooks in a separate pot. "I cook for myself, so I just try to make enough for tomorrow," he says. "It's just a routine thing.

"I got all of this shipped to me from the South," Guy continues as he opens a big cupboard of seasonings, containers with names like Memphis Mojo and Spice Supreme. "I got some shit you can't even let it pass by your face. Everything here is spicy except my tomato sauce. I'm from Louisiana, man!" On the top shelf, there's a jug of moonshine in a plastic container. He gets it from a fan from Tennessee. "You want some for breakfast?" Guy asks with a grin. (Richards approves of Guy's corn liquor: "It's very, very good," he says. "And there's a lot of it.")

After cooking, he'll go back to bed (friends know not to call between 1 and 6 p.m.) before driving to the club. "I get three and a half hours of sleep at night, three and a half in the afternoon," he says. "It's been like that for 50 years. I try to break it, and I can't. As soon as I hear birds, it sounds like somebody calling me."

Guy's mother would also rise at 4:30 a.m. to cook on the wood stove of their shotgun-style one-story house in Lettsworth, Louisiana — on a good day, biscuits and fried eggs from their sharecropper farm, which she'd put in a bag for Guy and his four siblings to take to school. The kids would kill the chickens. "We'd live to eat, and eat to live," he says. "When I got big enough to catch a fish, [my parents] were the happiest people in the world."

Guy loves talking about farm life: milking cows in the morning, herding cattle, picking cotton with his siblings. Guy says that he didn't know what electricity was until he was 12 or running water until 16; the family drank rainwater stored in barrels. "Wasn't no such thing as acid rain back then," he says. "You could be walking home from school after a rainy day, and you could just lay down on the ground and drink out of a horse's track." He smiles. "It had a sweet taste."

Guy was born in 1936; Jim Crow was a fact of life. He remembers walking to school with his siblings while the white kids took the bus. "They would pass us on the gravel road," he says. "The dust looked like fog coming, and we'd run off to the side of the road to avoid the dust. And they would be spitting and throwing stuff at us. We never let it bother us. Because that's the way it was." He tells the story of when his parents' white landlord told his son he could no longer hang out with Guy. (Years later, the friend visited Guy: "He came to my house in Louisiana and cried, asking me, 'Do you remember that?' And I'd say, 'It wasn't you. It was them.'")

"My parents were very religious," says Guy. "My mama used to say, 'If you get slapped, turn the other cheek, so they can slap the other side.' They didn't teach us no hate."

That lesson may explain why, when Guy first moved to Orland Park more than a decade ago, he did not get angry when he woke up one snowy morning and discovered someone had egged his home. Instead, after cleaning it up, he got out his snowblower and cleaned every neighbor's sidewalk. "They said, 'A black man gets eggs thrown on his house, and he's still plowing snow off everybody's sidewalk, corner to corner?'" Guy says. "And we were the best of friends after that."

In the Sixties, Guy did not echo the resentment of some of his peers toward the white rock bands that became rich playing the blues. "When those songs would come on, I heard a lot of guys say, 'I do it better,'" says Guy, gesturing toward his indoor pool. "My answer to that is, if you swim 10 lengths of a pool and I swim two, you're doing something I ain't.

Guy in 1965. "I wanted to do what he was doing," says Eric Clapton of seeing the bluesman that same year. Val Wilmer/Redferns/Getty Images

"The British did more for us than any record company," he continues. He likes to tell the story about how the Rolling Stones only agreed to appear on the popular show Shindig! if Wolf came on the show with them. "That brought tears to my eyes," Guy says. "They let white America know who we were."

Every Christmas, Guy's father would invite an acquaintance, Henry "Coot" Smith, to the house to entertain the family. "We had a case of beer and a jug of wine, and he'd drink it up and play, and then go to the next house," says Guy.

Coot stomped and sang songs like John Lee Hooker's hit "Boogie Chillen'," a hypnotizing riff with no discernible melody that in 1949 became the first electric blues song to hit Number One on the R&B chart. Guy asked Coot to play the song seven times in a row. "I watched him pick the thing with his fingers and produce a sound that gave me goose bumps," Guy later wrote in his autobiography, When I Left Home. Guy took wires off their screen door and tried to imitate the sound. "I'd also take a rubber band and put it up against my ear and bang away as long as I could hear something," says Guy. "I just loved the sound." Finally, when Guy was 13, his father bought Coot's guitar for $4.35. The first song Guy learned to play was "Boogie Chillen'."

Just after Guy finished eighth grade, his mother had a stroke, and "everything changed," he wrote. "She could no longer smile ... I'd be hungry for that smile for the rest of my life." (Guy plays a polka-dot Strat as a tribute to his mother; before her death in 1968, he promised he would someday buy her a polka-dot Cadillac.) Guy dropped out of school, and the family moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where Guy worked on a conveyor belt at a beer factory, at a service station gassing up cars and as a janitor at LSU. He'd hear on the radio hits like Waters' "Hoochie Coochie Man" and Elmore James' "Dust My Broom," playing them on his guitar during breaks. He eventually learned that all those acts were in one place. "I said, 'If I ever get a chance, I'm going to Chicago, man,'" he says. "Just to see Muddy — that's what it was all about."

One night in Baton Rouge, Guy spent 50 cents to hear New Orleans electric bluesman Guitar Slim at the Masonic Temple. Guy remembers being the first one to the gig and being confused when he heard Slim's guitar but couldn't see him. After the band started playing, Slim entered the club from outside, his Strat hooked up to a 150-foot wire. "He was slick as grease and dressed to kill," Guy wrote, "flaming red suit, flaming red shoes, red-dyed hair." He says now, "Whatever these guys had, I wanted a piece of that."

By then, Guy had started performing in juke joints and roadhouses. He bought a long cord and began doing Slim's moves. "I wanted to play like B.B. King but act like Guitar Slim," he says. The stunt is still part of Guy's act; these days, he prowls clubs with his wireless guitar, usually stopping at the bar to throw back a shot of cognac.

Guy would grow into a dynamic, even confrontational, performer. (One night at Legends, I see him tell a loud customer to "shut the fuck up" from the stage.) "Buddy made it nasty and naughty," says Carlos Santana. "B.B.'s nice, Buddy is not, and I mean that in a good way. He can take off people's heads with a few notes. He comes from that generation like Albert King and Albert Collins — it was called the cut-and-shoot crowd."

Guy arrived in Chicago on September 25th, 1957, the date he calls his "second birthday." ("Buddy has a phenomenal memory," says Richards. "He can tell you the time of day he arrived in Chicago and what train he was on.") At first, Guy stayed with a family friend named Shorty, who'd also moved from Louisiana. He crashed on Shorty's bed during the day while he was at work, and walked the streets at night, drinking coffee in diners, waiting for Shorty to wake up.

Six months after arriving, Guy was broke, ready to call his parents for a ticket home. But then, as he tells it, a stranger on the street noticed him with his guitar case and invited him to the 708 Club, where Otis Rush allowed him to sit in. The bar owner called Waters, who came to watch. "I was telling people how hungry I was," says Guy. "And when he heard me play, he said, 'Well, how can you play like that and be hungry?'"

Waters became a "father figure" to Guy. "Muddy taught me how to drink," he says. "He gave me my first drink of whiskey and told me it would stop me from being shy. And still to this day, whenever I've got to play, I've got to have my shot before I go onstage."

Waters' friend Willie Dixon opened the door for Guy at Chess Records, where, as a session guitarist, Guy earned a reputation for being punctual and easygoing. "I was the student," he says. He played on hits by Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson, classic records like Waters' Folk Singer and Wolf's "Killing Floor." "They called about 7:00 in the morning, and had been trying to do it all night," says Guy of the latter. "I did it in two takes, and Leonard Chess said, 'See, you motherfuckers, I told you I could call a son of a bitch who would know how to play the fuckin' shit in two seconds.'"

"You can find an old Chess recording and pick him out pretty quickly," says Derek Trucks. "He just had a vibe — it reminds me a lot of the great funk rhythm players that came after. It's not overdriven, but it's blown out in the most beautiful way — stinging, clean and concise."

Guy made $15 for his work on "Killing Floor." He made more during those years driving a tow truck. "I'd drive that truck until it was time to play guitar," he says. "I kept the guitar in the truck, and then I would just go into the dressing room, take a shower and go straight to the gig and play till four in the morning and lay down in the car."

It wasn't much better for the established names: Guy learned that King was only making enough "to get from one town to the next." "Muddy was the only one who had a house," he says. "Lightnin' Hopkins didn't have a house like that, or Little Walter." Chess became notorious for getting artists to sign away publishing rights: "Every time I went to Chess and I had wrote a song that they thought was pretty good, they'd tell me to let Willie Dixon hear it," says Guy. Dixon was Chess' main A&R man, talent scout, producer and songwriter. "He'd say, 'That's a pretty good song, but you need a stronger line.' And if he changed one word, it was his song."

Chess was uninterested in Guy's wilder, more adventurous playing or in him as a recording artist. "At the club, I'd be jumping off the stage, turning that amplifier up loud as I could get, dropping the guitar on the floor and letting it ring for five minutes," says Guy. But if "I hit a note and let it ring in the studio, Leonard Chess would say, 'Get out of here with that.'"

Guy found an outlet with longtime collaborator Junior Wells on groove-driven classics like 1965's Hoodoo Man Blues, which Guy played on under a pseudonym for another label. Then around 1967, with blues disciples like Clapton and Hendrix on the rise, Guy finally left Chess. He got some small satisfaction when Leonard asked him in for a meeting. "The first thing he said was, 'I want you to kick me in my ass,'" says Guy. "And I said, 'What?' He said, 'Because you've been trying to show us this shit ever since you came here and we was too goddamn dumb to listen. So now this shit is selling and I want you to come in here — you can have your way in the studio.' But by then I was gone."

After leaving Chess, Guy found a home on the hippie circuit, playing the Fillmore and touring on the 1970 "Festival Express" tour with Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead and the Band. "I thought maybe I'd get rich and make that kind of money if I followed those [rock] guys," he says. "I liked the women better than the reefer. I said, 'Y'all go smoke, and I'll watch these little gals.'" He sometimes wonders what would have happened if he had moved to the U.K. in the mid-Sixties, where Hendrix got his early buzz. "If I had went to England, I probably would have been bigger than bubblegum," he says.

Guy tends to talk himself down. "I'll tell you, man, those guys were naturals — B.B. King, Lightnin' Hopkins, Big Joe Turner," he says. "All those guys, man, had something that God gave them .... I don't have that." A few times, he refers to a local review of his performance with Clapton at the 2010 Crossroads Guitar Festival. "Eric called me out to play, and he said, 'Take a solo.' And this motherfucker wrote that I got in Eric's way!"

Guy's sensitivity might explain why Santana unfailingly tells him how special he is when they are together. "If he doesn't wanna see that himself, that's his own business," Santana says. "But when he's around me, I do nothing but validate that man all the time. I tell him, 'Man, you're just as important as Einstein. You're just as important as fucking Nikola Tesla. You're just as important as Coltrane and Billie Holiday. You're a trailblazer with sound — and you're still alive.'"

Guy's driveway begins across the street from a golf course in Orland Park. It takes a quarter mile to reach a large barn that stores a '55 T-Bird, a '56 Ford Edsel and a Ferrari that Clapton encouraged him to buy. ("I don't want it no more now, 'cause you can't hardly get in there when you're my age," says Guy.) The large brown three-story home, which features wood-panel walls and ceramic countertops, was decorated by his ex-wife, Jennifer. He's considering putting it on the market — it's too big for him; he's almost never swum in the pool — and buying an apartment in downtown Chicago.

This hot August morning, Guy is stirring oxtail stew, which he'll drop off at the club later. "It's for my ex-wife so she leaves me alone," he jokes. Guy is friendly with both his former wives, who can sometimes be found hanging out at the bar or in the office at Legends. The entire family — wives, 10 kids, umpteen grandkids — celebrated his 79th birthday together here at the house and at the club. Guy's grandson Keith has been crashing upstairs, and today is shooting hoops in the driveway.

Guy and his second wife, Jennifer, divorced after 11 years in 2002. His first marriage, to Joan, whom he met shortly after moving to Chicago, lasted from 1959 to 1975. "She told me, 'It's me or that guitar,'" he says. "A musician's life is not easy on a family ... The two [marriages] I had, I was never here. And they would come to me and say, 'I'm tired of being by myself.' And I said, 'What the hell do you think I do when I'm on the road?' I go to one little room. When you play at the club, you got a crowd. But otherwise, I'm by myself."

He hasn't stopped looking for someone. "I see a lot of good-looking women, and I have women call me and all that, man," he says. "But I haven't had any luck. In the last three years, I didn't go to bed with 'em. I just had conversation and brought them out here and fixed them a good dinner."

Guy heads into his living room and points out some of his favorite memorabilia collected over his 60 years in the business: a photo of him grinning onstage with Clapton at the Royal Albert Hall in 1990; a thank-you note from Mick Jagger for appearing in Shine a Light. There's a photo of Guy with his family and the president and first lady from the first of four times Guy was invited to the Obama White House. "He's from Chicago, so he knows," Guy says of Obama. "As soon as he put his arm around me, I said, 'Mr. President, it's a long way from picking cotton to picking the guitar in the White House.' And we laughed."

Guy points out a painting of Hendrix, and tells the story of the day Hendrix brought a reel-to-reel recorder to tape Guy's guitar workshop at Newport. "Everyone was saying, 'Hendrix is here,'" Guy says. "I'm like, 'Who?' We went back to the hotel and played until the sun rose. He was so damn good, so creative."

Next to that is a painting of Stevie Ray Vaughan, playing his guitar behind his back — a trick he learned from Guy. "That one's priceless," he says. Vaughan had been a fan ever since he heard Guy singing and playing alongside Wolf and Waters on the 1963 American Folk Festival of the Blues LP as a kid. Whenever Guy played Antone's nightclub in Austin, he invited Vaughan and his older brother Jimmie onstage. "He became like a big brother to us," says Jimmie. "It was such a trip." Guy played with Stevie Ray at Wisconsin's Alpine Valley in 1990 — Guy took a different helicopter back to Chicago; Vaughan's helicopter crashed, killing him and four others.

Guy is still supporting younger blues players. He routinely lets kids onstage to show off, most notably Massachusetts teenage guitar prodigy Quinn Sullivan, who first played live with Guy at seven. "Parents will bring 'em around and ask, and if they can play, I'll give them an opportunity," Guy says. "Because when I went to Chicago, everybody looked at me and said, 'Who are you?' I don't ask, 'Do you have any experience?' I just say, 'Can you play this?' If he says, 'Yeah,' I say, 'Come on up!'"

In the corner of the room, there's a jukebox stocked with records of the guys who did the same thing for Guy: Little Walter, Waters and King. "They made me who I am," Guy says. He first heard King's 1951 hit "3 O'Clock Blues" as a teenager in Baton Rouge, and it became an early song in his repertoire. In 1958, King stopped by Guy's regular gig at the 708 Club, and offered words of encouragement, telling Guy to use straight picks, not finger picks. "I couldn't believe he was talking to me," Guy says. Later, when Guy was gigging at a Chicago nightclub that was in danger of going out of business in the Sixties, King played there for free.

B.B. King and Buddy Guy at the Chicago Blues Festival in 2008. "I couldn't believe he was talking to me," says Guy of meeting King in 1958. Lyle A. Waisman/FilmMagic

Guy and King toured the world several times together until 2011, with Guy opening. "Him and I were the last ones still traveling around, taking the music around the world," he says. Guy was impressed with King's work ethic; he played 250 dates per year into his seventies. "The last time we was talking, I said, 'B, you know all the money in the world ain't no good if you can't use it,'" Guy says.

What'd they talk about on tour? "Oh, it was mostly profane," Guy says with a laugh. "With B.B., he'd play two chords and it was back to the women." (Guy likes to tell a story about King giving advice on Viagra's side effects: "Take the headache.")

When he heard King's health was failing, Guy traveled to visit him one last time at his home in Las Vegas, but some of King's kids said he didn't want to see anybody. "Families go crazy if they think you got $10, and they're gonna fight about it," says Guy. "He was the nicest person you would ever want to meet. And I know damn well he wouldn't have told those people not to let me see him when I flew out there to see him."

Guy said goodbye to King at his funeral in Mississippi in May. "They let me get a little bit closer to his casket than anybody else — special treatment," he says. "But I had very little time to just sit there and remember the greatest things he had said to me and what we had done together. There were a lot of cameras. They showed a film of him playing, and I said, 'Man, that's what made me wanna keep playing.'"

Guy's assistant Annie stops him; he needs to tape a few social-media videos thanking his Twitter followers and promoting an appearance at a Las Vegas blues festival. Guy has touring down to a science. "I just saw that we get to play my hometown of Baton Rouge," he says at one point. He'll have an overnight bus ride after the show, but he's happy, because he'll get to stay in the house he just bought there and cook for himself: "I get off work, they rush me to the house, I take a shower, take a bowl of soup, come downstairs with my bag and head to the next gig.

"B.B. King dedicated his life to the blues until he couldn't go no more," says Guy. "Muddy, Wolf, all of them did it. Because they loved it as much as I do. And now I'm gonna do it myself. I think I owe that to them."

From The Archives Issue 1248: November 19, 2015
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/from-howlin-wolf-to-hendrix-the-life-and-times-of-buddy-guy-20151104#ixzz3slhIzq9v

http://www.teenink.com/nonfiction/academic/article/292878/Buddy-Guy/

BUDDY GUY
by muffinpb

Teen Ink
Magazine, website & books written by teens since 1989
Many have called Buddy Guy Chicago’s blues king of today. He is perhaps the most energetic and spontaneous bluesman that any aspiring guitarist can hope to see on stage, displaying a constant stream of unfiltered feeling through his polka-dotted Stratocaster and tortured vocal style. Even Eric Clapton has called him “by far and without a doubt the best guitar player alive” (Rockhall.com). His story is the classic story of a Chicago bluesman seeking success, and it’s hard to say that he hasn’t succeeded.

Born July 30, 1936, as George Guy, Buddy started out as the son of a sharecropper in Louisiana. At age 13, he built his own guitar and learned to play by reproducing the sounds of the bluesmen he heard on the radio, such as Guitar Slim and John Lee Hooker, when there wasn’t too much work to do on the plantation. It was at age 16 that he got his first real guitar: a Harmony acoustic. As a teenager, he started to play clubs in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, although he later found out that times there were hard for a bluesman, and moved on to Chicago at age 21. The Midwest’s blues center was just as inhospitable, though. He was starving and broke when he was offered an audition at the 708 Club, where he was rescued by the great Muddy Waters himself. In an interview with Guitar Player magazine, he recalled, “I was going on my third day without eating in Chicago, trying to borrow a dime to call my mom to get back to Louisiana, and Muddy Waters bought me a salami sandwich and put me in the back of his 1958 Chevy station wagon. He said, ‘You’re hungry, and I know it’” (Collins). Talking to his idol though, Guy was so overjoyed that he didn’t feel hungry anymore. When he said this to Waters, his response was, “Get in the goddamn car” (Collins). So began Guy’s career in playing Chicago clubs.

Here, he started to build up his reputation as a bluesman. He got to play alongside his idols, even having guitar battles with them at times. Here, he displayed his influence through his playing style and onstage acts. In his autobiography, he said, “I wanted to play like B.B. King but act like Guitar Slim,” (Rockhall.com) and, though his style has become very unique since then, that he did. Two of his 1968 singles for Cobra Records, “This is the End,” and “Try to Quit You Baby,” were clearly influenced by King’s playing. He told Guitar Player, “When I came to Chicago, most guitar players in town did not stand up to play. I stood up and played to make everybody know me. I started kicking chairs off the stage when I went up there at the battles of the guitars. They were sitting there going, ‘Who the hell is that?’” (Collins). One day he brought his 150-foot cable to the show, and walked right out into the snow as he played. The next day, the media was there wanting to know who he was. Through such acts, he gained a bit of fame and began recording with record labels. His early recording, though, consisted mainly of backing other renowned players under the Chess Records label. He had time to record some singles of his own, but it wasn’t until 1968 that he recorded his first album, A Man & the Blues, with Vanguard records. In 1972, he opened the Checkerboard Lounge blues club, where he regularly performed until it closed in 1983. Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, he went from one record company to another, often recording with blues harmonica player Junior Wells. However, the growth in popularity of rock toned down Guy’s career for a while. Once younger guitarists like Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Jeff Beck acknowledged the influence that Guy had on their playing, though, his popularity picked up again, and he was able to release several acclaimed albums in the ‘90s.

Today, Buddy Guy has become one of the great blues players of the city. Though his name isn’t a household name like Jeff Beck, anyone who really keeps up with Chicago blues knows it. He now owns the blues club Legends, which he opened in 1989, and even had enough influence to get the street it was built on renamed “Muddy Waters Drive.” Besides that, his influence can be felt through the playing of the aforementioned modern artists and many others. Eric Clapton said, “He was for me what Elvis was probably like for other people” (“Buddy Guy”). In his latest album, “Skin Deep,” he’s tried to help up-and-coming musicians in much the same way that Muddy Waters did with him by giving them recording spots. The album features guest appearances by younger musicians like Derek Trucks, Robert Randolph, and even pre-teen guitarist Quinn Sullivan. Guy has said, “I just try to get the best players, and hope I can pop the top off this can and show that the blues are back. […] These guys got me feeling like when I was 22 years old and went into the studio with Muddy Waters” (“Buddy Guy”).

It would be very hard to say that Buddy Guy hasn’t earned himself a spot among the great bluesmen of Chicago. He’s worked through his humble start on the plantation and the hard times he felt in his early career to become one of the most influential and original blues guitarists of the age. Without Buddy Guy, the blues might not have evolved to what it is today.

http://blog.longreads.com/2015/11/13/buddy-guy-and-the-inequity-of-musical-fame/

Buddy Guy and the Inequity of Musical Fame

Photo by Aaron Warren, Flickr

Guy heads into his living room and points out some of his favorite memorabilia collected over his 60 years in the business: a photo of him grinning onstage with Clapton at the Royal Albert Hall in 1990; a thank-you note from Mick Jagger for appearing in Shine a Light. There’s a photo of Guy with his family and the president and first lady from the first of four times Guy was invited to the Obama White House. “He’s from Chicago, so he knows,” Guy says of Obama. “As soon as he put his arm around me, I said, ‘Mr. President, it’s a long way from picking cotton to picking the guitar in the White House.’ And we laughed.”

Guy points out a painting of Hendrix, and tells the story of the day Hendrix brought a reel-to-reel recorder to tape Guy’s guitar workshop at Newport. “Everyone was saying, ‘Hendrix is here,'” Guy says. “I’m like, ‘Who?’ We went back to the hotel and played until the sun rose. He was so damn good, so creative.”

Next to that is a painting of Stevie Ray Vaughan, playing his guitar behind his back — a trick he learned from Guy. “That one’s priceless,” he says. Vaughan had been a fan ever since he heard Guy singing and playing alongside Wolf and Waters on the 1963 American Folk Festival of the Blues LP as a kid. Whenever Guy played Antone’s nightclub in Austin, he invited Vaughan and his older brother Jimmie onstage. “He became like a big brother to us,” says Jimmie. “It was such a trip.” Guy played with Stevie Ray at Wisconsin’s Alpine Valley in 1990 — Guy took a different helicopter back to Chicago; Vaughan’s helicopter crashed, killing him and four others.

—Patrick Doyle, writing in Rolling Stone about the life of trailblazing bluesman Buddy Guy, a brilliant guitarist and longtime Chicago club manager whose influence is as sweeping as Howlin’ Wolf’s, B.B. King’s and Sonny Boy Williamson’s, but whose name isn’t as recognizable.

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/December-2013/Chicagoans-of-the-Year-2013-Buddy-Guy/

Chicagoans of the Year 2013: Buddy Guy
Blues guitarist and owner of Buddy Guy’s Legends Club
by Bryan Smith
November 7, 2013
Chicago magazine

Photo: Jeff Sciortino; Hair and Makeup: Heather Schnell/Ford Artists

Few people possess the power to make a president sing. But in February 2012, when Buddy Guy stepped up to the microphone at the White House, launched into “Sweet Home Chicago,” and beckoned Barack Obama to join him, the president did. Then the veteran bluesman grinned his famous grin and let his Fender Stratocaster sing into the night—as he has most every night for six decades.

The 77-year-old Louisiana native moved to Chicago in 1957 for a simple reason: He wanted to learn from the best blues musicians in the country. “New York didn’t have what Chicago had,” Guy explains. “Boston didn’t have it. When I finally went to California, they didn’t have it. Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy [Williamson], Jimmy Reed, Memphis Slim—all those great guys were in Chicago. I said, ‘I don’t need to go nowhere else. Everything I’m looking for is here.’ ”

In those days the blues poured out of South Side bars as liberally as the whiskey, wine, and beer that served as the only cover charge. “A bottle of beer was 25 cents, but when Muddy Waters played, it was 35,” Guy recalls. “[During those evenings] I tried to copy every guitar player that I saw. I guess, in the meantime, I was learning something for myself.”

Invited by Chess Records to make his debut album in 1960, Guy soon became the one that others strove to emulate. Future superstars such as Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan dropped in to see the man some have called the best guitarist on the planet.

The old blues clubs may be gone, but Guy’s licks still soar at his 24-year-old namesake nightclub in the South Loop, where he performs each January (for 2014 tickets, visit buddyguy.com) and which he vows to keep open as long as he lives. “Buddy is our greatest surviving link to the incredible blues tradition of this city,” says Jim DeRogatis, music critic and cohost of the National Public Radio show Sound Opinions. “He was just the right age to learn at the feet of the masters. To have him here [in Chicago] and be able to watch him is magical. We should never take that for granted.”

While Guy has been showered with laurels in recent years—including a Kennedy Center Honors award last December—he is not willing to rest on them. This year brought the release of a tour de force double CD set, Rhythm & Blues, which features collaborations with rapper Kid Rock, country star Keith Urban, and members of the rock band Aerosmith. It includes “Meet Me in Chicago,” the kind of raucous number that has made Guy not only a blues titan but also an ongoing ambassador for his adopted hometown.

Who knows? Maybe President Obama will even sing a few bars the next time he’s in the city. If Buddy asks, of course.

http://jazztimes.com/articles/67022-bluesman-buddy-guy-honored-by-the-kennedy-center

Bluesman Buddy Guy Honored by the Kennedy Center

Broadcast of Kennedy Center Honors tribute airs on CBS

by Lee Mergne
December 26, 2012
JazzTimes

Buddy Guy ends his recent autobiography, When I Left Home with these words: “I’m believing that the blues makes life better wherever it goes—and I’ll tell you why: even the blues is sad, it turns your sadness to joy. And ain’t that a beautiful thing?” Indeed it is. And for a giving the world about six decades worth of sadness converted to joy, the guitarist and singer was recognized earlier this month in a star-studded gala event at the Kennedy Center that included a reception at the White House, a red carpet entrance and a tribute show taped for broadcast in prime time on CBS on December 26 at 9 p.m. EST. The other Kennedy Center Honors subjects this year included David Letterman, Dustin Hoffman, Natalia Makarova and Led Zeppelin.

BUDDY GUY

The Kennedy Center Honors gives equal billing to its honorees, although this year the gifted and influential dancer Makarova must have felt a bit like bassist Darryl Jones on tour with the Rolling Stones, pushed to the background, not necessarily because of talent but rather because of fame, an inarguable factor. Indeed the comedian and TV host Jimmy Kimmel referenced it when he said that almost everyone on the stage and up in the honoree box wanted to get to know David Letterman, except “the dancer,” at which point the camera cut to an ashen-faced Makarova, who had to wonder how her long career in dance would lead to becoming the punchline for a comedian.

But famous is famous and that’s that. As one of the most important electric blues guitarists in modern music, Guy was in the interesting position of being a major influence on fellow honorees, Led Zeppelin, in particular their guitarist Jimmy Page. And that made for a tricky use of Jeff Beck, who was a peer of Page, but, like so many of the British rock guitarists in the mid to late ‘60s, an acolyte of Guy’s. Beck ended up saluting the more elder of the two, and introduced his salute performance with a short speech of thanks to Guy for, amongst other things, saving him from "the constraints of the automotive industry." He then proceeded to play the type of edgy, screaming and note-bending blues guitar that both he and his hero have become famous for. In their soulful version of "I Would Rather Go Blind," Beck was accompanied by the relatively unknown but well-received blues belter Beth Hart, whose performance, thanks in part to a drowned out introduction and in part to her lack of celeb stature, had much of the older and affluent audience looking through their programs for identification.

Also paying tribute to Guy were singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman who sang “Hound Dog,” a double pairing of Texas blues-rock guitarists Gary Clark, Jr. and Jimmie Vaughan, and of course Bonnie Raitt, who told JT that she used to open for Guy and Junior Wells before her fortunes turned and she then had them open for her in front of young rock audiences. Raitt performed two songs, including the first song she ever heard Guy on “My Time After Awhile,” with an impressive house band and then closed out the Guy tribute with all her fellow saluters, taking turns on vocals and guitar solos on "Sweet Home Chicago." Actor Morgan Freeman hosted Guy’s segment with both an in-person short speech as well as narration of a video piece. Freeman, who like Guy came from Mississippi, credited the Chicago transplant with bringing “gutbucket” blues to the world.

For his part, Guy just beamed during the performances and tributes dedicated to his life and music. It was a beautiful thing.

http://www.popmatters.com/article/blues-guitarist-buddy-guy-never-fails-to-inspire/

Blues guitarist Buddy Guy never fails to inspire
by Walter Tunis
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)
28 May 2008
PopMatters

It’s one thing to marvel at the magnitude of an IMAX-size Rolling Stones in Martin Scorsese’s recent concert documentary, “Shine a Light.” But you’re dealing with an altogether more fearsome beast when Buddy Guy walks on, digs into Muddy Waters’ “Champagne and Reefer” and makes the ageless Stones sound more dangerous than they have in years.

For Guy, one of the last of the great Chicago bluesmen to electrify the rural Southern music of his youth in the late 1950s and `60s, such company is hardly new. He has long been championed by scores of rock pioneers, especially guitarists. The Stones picked up on him over 40 years ago. So did Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. A host of British players often outnumbered the American blues artists who were sometimes less than generous in acknowledging Guy’s influence - although Texas guitar star Stevie Ray Vaughan was a major exception.

But in conversation, Guy is as inward as his performance persona is extroverted.

He quietly, almost shyly, confessed he hasn’t seen “Shine a Light” but added that if the Stones and the audiences who see Scorsese’s film are pleased, then his job is complete.

“I never watch Buddy Guy,” said Guy. “That’s because I can’t learn nothing if I do. Now, I might be watching Mick (Jagger) and Keith (Richards) to see if I can steal some licks.

“When I came up, there were no Stones. There was no Clapton or people like that. I got what I do from Lightnin’ Hopkins and B.B. King. But I guess it’s the same thing. It’s just a hand-me-down. The British guys were listening to me while I was listening to B.B.”

At age 71, Guy is one of the few heralded bluesmen to live and work long enough to experience the fruits of his inspiration upon a subsequent generation.

But it almost didn’t work out that way.

After moving to Chicago in 1957 from his native Louisiana, Guy fell in with other bluesmen who had migrated from the South. Among them: Waters, Magic Sam and Otis Rush.

As the `60s progressed into the psychedelic era, Guy’s music - a mix of thick, jagged guitar frenzy and earth-shaking vocals that seemed as accepting of revivalistic gospel as of the blues - proved a major hit with the rock stylists of the day on both sides of the Atlantic.

But when he recorded for Chicago’s famed label Chess Records, Guy’s career was stymied.

Though Guy’s performance style had become more brazen and rockish, label chief Leonard Chess favored a more tempered blues sound from his artists and was said to have dismissed much of Guy’s music as “noise.”

Guy was signed to Chess Records for seven years.

Though he cut many singles there, he was allowed to issue only one album, 1967’s “Left My Blues in San Francisco.”

“These other blues guys like (Mississippi pianist) Eddie Boyd were so mad at Leonard Chess,” Guy recalled. “I remember telling Eddie, `Man, you’re madder than a dead man.’

“I mean, after Leonard died, what was I supposed to do? Go to his grave and say, `Leonard, you’re the cause of me not being who I want to be. I couldn’t get my music across because you wouldn’t let me record.’ I don’t think he would have heard me because he was dead and buried.”

The career renaissance - the payback, if you will - didn’t come until 1991. That’s when a comeback record hit stores with cameos by Clapton, Beck and Mark Knopfler and a title that seemed to summarize Guy’s professional life and times: “Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues.”

Today, what resonates most on the album, as well as on other `90s recordings that followed isn’t so much the guitar work. After all, Guy has yet to make a studio record that fully captures his volcanic performance sound.

No, what leaps out at you is his singing. Guy possesses a vocal style that has long and undeservedly played second fiddle to his instrumental prowess.

In short, his voice emits a collar-grabbing, soul-saturated, gospel fervent authority that is downright frightening.

“I grew up on a farm. We didn’t know what instruments were. Music was all in the voice. If you’re old enough to remember all the spiritual groups back then, like the first Five Blind Boys of Alabama, you’ll know that they didn’t have any instruments. These were guys with voices that sounded like instruments.

“Now I appreciate what you’re saying. But I don’t compare myself as a singer up there with B.B. or (Mississippi blues-R&B stylist) Little Milton. Those guys could just stand there and make you listen when they sing. Buddy Guy has to jump, shout and run out into the audience before I can get some attention. So I try to make my guitar and my voice coordinate and then just try to make people happy. That’s all I do.”

Honestly - and often, severely - humble about his talents, Guy is showing no signs of slowing down in 2008.

In July, just after his 72nd birthday, he will release a new album called “Skin Deep” that will consist predominantly of original music co-written with Nashville songsmith Tom Hambridge

“There’s a lyric on the new CD that sums up how I feel: `I know I’m not the best in town. I just try to be the best until the best comes around.’

“You see, nobody knows the real, true way the blues came about. We speculate about who did what, but who knows? We just took a little bit from here and there and, all of sudden, we all had our own thing. You appreciate it when somebody says something nice about what you do. But you just have to accept that and then move on, because, in the end, you still have to go out there and prove you can play a few licks.”

http://www.poconorecord.com/article/20150725/NEWS/150729603

MUSIC

Last of the greats, Buddy Guy keeps blues alive
by Scott Mervis
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (TNS)
July 25, 2015

Muddy Waters, BB. King, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker …

Run down the list of blues legends and just about all of them are gone. Most of them long gone.

Except for Buddy Guy.

"He's bigger than life," says Ron "Moondog" Esser, the owner of Moondog's Rock Blues Bar near Pittsburgh. "Especially now that B.B. is gone, he IS the guy. Buddy Guy is the guy. I don't consider Eric Clapton to be a real blues guy. He's white and he's from England and he's really a rock guy turned blues guy. Buddy Guy is the guy. I mean, that's it."
Nobody close?

"Nope."

Guy, at 78, is 11 years younger than King, who died in May, and a different type of showman, as anyone who's seen him run through the crowd with his guitar playing vicious licks well knows.

He grew up in Louisiana, but launched his career in the epicenter of electric blues, Chicago, around 1957 after moving there to pursue custodial work. After winning a guitar competition, he was signed by Chess Records to do session work for the likes of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson. Chess wasn't sure what to do with his more aggressive style as a solo artist, so 1967's "Left My Blues in San Francisco" was his first and last album with the label.

He went on to record with Vanguard, and in 1969 was showcased at the Supershow in England with Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, Stephen Stills, Jack Bruce and others. He opened for the Stones in the '70s. But lacking the commercial success B.B. King had with songs like "3'Clock Blues," "Every Day I Have the Blues" and "The Thrill is Gone," Guy was more influential than popular. Clapton would say, "Buddy Guy was to me what Elvis was for others."

Popularity came later, starting around 1990 when Clapton put him on the "24 Nights" all-star blues show at London's Albert Hall. What followed was a run of Grammy-winning albums on Silvertone: "Damn Right, I've Got the Blues" (1991, with Clapton, Jeff Beck and Mark Knopfler), "Feels Like Rain" (1993) and "Slippin' In" (1994).

In recent years, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall (2005), won another Grammy (2010, for "Living Proof") and was awarded at the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors.

But he's hardly just kicking back and celebrating his legacy. He sounded more alive than ever, and so did his fiery guitar on "Rhythm & Blues," a double album he released in 2013. He has followed that with the new album "Born to Play Guitar," due out July 31, which features guest spots from Joss Stone, Kim Wilson, Billy Gibbons and Van Morrison — on a tribute to B.B. King called "Flesh & Bone."

The last song on the album, "Come Back Muddy," looks back to one of the guys who set him on this course.

"I worry a lot about the legacy of Muddy, Wolf, and all the guys who created this stuff," he said recently. "I want people to remember them. It's like the Ford car — Henry Ford invented the Ford car, and regardless how much technology they got on them now, you still have that little sign that says 'Ford' on the front.

"One of the last things Muddy Waters told me — when I found out how ill he was, I gave him a call and said, 'I'm on my way to your house.' And he said, 'Don't come out here, I'm doing all right. Just keep the damn blues alive.' They all told me that if they left here before I did, then everything was going to be on my shoulders. So as long as I'm here, I'm going to do whatever I can to keep it alive."

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency

http://articles.latimes.com/1993-04-22/news/ol-25627_1_buddy-guy

NICE GUY FINISHES FIRST : After Years of Playing in the Shadows, Bluesman Buddy Guy Takes the Spotlight
April 22, 1993
by JIM WASHBURN
Los Angeles Times

Jim Washburn is a free-lance writer who regularly contributes to The Times Orange County Edition.

There may be no musician more aptly named than Buddy Guy. Eric Clapton has cited the Chicago bluesman as not only "by far and without a doubt the best guitar player alive" but also as a great, warm human being. Onstage, he's such a crowd-pleaser that he often seems to be pulled in 10 directions at once.

He's the sort of family man who, when he has a day off touring, will fly home to mow the lawn or blow the snow. Once when he was a guest on a fellow bluesman's album, contractual reasons prohibited them from listing him as Buddy Guy, so they used the pseudonym "Friendly Chap."

But his amiability hasn't always worked in his favor. Despite his flamboyant showmanship onstage, the 56-year-old hasn't been the sort to put himself forward. In interviews, he would speak in reverent tones of the Chicago originators he'd worked with, such as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, or he would heap praise on the players he'd influenced like Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck or Stevie Ray Vaughan.

In the meantime, he'd gone 12 years without having a record out, and he says now that his earlier recordings were compromised by his kowtowing to producers who toned down the wild enthusiasm he brought to his live shows.

"They wouldn't let me record like I was doing in person with that wide-open blastin' distortion," Guy recalled last week from a tour stop in Portland, Ore. "They were telling me, 'Don't come in with the noise like that.' So I didn't know what the hell I was doing because I was always being told I didn't have nothing special, and that's all I knew. I always doubted myself."

He is feeling a little more confident now that he has been able to record a couple of albums the way he likes. The first, 1991's "Damn Right, I've Got the Blues," won him a Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album, five blues-world W.C. Handy Awards, and gold-record status in several countries. There's little reason to doubt that his newly released "Feels Like Rain" will follow suit.

Actually, the live sound with which Guy is now connecting (he'll be at the Coach House tonight night with John Mayall) can be a blues purist's nightmare. He'll apply the same over-distorted volume and flashy speed that British players used to excess; he'll jump styles five times in a solo; he'll mug, clown and go through some of the most grandstanding stage antics since '50s New Orleans bluesman Guitar Slim. Yet, despite--or perhaps because of--his inattention to form, Guy's music comes across with a volcanic force, overwhelming listeners with his passion and love of the blues.

He was born in Lettsworth, La., and had only heard blues music on the radio when one day traveling musician Lightnin' Slim came through the farming town with an electric guitar, plugged his amp into an outlet outside the market, and commenced to playing "Boogie Chillen." The young Guy gave his allowance to Slim so he'd play it again. Guy soon got a guitar himself and started playing in nearby Baton Rouge.

In 1958, he took a bus to Chicago but, hungry and daunted by the big city, he decided almost immediately to return home. Fate interceded in the form of Muddy Waters, a salami sandwich and a late night jam session. Befriended by the elder blues master, Guy stayed in Chicago, playing and recording with Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson and other Chess Records artists, as well as performing solo and establishing a long musical partnership with harmonica player Junior Wells.

Guy said he was unaware that the music was gaining notice beyond Chicago's South Side. The first inkling came when white kids Paul Butterfield and Mike Bloomfield started showing up in the clubs.

"The first thing we thought was that they must be cops, because there wasn't no white people listening to no blues then," Guy said. He soon found that there was a hot new generation of guitar slingers influenced by his work.

"The same time producers were trying to get me to stop sounding like me, it turns out Jimi and Eric and these other guys was picking little licks from me," he said, referring to Hendrix and Clapton, who at that time was playing with Mayall. "Eric and Beck both told me they were into country and Western until they first heard me on an album (the live "Folk Festival of the Blues") playing behind Muddy and Wolf. They said that turned them around."

Guy said it never struck him as out of place that white British kids would be emulating Chicago's tough music.

"If musicians tell you the truth, we're all doing somebody's music. I think music don't come in the length of hair or the color of skin. Music speaks in all languages and nationalities. I just think that any man that's interested in playing an instrument and loving it the way I love it--the way I'm sure those kids loved it--they're going to be pretty good at it.http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-09-12/entertainment/chi-buddy-guy-kennedy-center-honor-20120912_1_kennedy-center-honorees-chairman-david-m-rubenstein-buddy-guy

Buddy Guy among Kennedy Center honorees
September 12, 2012
Chicago Tribune

Blues legend Buddy Guy performs at his club Buddy Guy's Legends in January. (Nuccio DiNuzzo/Chicago Tribune)

Chicago blues icon Buddy Guy is among seven artists to receive the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced Wednesday.

Other recipients to be honored at the 35th annual national celebration include actor Dustin Hoffman, comedian and television host David Letterman, ballerina Natalia Makarova, and rock band Led Zeppelin. While Led Zeppelin is being honored as a band, keyboardist/bassist John Paul Jones, guitarist Jimmy Page, and singer Robert Plant will each receive the Kennedy Center Honors.

"With their extraordinary talent, creativity and tenacity, the seven 2012 Kennedy Center Honorees have contributed significantly to the cultural life of our nation and the world," Kennedy Center Chairman David M. Rubenstein said in a release. "Buddy Guy is a titan of the blues and has been a tremendous influence on virtually everyone who has picked up an electric guitar in the last half century."

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-12-02/entertainment/chi-kennedy-center-honors-obama-honors-david-letterman-led-zeppelin-buddy-guy-dustin-hoffman-natalia-mak-20121202_1_buddy-guy-awards-show-david-letterman

Buddy Guy honored as living legend

Chicago blues legend Buddy Guy pays homage to Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters before accepting award

December 02, 2012
by Katherine Skiba
Tribune reporter

After bluesman Buddy Guy collected a Kennedy Center Honor, Bonnie Raitt brought a star-studded audience to its feet at Sunday's awards gala by belting out “Sweet Home Chicago” as a tribute to Guy and his adopted hometown.

Guy, 76, a sharecropper's son from Louisiana who made his first guitar from old paint cans and wire, beamed at the anthem, which Raitt delivered in a sultry growl, joined by guitarist Jeff Beck, singer-guitarist Tracy Chapman and other performers.

Guy was seated with President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and the six other award winners: actor Dustin Hoffman, comedian David Letterman, ballerina Natalia Makarova and three British rockers from Led Zeppelin.

Actor Morgan Freeman, heralding Guy, said he mastered the soul of the “gutbucket” South and found a “new music that no one has ever heard before.” He said Guy “went viral” before the Internet, YouTube, and even FM radio, inspiring the likes of Beck, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.

With political heavyweights and business titans ensconced at the black-tie awards show, the night leapt from the grace of the pas de deux to the growl of the blues, punctuated with some raucous laughter in between.

Throughout, the honorees' megawatt peers heaped praise. Robert De Niro and Naomi Watts heralded Hoffman, Judith Jamison sang the praises of Makarova, Jack Black lauded Led Zeppelin and Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey, Jimmy Kimmel and Ray Romano saluted — but mostly skewered — Letterman.

Fey joked that Letterman began his career “as a black opera singer in the '50s, just so he could win this award.”

Baldwin described Letterman as a homebody who was forced to travel, wear a tux and sit in a box for two hours — and “then we don't let him say anything.”

“For 30 years, David Letterman has made late-night TV more fun and clever, more original and crazy, than it would have been without you,” Baldwin said.

Hoffman, who has starred in such films as “The Graduate,” “Midnight Cowboy,” “All the President's Men” and “Tootsie,” “made it OK to be a character actor and a movie star,” said De Niro.

He recalled first meeting Hoffman at a party in 1968. “I was his waiter,” De Niro said. “It was an instant connection when he said to me, ‘How's the flounder?'”

Black enthused about the “Zepathon,” listening to nine Led Zeppelin albums in a row. Others borrowed from their hit, “Whole Lotta Love,” in lauding the band's three living members: John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.

The host of the awards show was Caroline Kennedy, who said Makarova gave new excitement to the words “prima ballerina.” The former Kirov Ballet dancer defected from the Soviet Union in 1970 and debuted that year with the American Ballet Theatre.

Guy came to Chicago on a one-way train ticket in 1957. He has a nightclub, Buddy Guy's Legends, downtown and a home in Orland Park.

Touring widely — recent stops included India, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and Brazil — he made headlines in February when he and B.B. King persuaded Obama to sing a few bars of “Sweet Home Chicago” during a White House tribute to the blues.

Guy returned Sunday for a preshow reception with the Obamas and the other honorees.

Leading up to the show, Guy said in an interview that the honor conjures memories of his blues mentors. “I always take honors like this and look up and say these honors should have went to the guys I learned everything from. People like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Fred McDowell and Son House. I wouldn't be nothin' if it wouldn't be for them,” he said.

He spoke Saturday at a candlelit soiree at the State Department, where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was host and actress Meryl Streep was emcee.

Former President Bill Clinton delivered a toast to Guy, saying he had traveled from a cotton patch to the concrete jungle of Chicago to emerge as the “greatest living blues guitarist.”

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, among the dinner guests, said in an interview that Guy was a “great Chicago treasure” whose songs told the story of the great migration of African-Americans to the North.

The awards show airs on CBS on Dec. 26.

kskiba@tribune.com

http://www.newswise.com/articles/professor-available-to-discuss-kennedy-center-honoree-buddy-guy-s-legacy2

Professor Available to Discuss Kennedy Center Honoree Buddy Guy's Legacy
3-Dec-2012
Newswise

Janice Monti, chair and professor of sociology and criminology at Dominican University just outside Chicago, is one of the nation's preeminent scholars on the blues and its place in American culture.

As director of the bi-annual Blues and the Spirit Symposium, Monti has brought together and studied alongside the nation's top scholars, industry professionals and musicians and artists in the blues today.

"Buddy Guy is an iconic American figure, and his story is in so many ways emblematic of the changes that have taken place in American society. His life is a metaphor of the American Dream with all the 'rags to riches' elements in place—growing up poor in Louisiana, making his first guitar out paint cans and strings he tore off an old screen door, coming up to Chicago, learning from the Blues masters like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, and driving trucks until he could make his living from the music he loved."

Monti holds a PhD in sociology from, Carleton University, Canada, and is a regular commenter in the media on blues culture.

http://www.chicagoblues.com/buddy-guy-receive-lifetime-achievement-award-2015-grammy-awards/

Buddy Guy to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2015 Grammy Awards
December 29, 2014
Chicago Blues

Blues icon and standard bearer, Buddy Guy, will be honored with the Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award at an invitation-only ceremony on Saturday, February 7th, 2015, during Grammy Week. The award will be announced with an official acknowledgement during the Grammy Awards broadcast on Sunday, February 8th, 2015. The Lifetime Achievement Award honors performers who have made contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording, while the Trustees Award recognizes such contributions in areas other than performance. Both awards are determined by vote of The Recording Academy’s National Board of Trustees.

Guy, who is a six time Grammy Award recipient, has been playing the blues since the 1950s. For younger fans, it is hard to imagine that Guy struggled for many, many years before gaining the commercial success he enjoys today. Part of that was due to poor choices by his record labels in not utilizing his immense talents to their fullest extent. During the Chess years, while the label did use Guy as a session artist, he was denied the opportunity to be himself musically, and express himself as he saw fit. His style was considered “too wild,” and consequently, he wasn’t recorded as he himself, wanted to be heard.

When he was given an opportunity to record as himself, the results were remarkable, as with the 1965 masterpiece he recorded with Junior Wells, Hoodoo Man Blues, on the Delmark Records label. His live performances were the stuff of legend, often leaving audiences with their jaws on the floor. Other albums followed, and by the end of the 1960s, Guy was already an idol and icon to many musicians including Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and Jimi Hendrix, who all idolized him.

The road to more commercial success began bearing fruit beginning with Guy playing at Clapton’s series of concerts, 24 Nights, and then his signing with Silvertone Records. In 1995, Silvertone issued guy’s breakout album, Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues. The album won the 1991 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Suddenly, a whole generation of blues fans had discovered Buddy Guy. Naturally, these fans began to investigate his older catalog as well. They also went back and rediscovered the music of the old masters that Guy had known and worked with previously, such as Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Junior Wells, and more.

Buddy Guy has since won Grammy Awards for several more albums including, Feels Like Rain, Slippin’ In, Blues Singer, and Living Proof. His drive, and persistence has served him well. Guy’s success has also been a boon for the blues itself. As perhaps the blues’ most visible ambassador (along with B.B. King), Guy has never stopped bringing the blues to people, gifting it to several successive generations now. Whether mentoring young musicians such as Quinn Sullivan, or doing charity work, Guy is always giving back to the blues in whatever way he can. He also still maintains a fairly vigorous touring schedule, with the exception of January, when he plays his annual residency shows at his famed club, Buddy Guy’s Legends.

In addition to Grammy Awards, Guy has received numerous other distinctions including the National Medal of Arts in 2003, which is awarded by the President of the United States “to those who have made extraordinary contributions to the creation, growth and support in the arts in the United States.” He has also received numerous W.C. Handy Awards, renamed in 2006, becoming the Blues Music Awards, presented by the Blues Foundation. Guy was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 14, 2005, by friends, Eric Clapton and B.B. King. On December 2, 2012, Guy was awarded the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors.

Other named recipients of the Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award include the Bee Gees, Pierre Boulez, Buddy Guy, George Harrison, Flaco Jiménez, the Louvin Brothers, and Wayne Shorter. Recipients of the Trustees Award honorees are Richard Perry, Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil, and George Wein. Ray Kurzweil will receive the Technical GRAMMY Award.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-01-02/news/chi-buddy-guy-ott-20140102_1_buddy-guy-kid-rock-junior-wells

Buddy Guy performs
January 02, 2014
Chicago Tribune

Chicago's 77-year-old, polka-dotted, fast-fingered survivor has spent roughly the past year simultaneously looking back and moving forward. His 2012 autobiography "When I Left Home" begins with a 9-year-old picking cotton in Lettswerth, La., and ends with the owner of Buddy Guy's Legends getting up at first light to tend to his 14 suburban Chicago acres. His latest album, last year's cranked-up "Rhythm & Blues," includes duets with younger stars such as Kid Rock (on Buddy's late friend Junior Wells' standard "Messin' with the Kid") and Keith Urban, yet the first song "Best In Town" is a biography: "When I first heard Muddy Waters/I knew I was Chicago-bound." Guy has been telling his story in Chicago since he moved here from Louisiana in the late '50s, and continues at Legends every weekend this month.

Where: Buddy Guy's Legends, 700 S. Wabash
When: 9 p.m. Friday [JAN. 3] and 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 9-12, Jan. 16-19, Jan. 21-26 and Jan. 30-31

Tickets: $55-65; 312-427-1190 or buddyguy.com

http://www.straight.com/blogra/blues-icon-buddy-guy-burns-fretboard-hendrix-passion-74-years-young

Blues icon Buddy Guy burns up the fretboard with Hendrix-like passion on "74 Years Young"
by Steve Newton
October 28th, 2010

He may be 74 years old, but on "74 Years Young", the opening track off his new album Living Proof, Chicago blues legend Buddy Guy rips up the fretboard with the same ferocity he displayed in the '60s.

"I've been all around the world," croons Guy in the autobiographical number, "everywhere is home/drank wine with Kings and the Rolling Stones/I got a few scars from the battles I won, 'cause I'm 74 years young." Then he lets loose a torrent of scathing blues-metal licks on a '57 Strat and you just know Jimi's smiling down from above.

Guitar freaks should also note that B.B. King and Carlos Santana make appearances on the album, which ends with Guy blazing away on the rowdy instrumental "Skanky". Sounds like blues-rock heaven to me.

THE MUSIC OF BUDDY GUY: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH MR. GUY:

Buddy Guy - "Man and the blues" (full album):

Playlist:

(0:00) "A Man and the Blues"
(6:18) "I Can't Quit the Blues"
(9:33) "Money (That's What I Want)" (Berry Gordy, Jr., Janie Bradford) (12:23) "One Room Country Shack" (Mercy Dee Walton) x "Just Playing With My Axe"
(18:00) "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (Lyrics Traditional English Music Written by B. Guy)
(20:27) "Sweet Little Angel" (B.B. King)
(26:04) "Worry, Worry" (Pluma Davis, Jules Taub)
(32:14) "Jam on a Monday Morning" FINIS (35:02) Live Music: Introduction of The Band
(35:50) Live Music: "Low Down Dirty Shame"
(39:51) Live Music: "How Can One Woman Be So Mean"
(46:12) Live Music: "Checking on My Baby"
(51:15) Live Music: "When You See Tears Coming From My Eyes"
(57:30) Live Music: Buddy Guy talking about playing overseas
(58:06) Live Music: "Ten Years Ago"
(1:06:53) Live Music: "Messin' with the Kid"
(1:10:36) Live Music: "Somebody Done Hoodooed The Hoodoo Man"
(1:16:15) Live Music: "In My Younger Days"

Buddy Guy & his Blues Band - "Five Long Years" - Live Bern May 2, 2000:

Personnel:
Buddy Guy - Guitar and Vocals)
Frank Blinkal - Guitar
Jason Moynihan - Saxophone
Jerry Porter - Drums
Orlando Wright - Bass
Tony Zamagni - Keyboards

Buddy Guy "Stormy Monday" (4/7/68) with Jimi Hendrix watching from the crowd:

Buddy Guy performing "Stormy Monday" at the Generation Club in NYC on April 7th in 1968. This was part of a celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. who had passed a few days prior. Notice Jimi Hendrix watching Buddy in awe.

About half way through this video, after Stormy Monday. There is a few minutes of a jam with Jimi Hendrix and most likely Dave Woods on guitar, with Ed "Bugs" Gregory on bass, and possibly Glenway McTeer on drums.

Buddy Guy - "Ten Years Ago":

Montreux 1974 from the DVD "Muddy Waters - Messin' with the blues"

Buddy Guy - Full Concert - 08/14/94 - Newport Jazz Festival (OFFICIAL):

Setlist:

0:00:00 - All Your Love (I Miss Loving) / Five Long Years / Someone Else Is Steppin' In (Slippin' Out, Slippin' In)
0:12:39 - Mustang Sally / Sweet Little Angel / Feels Like Rain
0:22:36 - Damn Right, I've Got The Blues
0:26:15 - Hoochie Coochie Man
0:31:12 - Knock On Wood
0:41:47 - Cold Shot (instrumental) / Blues Medley / She's Nineteen Years Old

Buddy Guy On Strombo: Full Extended Interview:

http://www.strombo.com
Legendary blues guitarist Buddy Guy visited the show to talk about his career and memoir - however, we couldn't air the entire interview on the program, we have it here for you now. Enjoy.

BUDDY GUY - "THIS IS BUDDY GUY!" (FULL ALBUM)--1968:

TRACK LISTING:
SIDE A

00:00 Got My Eyes On You
03:55 The Things I Used To Do
07:30 (You Give Me) Fever
14:15 Knock On Wood

SIDE B

19:12 I Had A Dream Last Night
25:27 24 Hours Of The Day
28:23 You Were Wrong
33:05 I'm Not The Best

BUDDY GUY - "DAMN RIGHT, I'VE GOT THE BLUES"-- (FULL VINYL):

SIDE A

00:00 Damn Right, I've Got The Blues
04:26 Where Is The Next One Coming From
09:00 Five Long Years
17:28 Mustang Sally
22:10 There Is Something On Your Mind

SIDE B

26:56 Early In The Morning
30:06 Too Broke To Spend The Night
35:06 Black Night
42:50 Let Me Love You Baby
46:50 Rememberin' Stevie

Buddy Guy with B.B. King & Eric Clapton:

Buddy Guy "Damn Right, I've Got the Blues" on Guitar Center Sessions:

The Kennedy Center Honors Buddy Guy 2012:

The Kennedy Center Honors Buddy Guy
The Kennedy Center Opera House
Washington, DC

Recorded December 2, 2012
Broadcast December 26, 2012 on CBS-TV

Setlist:

01 Introduction - Morgan Freeman
02 Hound Dog - Tracy Chapman
03 The Things I Used To Do - Gary Clark, Jr. and Jimmie Vaughan
04 I'd Rather Go Blind - Beth Hart and Jeff Beck
05 Sweet Home Chicago - Bonnie Raitt and all

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_Guy

Buddy Guy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Buddy Guy
Buddy Guy performing and interacting with the crowd
Background information
Birth name	George Guy
Born	July 30, 1936 (age 79) Lettsworth, Louisiana, United States^[1]
Genres	Chicago blues, electric blues, Blues Rock
Occupation(s)	Musician, songwriter
Instruments	Guitar, vocals
Years active	1953–present
Labels	RCA, Cobra, Chess, Delmark, Silvertone, MCA, Atlantic, MPS, Charly, Zomba Music Group, Jive, Vanguard, JSP Records, Rhino Records, Purple Pyramid, Flyright, AIM Recording Co., Alligator Records, Blues Ball Records
Associated acts	Junior Wells
Website	http://www.buddyguy.net/
Notable instruments
Fender Buddy Guy Signature Stratocaster

George "Buddy" Guy (born July 30, 1936^[2]) is an American blues guitarist and singer. He is an exponent of Chicago blues and has influenced guitarists including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, John Mayer and Stevie Ray Vaughan. In the 1960s, Guy played with Muddy Waters as a house guitarist at Chess Records and began a musical partnership with harmonica player Junior Wells.

Guy was ranked 30th in Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.^[3] His song "Stone Crazy" was ranked 78th in Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time.^[4] Clapton once described him as "the best guitar player alive".^[5]

Guy's autobiography, When I Left Home: My Story, was published in 2012.^[6]

Early life

Buddy Guy at Monterey Jazz Festival 1992. Photo: Brian McMillen

Guy was born and raised in Lettsworth, Louisiana, United States.^[1] Guy began learning guitar on a two-string diddley bow he made. Later he was given a Harmony acoustic guitar, which, decades later in Guy's lengthy career was donated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Career

In the early 1950s Guy began performing with bands in Baton Rouge. While living in Baton Rouge, Guy worked as a custodian at Louisiana State University.^[1]

Soon after moving to Chicago on September 25, 1957,^[1] Guy fell under the influence of Muddy Waters. In 1958, a competition with West Side guitarists Magic Sam and Otis Rush gave Guy a record contract. Soon afterwards he recorded for Cobra Records. He recorded sessions with Junior Wells for Delmark Records under the pseudonym Friendly Chap in 1965 and 1966.^[7]

Guy’s early career was impeded by both conservative business choices made by his record company (Chess Records) and "the scorn, diminishments and petty subterfuge from a few jealous rivals"^{[citation needed]}. Chess, Guy’s record label from 1959 to 1968, refused to record Buddy Guy’s novel style that was similar to his live shows. Leonard Chess, Chess Records founder, denounced Guy’s playing as "noise". In the early 1960s, Chess tried recording Guy as a solo artist with R&B ballads, jazz instrumentals, soul and novelty dance tunes, but none was released as a single. Guy’s only Chess album, Left My Blues in San Francisco, was finally issued in 1967. Most of the songs belong stylistically to the era's soul boom, with orchestrations by Gene Barge and Charlie Stepney. Chess used Guy mainly as a session guitarist to back Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Koko Taylor and others.

In 1965 Guy participated in the European tour American Folk Blues Festival.

He appeared onstage at the March 1969 Supershow at Staines, England, that also included Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, Jack Bruce, Stephen Stills, Buddy Miles, Glenn Campbell, Roland Kirk, Jon Hiseman, and The Misunderstood. But by the late 1960s, Guy's star was in decline.

Guy's career finally took off during the blues revival period of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was sparked by Clapton's request that Guy be part of the 24 Nights all-star blues guitar lineup at London's Royal Albert Hall and Guy's subsequent signing with Silvertone Records.

Guy performs an annual residency at his Chicago blues club Buddy Guy's Legends each January.^[8]

Music

Buddy Guy in 1993 performing in Toronto, Canada

While Guy's music is often labelled Chicago blues, his style is unique and separate. His music can vary from the most traditional, deepest blues to a creative, unpredictable and radical gumbo of the blues, avant rock, soul and free jazz that morphs at each night’s performance.

As New York Times music critic Jon Pareles noted in 2004:

Mr. Guy, 68, mingles anarchy, virtuosity, deep blues and hammy shtick in ways that keep all eyes on him.... [Guy] loves extremes: sudden drops from loud to soft, or a sweet, sustained guitar solo followed by a jolt of speed, or a high, imploring vocal cut off with a rasp.... Whether he's singing with gentle menace or bending new curves into a blue note, he is a master of tension and release, and his every wayward impulse was riveting.

In an interview taped April 14, 2000, for the Cleveland college station WRUW-FM, Guy said:

The purpose of me trying to play the kind of rocky stuff is to get airplay...I find myself kind of searching, hoping I'll hit the right notes, say the right things, maybe they'll put me on one of these big stations, what they call 'classic'...if you get Eric Clapton to play a Muddy Waters song, they call it classic, and they will put it on that station, but you'll never hear Muddy Waters.

Influence

For almost 50 years, Guy has performed flamboyant live concerts of energetic blues and blues rock, predating the 1960s blues rockers. As a musician, he had a fundamental impact on the blues and on rock and roll, influencing a new generation of artists.

Buddy Guy has been called the bridge between the blues and rock and roll. He is one of the historic links between Chicago electric blues pioneers Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and popular musicians like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page as well as later revivalists like Stevie Ray Vaughan. Vaughan stated that, "Without Buddy Guy, there would be no Stevie Ray Vaughan." Guitarist magazine observed:

Without Buddy Guy, the blues, not to mention rock as we know it, might be a heckuva lot less interesting today. Take the blues out of contemporary rock music—or pop, jazz and funk for that matter—and what you have left is a wholly spineless affair. A tasteless stew. Makes you shudder to think about it ...^[where?]

Buddy Guy at the Liri Blues Festival, Italy, in 1989

In addition, Guy's pathfinding guitar techniques also contributed greatly to rock and roll music. His guitar playing was loud and aggressive; used pioneering distortion and feedback techniques; employed longer solos; had shifts of volume and texture; and was driven by emotion and impulse. These lessons were eagerly learned and applied by the new wave of 1960s British artists and later became basic attributes of blues-rock music and its offspring, hard rock and heavy metal music. Jeff Beck realized in the early 1960s: "I didn't know a Strat could sound like that—until I heard Buddy's tracks on the Blues From Big Bill's Copa Cabana album" (reissue of 1963 Folk Festival Of The Blues album) and "It was the total manic abandon in Buddy's solos. They broke all boundaries. I just thought, this is more like it! Also, his solos weren't restricted to a three-minute pop format; they were long and really developed."^{[citation needed]}

Clapton has stated that he got the idea for a blues-rock power trio while watching Buddy Guy's trio perform in England in 1965. Clapton later formed the rock band Cream, which was "the first rock supergroup to become superstars" and was also "the first top group to truly exploit the power-trio format, in the process laying the foundation for much blues-rock and hard rock of the 1960s and 1970s."^[where?]

Eric Clapton said "Buddy Guy was to me what Elvis was for others." Clapton said in a 1985 Musician magazine article that "Buddy Guy is by far and without a doubt the best guitar player alive...if you see him in person, the way he plays is beyond anyone. Total freedom of spirit, I guess. He really changed the course of rock and roll blues." While inducting Buddy into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Eric Clapton said "No matter how great the song, or performance, my ear would always find him out. He stood out in the mix. Simply by virtue of the originality and vitality of his playing." ^[9]

Buddy Guy performing in 1999

Recalls Guy: "Eric Clapton and I are the best of friends and I like the tune "Strange Brew" and we were sitting and having a drink one day and I said 'Man, that "Strange Brew" ... you just cracked me up with that note.' And he said 'You should...cause it's your licks ...' " As soon as Clapton completed his famous Derek & the Dominos sessions in October 1970, he co-produced (with Ahmet Ertegün and Tom Dowd) the Buddy Guy & Junior Wells Play The Blues album with Guy's longtime harp and vocal compatriot, Junior Wells. The record, released in 1972, is regarded by some critics as among the finest electric blues recordings of the modern era.^{[citation needed]}

In recognition of Guy's influence on Hendrix's career, the Hendrix family invited Buddy Guy to headline all-star casts at several Jimi Hendrix tribute concerts they organized in recent years, "calling on a legend to celebrate a legend." Jimi Hendrix himself once said that "Heaven is lying at Buddy Guy’s feet while listening to him play guitar."^{[citation needed]}

Songs such as "Red House", "Voodoo Chile" and "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" partly came from the sonic world that Buddy Guy helped to create. According to the Fender Players' Club: "Almost ten years before Jimi Hendrix would electrify the rock world with his high-voltage voodoo blues, Buddy Guy was shocking juke joint patrons in Baton Rouge with his own brand of high-octane blues. Ironically, when Buddy’s playing technique and flamboyant showmanship were later revealed to crossover audiences in the late Sixties, it was erroneously assumed that he was imitating Hendrix." (In 1993, Guy covered "Red House" on Stone Free: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix.)

Guy performing at the Bonnaroo Music Festival in 2006

In Urbana, Illinois, 1983

Stevie Ray Vaughan once declared that Buddy Guy "plays from a place that I've never heard anyone play." Vaughan continued:

Buddy can go from one end of the spectrum to another. He can play quieter than anybody I've ever heard, or wilder and louder than anybody I've ever heard. I play pretty loud a lot of times, but Buddy's tones are incredible. He pulls such emotion out of so little volume. Buddy just has this cool feel to everything he does. And when he sings, it's just compounded. Girls fall over and sweat and die! Every once in a while I get the chance to play with Buddy, and he gets me every time, because we could try to go to Mars on guitars but then he'll start singing, sing a couple of lines, and then stick the mike in front of me! What are you gonna do? What is a person gonna do?!

Geez, you can't forget Buddy Guy. He transcended blues and started becoming theater. It was high art, kind of like drama theater when he played, you know. He was playing behind his head long before Hendrix. I once saw him throw the guitar up in the air and catch it in the same chord.

— Jeff Beck

Beck recalled the night he and Stevie Ray Vaughan performed with Guy at Buddy Guy's Legends club^[10] in Chicago: "That was just the most incredible stuff I ever heard in my life. The three of us all jammed and it was so thrilling. That is as close you can come to the heart of the blues."

According to Jimmy Page, "Buddy Guy is an absolute monster." "There were a number of albums that everybody got tuned into in the early days. There was one in particular called, I think, American Folk Festival Of The Blues, which featured Buddy Guy. He just astounded everybody."^{[citation needed]}

Singer-songwriter and guitarist John Mayer, who has performed with Guy on numerous occasions (including with Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival and on PBS's Soundstage) and collaborated with him on Guy's 2005 album Bring 'Em In, cited on several occasions that Buddy Guy was one of his top influences.

Former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman:

Guitar Legends do not come any better than Buddy Guy. He is feted by his peers and loved by his fans for his ability to make the guitar both talk and cry the blues. Such is Buddy's mastery of the guitar that there is virtually no guitarist that he cannot imitate.

Guy has opened for the Rolling Stones on numerous tours since the early 1970s. Slash: "Buddy Guy is the perfect combination of R&B and hardcore rock and roll." ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons: "He (Buddy Guy) ain't no trickster. He may appear surprised by his own instant ability but, clearly, he knows what's up."

Guy was a judge for the 6th and 8th annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists.^[11]

Guy appeared and performed in an episode of the popular children's show, Jack's Big Music Show, as the "King of Swing". Guy has influenced the styles of subsequent artists such as Reggie Sears^[12] and Jesse Marchant of JBM.^[13]

On February 21, 2012, Guy performed in concert at the White House for President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle.^[14] During the finale of the concert Guy successfully encouraged the President to sing a few bars of "Sweet Home Chicago".^[15]

Awards

On September 20, 1996, Guy was inducted in Guitar Center's Hollywood Rockwalk.^[16]

Guy has won six^[17] Grammy Awards both for his work on his electric and acoustic guitars, and for contemporary and traditional forms of blues music. In 2003, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. This medal is awarded by the President of the United States of America to those who have made extraordinary contributions to the creation, growth and support in the arts in the United States.^[18] By 2004, Guy had also earned 23 W.C. Handy Awards, Billboard magazine's The Century Award (Guy was its second recipient) for distinguished artistic achievement, and the title of Greatest Living Electric Blues Guitarist.

Guy was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 14, 2005, by Eric Clapton and B.B. King. Clapton recalled seeing Guy perform in London’s Marquee Club in 1965, impressing him with his technique, his looks and his charismatic showmanship. He remembered seeing Guy pick the guitar with his teeth and play it over his head—two tricks that later influenced Jimi Hendrix.^{[citation needed]} Guy’s acceptance speech was concise: "If you don’t think you have the blues, just keep living." Guy previously served on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s nominating committee.

In 2008, Buddy Guy was inducted into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, performing at Texas Club in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to commemorate the occasion.

In October 2009, he performed "Let Me Love You Baby" with Jeff Beck at the 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Concert.^[19]

On November 15, 2010, Guy performed a live set for Guitar Center Sessions on DirecTV. The episode also included an interview with Guy by program host Nic Harcourt.^[20]

On December 2, 2012, Guy was awarded the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors.^[21] At his induction, Kennedy Center Chairman David Rubenstein made the commendation, "Buddy Guy is a titan of the blues and has been a tremendous influence on virtually everyone who has picked up an electric guitar in the last half century".^[22] He was honored that night along with Dustin Hoffman, Led Zeppelin (John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant), David Letterman and Natalia Makarova.^[23]

On January 28, 2014, Guy was inducted into Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum.^[24]

Personal life and family

Several people in Buddy Guy's family are musicians. His brother, Phil Guy, was also a blues musician. Buddy's daughter, Rashawnna Guy, is a rapper whose stage name is Shawnna. Buddy's son, Greg, also performs blues guitar.^[25]
From 1991 to 2002, he was married to Jennifer Guy.^[26] The marriage ended in divorce.^[27]

Discography

Solo studio albums

I Left My Blues in San Francisco	1967	Chess	^[28]
A Man and the Blues	1968	Vanguard	^[28]
Hold That Plane!	1972	Vanguard	^[28]
Stone Crazy!	1981	Alligator	^[28]
DJ Play My Blues	1982	JSP	^[28]
Ten Blue Fingers	1985	JSP	^[28]
Breaking Out	1988	JSP	^[28]
Damn Right, I've Got the Blues	1991	Silvertone/BMG	Won the 1991 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album^[28]
Feels Like Rain	1993	Silvertone	Won the 1993 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album^[28]
Slippin' In	1994	Silvertone	Won the 1995 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album^[28]
Heavy Love	1998	Silvertone	^[28]
Sweet Tea	2001	Jive	Nominated for the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album^[28]
Blues Singer	2003	Silvertone	Won the 2003 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album^[28]
Bring 'Em In	2005	Jive
Skin Deep	2008	Jive	^[28]
Living Proof	2010	Jive	Won the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album^[29]
Rhythm & Blues	2013	RCA Records
Born to Play Guitar	2015	RCA Records

Live albums

Album	Year	Label	Notes
This Is Buddy Guy (Live)	1968	Vanguard	^[28]
The Dollar Done Fell	1980	JSP	re-released in 1988 as Live at the Checkerboard Lounge, Chicago-1979
Drinkin’ TNT ’n’ Smokin’ Dynamite	1982	Blind Pig	Rec. 1974 at the Montreux Jazz Festival
Live at Montreaux	1992	Evidence	with Junior Wells
Chicago Blues Festival 1964	2003	Stardust
Jammin’ Blues Electric & Acoustic	2003	Sony	A compilation of tracks from Live: The Real Deal and Last Time Around - Live at Legends
Live at the Mystery Club	2003	Quicksilver	Reissue of Every Day I Have the Blues
Live: The Real Deal	2006	Sony	with G.E. Smith & the Saturday Night Live Band (reissue)
Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino	2007	Vanguard	with Joss Stone and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, performing "Every Night About This Time".
Live at Legends	2012	RCA/Silvertone

Compilations

Album	Year	Label	Notes
First Time I Met the Blues	1969	Python
In the Beginning	1971	Red Lightnin’
I Was Walking Through the Woods	1974	Chess	rec. 1960–64
Hot & Cool	1978	Vanguard	^[28]
Got to Use Your Head	1979	Blues Ball	^[28]
Buddy Guy	1983	Chess
Chess Masters	1987	Charly
My Time After Awhile	1992	Vanguard
The Very Best of Buddy Guy	1992	Rhino/WEA
The Complete Chess Studio Recordings	1992	Chess	2 CD, 1960–67
Southern Blues 1957-63	1994	Paula PCD-26
Buddy’s Blues	1997	Chess	"Chess Masters" series
Buddy’s Blues 1978-1982: The Best of the JSP Recordings	1998	JSP
As Good as It Gets	1998	Vanguard
Blues Master	1998	Vanguard
Buddy’s Baddest: The Best of Buddy Guy	1999	Silvertone
The Complete Vanguard Recordings	2000	Vanguard
20th Century Masters: The Millennium: The Best of Buddy Guy	2001	MCA
Can't Quit the Blues: Box Set	2006	Silvertone/Legacy
The Definitive Buddy Guy	2009	Shout! Factory	His first single-disc career - spanning CD
Icon	2011	Geffen/Chess	Same track listing as 20th Century Masters: The Millennium: The Best of Buddy Guy

Collaborative albums

Album	Year	Label	Notes
Hoodoo Man Blues	1965	Delmark	with Junior Wells Band
Chicago / The Blues / Today!, Vol. 1	1966	Vanguard	with Junior Wells Band
It’s My Life, Baby!	1966	Vanguard	with Junior Wells Band
Berlin Festival - Guitar Workshop	1967	MPS	with various artists, Long Play released in Argentina by Microphone Argentina S.A. (1974)
Coming at You	1968	Vanguard	with Junior Wells Band^[28]
Buddy and the Juniors	1970	MCA	with Junior Mance & Junior Wells^[28]
Buddy & Junior Mance & Junior Wells	1971	Harvest (UK)	UK release of Buddy and the Juniors^[28]
South Side Blues Jam	1970	Delmark	with Junior Wells and Otis Spann
Play the Blues	1972	Rhino	with Junior Wells
Buddy & Phil Guy	1981	JSP (1024)	with Philip Guy, also P-Vine CD 23886 (2007)
Going Back	1981	Isabel	with Junior Wells, LP released only in France
The Original Blues Brothers	1983	Blue Moon	with Junior Wells
Atlantic Blues: Chicago	1986	Atlantic	with various artists
I Ain’t Got No Money	1989	Flyright	with various artists^[28]
Alone & Acoustic	1991	Alligator	CD reissue of 1981's Going Back plus 5 more songs from the sessions
Stone Free: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix	1993	Reprise	with various artists, performed "Red House"
Live: The Real Deal	1996	Silvertone	with G.E. Smith & the Saturday Night Live Band
Last Time Around - Live at Legends	1998	Jive	with Junior Wells
Every Day I Have the Blues	2000	Purple Pyramid	with Junior Wells
Double Dynamite	2001	AIM	with Junior Wells
A Night of the Blues	2005		with Junior Wells - Master Classics - reissue of Every Day I Have the Blues

References

"Buddy Guy Biography". Biography.com. A&E Television Networks, LLC. Retrieved 15 May 2015.

"Buddy Guy". Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

"The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Rolling Stone. 2004-03-24. Archived from the original on 2008-08-22. Retrieved 2010-01-25.

"The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time" at the Wayback Machine (archived May 31, 2008). Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2011-01-25. "Cut in 1961 for Chess, the full seven minutes of this blinding blues went unreleased for nearly a decade. Guy solos with a steel-needle tone, answering his own barking vocal with dizzying pinpoint stabs. 'I don't know how to bend the string', he told RS. 'Let me break it.’"

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Guy, Buddy with Ritz, David. (2012) When I Left Home: My Story, Cambridge: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-81957-5

"We've Got The Westside Covered". Riverside Reader. Retrieved 2012-12-25.

Everett, Matthew (27 February 2013). "Buddy Guy Keeps the Blues Alive". MetroPulse. Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group. Retrieved 26 March 2013.

"BB King and Eric Clapton induct Buddy Guy Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductions 2005". YouTube.com. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame + Museum. 8 December 2010. Retrieved 15 May 2015.

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All Music Guide. "Reggie Sears Related". Rovi. Retrieved 2014-01-18.

Duncan, Andrew (July 9, 2010). "JBM – Reflections". Zaptown. Retrieved 2011-05-23.

"In Performance @ the White House | Blues Legend Buddy Guy talks about playing at the White House". YouTube. Retrieved 2012-05-21.

Compton, Matt (2012-02-21). "President Obama Sings "Sweet Home Chicago"". WhiteHouse.gov. US Government. Retrieved 2012-05-21.

Guitar Center's Hollywood Rockwalk Retrieved October 7, 2013.

"Grammys 2011: Beatles, McCartney Honored on Music’s Big Night". Hollywoodtoday.net. 2011-02-13. Retrieved 2011-12-30.

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Guitar Center Sessions with host Nic Harcourt Retrieved July 1, 2013.

"Kennedy Center Honors Buddy Guy & Led Zeppelin". Americanbluesscene.com. 2012-12-03. Retrieved 2012-12-25.

"Dustin Hoffman, David Letterman, Natalia Makarova, Buddy Guy, Led Zeppelin Are Kennedy Center Honorees". Playbill.com. 2012-09-12. Retrieved 2012-12-25.

Gans, Andrew. "Dustin Hoffman, David Letterman, Natalia Makarova, Buddy Guy, Led Zeppelin Are Kennedy Center Honorees" playbill.com, September 12, 2012

"Buddy Guy Accepts His Musicians Hall of Fame Award". MusiciansHallofFame.com. Retrieved 15 May 2015.

Shafel Omiccioli, Kristin (10 September 2014). "Buddy Guy is still the baddest". KCMetropolis.org. Retrieved 15 May 2015.

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Buddy Guy > Discography > Main Albums from Allmusic

""Living Proof" wins Contemporary Blues Album at Grammys!". Buddy Guy. Retrieved 2012-12-25.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Buddy Guy.

Official website
Buddy Guy at DMOZ
Buddy Guy at the Internet Movie Database

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BUDDY GUY (b. July 30, 1936): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, singer, songwriter, arranger, ensemble leader, and teacher