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Buddy Guy (B. George Guy 1936)Buddy Guy grew up in Lettsworth, Louisiana, where he was stuck out in the country trying to learn John Lee Hooker tunes from the Radio. He began his career in Baton Rouge, La., at 21 he made a trip north to Chicago in 1957. By that time African-American migrants from the South were clustering on Chicago's West Side, not far from the original black ghetto on the South Side.
Buddy Guy's first records would show that he had replaced Hooker as a model with B.B.King and the new "West Side Sound" was actually closer to B.B.King than to Muddy Waters, because of the gospel tinged singing and single string solos, but it still had the heat and speed that was all Chicago.
In the beginning there hardly were no records or music career at all. Buddy Guy recalls "I hadn't eaten for three days, and I was trying to borrow some money from someone to telephone my mother, to tell her I'd decided to come back to Louisiana. That was when Muddy Waters bought me a sandwich and told me to sit in the back of his Chevy Station wagon. He said, "You're hungry, I can tell". But the fact that I was talking to Muddy Waters took away all my hunger. It was enough just to have said "hello" to him. I was so happy I didn't feel the cramp in my stomach any more"
Muddy waters encouraged Buddy Guy to play around the clubs, and suddenly he was hot enough and conquered Magic Sam(listen), Otis Rush and Junior Wells (listen) in a blues battle. In 1960 Willie Dixon (listen) got him to Chess, where he recorded "First Time I Meet The Blues"(listen), a song written years earlier by the singer and pianist Little Brother Montgomery (listen). The difference between Montgomery's meditative solo recording and Buddy Guy's fallout attack signifies the enormous changes in blues over a quarter of a century.
Buddy Guy soon became one of the most exciting West Side performers, perhaps because he was not a lot older than the first generation of international blues fans and subsequently was youthful enough to jump about and do sexy things with his guitar. Buddy Guy soon began recording both as a singer and as a sideman for Waters, Koko Taylor (listen) and other Chess Records stars.
"Broken Hearted Blues"(listen) and "Ten Years Ago"(listen), were just as stunning tunes, but the heyday of Chicago blues was passing. In 1965 he visited Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival and was amazed to find himself a star. Buddy Guy recalls; "A kid snatched a button off my suit. He said he wanted it for a souvenir. Back home I had a daytime job and nobody knew who I was, but these guys were shouting my name". But it was not only souvenir hunters who were hanging on to his coattails, but also guitarists like Eric Clapton (listen) and Jeff Beck (listen).
At the end of the Sixties Guy teamed up with Junior Wells (listen) to form a sort of Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry (listen) of electric Chicago blues - although their first joint album was the unplugged "Buddy And The Juniors". Some of their performances were terrific - hear Wells' albums "Hoodoo Man Blues" (listen) and "South Side Blues Jam" (listen) or the 1970 TV documentary "Chicago Blues".
For a while Guy ran a Chicago club called the "Checkerboard Lounge", weathered the album "Live At The Checkerboard Lounge, Chicago - 1979", better bookings and a new club, "Buddy Guy's Legends".
A series of 1991 shows in London with Eric Clapton (listen) attracted a lot of attention and led to a new record deal with the Silvertone label. One of these CDs, "Damn Right I've got The Blues" with cameos from Clapton, Mark Knopfler (listen) and others, became one of the most celebrated blues disc of the 1990s. Important recordings:
•The
complete Chess Studio Recordings Here is a taste of Buddy Guy from Crossroads Guitar Festival 2004:
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