Buddy Guy

Buddy Guy makes his guitar sob, scream and shudder on a nightly basis. But a concert review nearly made him react the same way, and this unassuming blues legend is still smarting over the insult almost 10 years later.

"In my earlier days I got a lot of bad reviews, and I learned to live with it," said Guy, whom such guitar stars as Jeff Beck and Carlos Santana have hailed as a musical hero.

"But this article in a Kentucky newspaper almost made me cry," he continued. "I`d played a few licks (in homage) to Stevie Ray Vaughan, and the article read: `Buddy was playing "white licks."` Now when Stevie was alive. ..."

Guy`s words trailed off, but the hurt in his voice was as apparent as the misguided statement by the reviewer, who didn`t seem to know that Vaughan had been profoundly influenced by Guy, not the other way around.

Besides Vaughan, Guy`s incendiary guitar work has inspired several generations of blues and rock artists, ranging from such current young wannabes as Jonny Lang and Kenny Wayne Shepherd to such icons as Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, who in 1993 hailed Guy as "by far and without a doubt the best guitar player alive."

And Vaughan himself regularly sang Guy`s praises, telling a 1987 interviewer: "Buddy can play quieter and sweeter or louder and wilder than anybody you`ve ever heard. And as a singer ... he is just incredible."

But Guy is uncomfortable boasting about his impact on other musicians. He performs nightly tributes to Hendrix, Vaughan and other Guy-acolytes as reference points for audience members not schooled in the blues or its enormous influence on rock.

When pressed, however, this multiple Grammy Award-winner softly acknowledges his impact on other guitarists.

"Eric (Clapton) and I were playing at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1989," Guy recalled.

"And I told him: `Man, I love those licks you`re playing. They make me shiver.` And he said: `They should. They`re yours.` But if I play them, (ignorant critics) call them `white licks.`"

Again, Guy`s pained voice trailed off.

"If you could please the whole world, you wouldn`t have to play but once," he continued a moment later.

"Every time I play, I know there`s someone there who`d never heard of me (firsthand), someone who read something Eric Clapton said about me. I have to go out on stage and make that guy say: `Wow.` That`s my job. I have a point to make. So it`s like: `Let me give you what I got.`"

BORN ON THE BAYOU

Born and raised in the tiny Louisiana farming community of Lettsworth, George "Buddy" Guy spent much of his childhood picking cotton alongside his parents.

By his mid-teens, he started to teach himself guitar by playing along to such seminal blues records as John Lee Hooker`s "Boogie Chillen." At 18, he moved to Baton Rouge, where he graduated from high school and worked at a service station. Three years later, in 1957, Guy made his first recording.

Armed with his electric guitar and not much else, he soon headed off to Chicago, the vibrant capital of the fiery urban blues style he cherished. Within days of arriving in the Windy City, he was on stage trading licks with fellow dynamo Otis Rush and had become a protege of Muddy Waters.

"When I first arrived in Chicago, I thought I should give my guitar to Earl Hooker or Hubert Sumlin or one of those guys who could really play it," Guy said with a laugh.

"After seeing them I was ashamed to say I played guitar, but I loved it so much. Matt Murphy, Wayne Bennett - you`re talking about some real players, and they didn`t even have a name for themselves. I watched them and learned."

Guy soon was holding his own against Waters, B.B. King and other six-string greats. He also pioneered the use of controlled feedback and became one of the house guitarists at Chess Records, where he recorded with the likes of Howlin` Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson. He soon began making a series of classic albums, including "A Man and the Blues" and "This Is Buddy Guy," that still electrify today.

Nearly as talented a singer as he is a guitarist, Guy is now on tour to promote his Jive/Silvertone Records album "Sweet Tea," which is due out in May.

One of the most primal and raw-sounding releases of his career, it features a mix of his patented Chicago blues with the earthy rural Mississippi style performed by such Fat Possum Records artists as R.L. Burnside, T-Model Ford and Junior Kimbrough. The album features T-Model Ford drummer Spam, former Elvis Costello sticks-man Pete Thomas and ex-Derek & The Dominos keyboardist Bobby Whitlock.

"I had to warm up to doing it," Guy said of "Sweet Tea," which mostly features songs by Burnside, Ford and Kimbrough. "Junior Kimbrough reminds me of John Lee Hooker; you play guitar according to how you sing. So all I did was close my eyes and listen, and then I played."

The album`s proudly unpolished sound could win him a new generation of listeners, including fans of Burnside`s recent albums with alt-rock favorites the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. But Guy, who spent nearly 15 years without a record contract between the mid-1970s and late `80s, doesn`t take anything for granted. He knows all too well that bona-fide blues albums are routinely ignored by commercial radio.

"Unless somebody tells you (about a new blues album), you won`t know, because they don`t play this music on the radio," he said. "They play B.B. King`s album with Eric Clapton, but that`s because of Eric. They don`t play B.B. by himself, or Muddy, but they`ll play versions of their songs by somebody else.

"It`s almost like the pre-civil rights era, where we were told to ride on the back of the bus even when it was empty. I`m going to keep playing, and hope I get the right note."

Guy grew even more somber.

"My kids didn`t find out who I was until they were in their 20s, because they couldn`t hear me on radio or see me on TV, and they were too young to come hear me play in the clubs. They know now, but what about the kids who don`t know anything about it?" he lamented.

"It`s like my friend, Otis Rush, once said to a guy who wanted to fight him: `Man, you so little I`m going to let you hit me for six days in a row. Just let me hit you once on Sunday.` Just give us one day a week on the radio (for blues), and play the other stuff six days a week. We`ve been locked out long enough."

(c)Copley News Service

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Author: George Varga