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Continuing the spectacular relaunch of his career as he turns 60, Buddy Guy finally stretches out on a solo live album, recorded at his very own Chicago club. Dominic Pedler talked to him about his transformation from blues journeyman to international star.
Chicago bluesmen know a bit about pain and suffering - but after 13 years without a recording contract, one of the great injustices was finally put to rights when Buddy Guy struck gold with his 1991 comeback album, Damn Right I Got The Blues. Buddy Guy is a guitarist whose life could be a script for a Hollywood film about the blues: from Delta roots to TV commercials - although Guy never had to sell his soul to the devil along the way!
Born the son of Louisiana sharecropper, he travelled penniless to Chicago in the late '50s where he lit up the blues scene with his awesome guitar technique and wild showmanship, a time when most blues performers were still playing from their chairs. After cutting his teeth in guitar 'duels' against rivals such as Otis Rush and Magic Sam, he became the house session guitarist at Chess Records by day, while backing everyone from Howlin' Wolf to Muddy Waters by night.
The '70s and '80s saw Guy in legendary collaborations with Junior Wells (the pair became the blueprint for the original Blues Brothers), while attracting adulation from white blues giants like Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan, with whom Guy struck up close friendships. But, as with his soulmate John Lee Hooker, it was his 'repackaging' for the blues revival of the '90s that gave Guy a new lease of life, taking his music to a new generation and his playing to new levels.
After two more impressive studio outings, Feels Like Rain and Slippin' In, in 1996 Guy was finally captured doing what he does best - wailing in front of his screaming fans at the Legends club which he owns on Chicago's South Side. For a guitarist known for his fiery stage performances, the new album Live... The Real Deal, has been, as they say, a long time comin'.
Guy: "I'm making up for lost time, for all those years when I could have been recording. I thought my chances had passed me by, but Damn Right gave me some success which I'm very proud of and, after we played with the Saturday Night Live band on TV, Silvertone said go ahead and make an album at Legends. I never dreamed that I'd be making a career out of the blues. I'd always just been playing for the love of it. But better late than never."
The real deal
Live... The Real Deal dips into Buddy Guy's encyclopedic repertoire, including My Time After A While, and his very first hit in the '60s, The First Time I Met The Blues. So how tough was it to choose the set? "It was just another night," he says modestly."When I go out to play my live shows, I don't plan anything. I rely on my audience. If I hear someone shout out a song - I'll play it. Normally, it's 40 per cent of my own stuff and 60 per cent other people's. But for years before I had a hit record, I had to rely on BB King and Willie Dixon numbers - songs that people would know."
The album represents a return to a full-on blues assault after the mixture of styles covered on the first two Silvertone albums, where collaborators included John Hiatt, John Fogerty and Mark Knopfler. "They're great songs anyway but to get airplay for blues records, sometimes you need to have variety. Then the people who buy it will run across things like "Sweet Black Angel" and get into the blues that way.
Sure, I've put a Marvin Gaye song on an album ("Trouble Man" on Feels Like Rain) so that it gets heard on a soul radio station. I'll be honest, you gotta be smart sometimes and radio introduces people to music. That's how I heard Muddy Waters' Louisiana Blues, back in the '50s. I picked cotton for three weekends to save up for that record."
Of course, the blues scene has changed since then... "Yeah, things have moderated a bit from the wild Chicago days when I first came here. I think a lot of people play now for the money. Back then, we did it for fun. But great players are popping up all the time - some of them are only 9 or 10 years old. It's amazing how good they are. But they've got TV and videos to learn from. I didn't have any of that shit. I would figure it out in my head or from an old 78 record that was probably broken in the mail by the time it got to me."
Blues influences
Having played with everyone from Muddy Waters to Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Guy is one of the last genuine links between the old and the new blues. "It keeps me going to have played with those guys - like Arthur Crudup, Sonny Boy Williamson and even Lonnie Johnson the day before he died.
"It's something I often joke about with Eric [Clapton], I tell him: 'I've got something that you ain't never got!' But my main influences are BB King, who taught us all how to bend a string; T-Bone Walker for all those chords; Muddy for the true slide and John Lee Hooker for that Boogie Chillun-type blues."
Eric Clapton describes Guy as "simply the greatest guitar player alive," and he even cut a few Buddy Guy-style tracks (check out "Five Long Years" on From The Cradle). Buddy: "Yeah, we are the best of friends - and what a friend to have! He brought me over to the Royal Albert Hall and that gig is where I got my record contract from. People had ignored me for so long, but when he spoke up, they listened. But the British guys generally have done so much to lift John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, all of us. I mean, Knopfler and Beck, these guys are like money in the bank for you."
Strat casting
Guy and Clapton have more than just a shared love of the blues. Their signature Fender Stratocasters have almost identical specifications underneath Guy's trademark 'Polka Dot' finish.
"When Fender called me in to give me the endorsement and get me to decide all the parts, I chose the same wood, neck and active [Lace Sensor] pickups without knowing. They said to me: 'That's too much like Eric's. He picked out the same damn things you did.' I guess we do have a lot in common. For amps, I'm still using the reissued Fender Bassman. The materials are a little different to the Leo Fender originals but they still have the sound. Leo was like an Eric or a Stevie Ray Vaughan, people that come along once in a lifetime."
Stevie and Jimi
Buddy Guy still laments Vaughan's tragic death and paid a moving tribute to him on Damn Right I've Got The Blues. "I joined him onstage with Eric and Robert Cray for Sweet Home Chicago, the last song on the night his helicopter crashed.
"What an incredible guitar player he was - and a great friend who was always saying nice things about me every time he opened his mouth. Then I heard the news he'd died and I have never been the same since.
"But it's been great to record with Tommy Shannon, Chris Layton and Reese (Guy teamed up with Vaughan's rhythm section for Slippin' In). When I'm in Texas and they're jamming somewhere - I'm there. I'd jump out of a moving car to play with them. People like that make a better musician out of me anyway."
But SRV and Clapton are not the only guitar legends to have soaked up Guy's influence in their playing. The story goes that a certain Jimi Hendrix was caught, red-handed, blagging his licks at a gig in the '60s.
"I didn't know who he was on the night. My manager kept screaming to me; 'That's Jimi Hendrix!' And I'm going, like: 'Who the hell is he?' Then Jimi came up to me and said 'I hope you don't mind, I've been stealing licks from you.' I said; 'Okay, man, I don't care.' Someone at the show had a cine camera and they filmed Hendrix in the audience. One day this video came through the mail, I plugged it in and there he was, kneeling down with a little tape recorder."
So how different is life now for the former truck driver, now making Budweiser commercials and endorsing Fender guitars?
"I'm still the same blues player that I was. I've got a new guitar and amplification and I've had to adapt and grow with the music. But it's like an old car - it might have a new engine and tyres, but it's still the same old thing. I'm a country man, I was born that way and I'll die that way. I'm at my club every night sitting on the bar, and I'm just going to keep playing the music I've been loving all my life."
"Things have moderated a bit from the wild Chicago days when I first came here. I think a lot of people play now for the money. Back then, we just did it for fun."