Buddy Guy

• Born: July 30, 1936
• Place of Birth: Lettsworth, Louisiana

AMERICAN BLUES SINGER, SONGWRITER, AND GUITARIST

Buddy Guy provided a bridge between the electric Chicago blues sound of the late 1950s and the guitar-driven rock music of the late 1960s.

The Life

George "Buddy" Guy was born to a family of sharecroppers in rural Louisiana. When he was not in school, he worked on the farm, plowing with a mule or picking cotton. He later acknowledged the impact of racism and segregation on his life, such as when a white friend's parents forbid the two from playing together, but did his best to follow his family's example in turning the other cheek. By the age of seven, he was deeply interested in music, fashioning pieces of scrap wood and wire into something resembling a guitar.

Influenced by both acoustic blues and the newly emerging electric sounds—often accompanied by flashy showmanship—Guy began playing guitar at roadhouses with local bands in his teens. His style evolved as he learned from other musicians, and especially when he began using solid body electric guitars, most notably the Fender Stratocaster, which eventually become part of his signature sound. He decided to move to Chicago, at that time the center of blues music, in 1957. There he played in clubs, recorded as a session player, and eventually won recording contracts of his own. Guy also created showcases for live music in Chicago, when in 1972 he bought a blues bar called the Checkerboard, which remained open until 1985. In 1989, he opened Buddy Guy’s Legends, a premier venue for live blues music in downtown Chicago.

Guy won multiple Grammy Awards, more than thirty W. C. Handy Awards for blues music, and a National Medal of Arts in 2003. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005 by Eric Clapton and B. B. King, entered the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2008, and was named to the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2014. He released an autobiography, When I Left Home: My Story, in 2012. Guy had six children with his first wife, Joanne, and two more with his second wife, Jennifer. Guy was granted a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. In 2018, the states of Louisiana and Mississippi declared December 8, 2018 "Buddy Guy Day."

Guy released his eighteenth studio album, The Blues Is Alive and Well, in 2018. He followed The Blues Is Alive and Well with The Blues Don't Lie in 2022. In 2024, the artist headlined the Chicago Blues Festival as part of the "Buddy Guy Damn Right Farewell Tour."

The Music

Guy’s life might stand as a model for the development of blues music in America: he began playing the blues in the rural South, he perfected his craft in Chicago, and he found belated recognition when he was "discovered" by rock musicians and introduced by them to a mainstream popular audience.

Early Works. Guy had recorded a demo at a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, radio station before coming to Chicago, and he produced a handful of singles for Cobra Records (released by Artistic Records) after winning a battle of the bands. However, he made his early reputation with Chess Records. Although Guy recorded forty-seven songs under his own name while under contract to Chess Records from 1960 to 1967, the label showed no interest in releasing an album, perceiving him primarily as a versatile session guitarist who could play behind its more established stars, such as Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.

Even when Guy was allowed to record his own music, Leonard Chess, a founder of Chess Records, insisted that Guy play traditional blues rather than the sort of unrestrained "noise" on guitar that was the trademark of his explosive live shows. An innovative guitarist, Guy was also a flamboyant showman, playing the guitar behind his back and with his teeth (techniques later borrowed by Jimi Hendrix and others), hanging from rafters by his knees, and using long guitar cords that allowed him to walk out into the crowd as he played. When blues-influenced rock bands such as Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Led Zeppelin began selling millions of albums featuring the kind of extended feedback-drenched guitar solos that Guy had pioneered, Chess reportedly went to Guy, bent over, and said, "Kick me!" Chess offered to let Guy record his own style of music, but too late—Guy had just signed a contract with Vanguard Records that offered him artistic control, though none of the albums he recorded with Vanguard were completely successful.

While his recorded output remained frustratingly uneven, Guy made his reputation with his live performances, touring as a solo artist and with harmonica player Junior Wells (and recording with Wells as Friendly Chap on the classic Hoodoo Man Blues [1965] to avoid contractual conflicts), as a lead-in act with the Rolling Stones, and in appearances with such famous disciples as Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Stone Crazy! Perhaps the first full-length recording that accurately represented Guy’s style was Stone Crazy!, recorded in one session while he was on a tour of France and released in America in 1981 by Alligator Records. (Remarkably, he had recorded a full album backing up Junior Wells, Pleading the Blues [1979], on the same day.) The opening track of Stone Crazy!, Guy’s "I Smell a Rat," exemplified the freedom he had always needed: The song ran more than nine minutes, and it opened with a guitar solo extending more than two minutes before the first lyrics were sung, an approach that would never have been allowed by traditional blues labels, which had always followed the Chess formula of three-minute songs suitable for radio play.

Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues. Guy signed with Silvertone Records in 1990, and he finally achieved his first unalloyed successes with both critics and fans, resurrecting his career and earning him his first Grammy Award for best contemporary blues album. Now well into his fifties, he had finally begun the richest and most productive period of his career, and he would win the same Grammy Award in 1993, for Feels Like Rain, and in 1995, for Slippin’ In. Guy would collect additional Grammy Awards for best rock instrumental performance (1996, for the Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute "SRV Shuffle"), for best traditional blues album (2003, for Blues Singer), once again for best contemporary blues album (2010, for Living Proof), and for best blues album (2014, for Born to Play Guitar).

Can’t Quit the Blues. This definitive three-album boxed set, which surveys the first fifty years of Guy’s music, beginning with his 1957 demo for Ace Records, was released in 2006 to coincide with his seventieth birthday. Guy’s sporadic and inconsistent recording history, mostly with small record companies, had made it extraordinarily difficult for fans to obtain his earlier works, and this release addressed that need.

Musical Legacy

Guy unleashed the full potential of the electric guitar, establishing it as the distinctive lead instrument for most rock and blues music. He was twenty years younger than blues players such as Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, from whom he had learned his craft, and he became an elder statesman for the rock musicians who would follow him. Guy found himself in the unusual position of being both a living symbol of the classic blues tradition and a restless innovator whose interests extended that tradition. While his most famous contributions are classified as Chicago blues, he also experimented with different subgenres, such as Delta hill country blues (Sweet Tea, 2001) and traditional acoustic blues (Blues Singer).

Above all, Guy broadened the range and appeal of the blues while remaining true to its fundamental sound and emotional resonance. Among the notable guitarists who have acknowledged Guy’s influence are Hendrix, Clapton, Vaughan, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Robert Cray, and John Mayer.

Principal Recordings

ALBUMS: I Left My Blues in San Francisco, 1967; Blues Today, 1968; A Man and the Blues, 1968; Buddy and the Juniors, 1970 (with Junior Wells and Junior Mance); Buddy Guy and Junior Wells Play the Blues, 1972 (with Wells); Hold That Plane, 1972; Buddy and Phil Guy, 1979 (with Phil Guy); Got to Use Your Head, 1979; Pleading the Blues, 1979 (with Wells); The Dollar Done Fell, 1980; Stone Crazy!, 1981; D. J. Play My Blues, 1982; Buddy Guy, 1983; Ten Blue Fingers, 1985; Chess Masters, 1987; Breaking Out, 1988; I Ain’t Got No Money, 1989; Alone and Acoustic, 1991 (with Wells); Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues, 1991; My Time After Awhile, 1992; Feels Like Rain, 1993; Slippin’ In, 1994; I Cry, 1995; The Treasure Untold, 1997; Try to Quit You Baby, 1997; Heavy Love, 1998; The Real Blues, 1999 (with Wells); Everyday I Have the Blues, 2000 (with Wells); Sweet Tea, 2001; Blue on Blues, 2002 (with Otis Rush); Everything Gonna Be Alright, 2002; Blues Singer, 2003; Bring ’Em In, 2005; Messin’ with the Kids, 2006 (with Wells); Skin Deep, 2008; Living Proof, 2010; Rhythm & Blues, 2013; Born to Play Guitar, 2015; The Blues Is Alive and Well, 2018; The Blues Don't Lie, 2022.

Bibliography

"Buddy Guy." Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, 2017, www.rockhall.com/inductees/buddy-guy. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.

Dicaire, David. Blues Singers: Biographies of Fifty Legendary Artists of the Early Twentieth Century. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999.

Doyle, Patrick. "From Howlin' Wolf to Hendrix: The Life and Times of Buddy Guy." Rolling Stone, 4 Nov. 2015, www.rollingstone.com/music/features/from-howlin-wolf-to-hendrix-the-life-and-times-of-buddy-guy-20151104. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.

Fragassi, Selena. "Buddy Guy Delivers Powerhouse Set on Closing Night of Chicago Blues Festival." Chicago Sun Times, 9 June 2024, chicago.suntimes.com/music/2024/06/09/buddy-guy-delivers-powerhouse-set-chicago-blues-festival-millennium-park-culture-music-arts. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.

Gill, Chris. Guitar Legends. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

Guy, Buddy, and David Ritz. When I Left Home: My Story. Da Capo Press, 2012.

Obrecht, Jas. Blues Guitar: The Men Who Made the Music. San Francisco: GPI Books, 1990.

Waterman, Dick. Between Midnight and Day: The Last Unpublished Blues Archive. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003.

Wilcock, Donald E., with Buddy Guy. Damn Right I’ve Got the Blues: Buddy Guy and the Blues Roots of Rock and Roll. San Francisco: Woodford Press, 1993. musicians.