There are great guitarists ... superstar guitarists ... legendary guitarists... and then there is Buddy Guy.
“Buddy Guy was for me... what Elvis was for others”, said Eric Clapton... and he wasn’t alone in following his ‘mentor’
“Buddy Guy plays from a place that I’ve never heard anyone play” - Stevie Ray Vaughan
Every major guitar player without exception gives a nod to Buddy Guy who for 50 years has blazed his trail of energetic blues and blues rock, releasing over 60 albums,’ mingling the most deepest of blues with a creative, unpredictable and radical gumbo of the blues, rock, soul and free jazz that morph’s at every performance. And there have been many performances. As one of five children raised on a plantation near the small town of Lettsworth, located some 140 miles northwest of New Orleans, he used to be kicked out for making a racket on his first makeshift “guitar”—a two-string contraption attached to a piece of wood and secured with his mother’s hairpins.
Thankfully for us all, Buddy kept his faith eventually moving to Chicago, meeting and being influenced by Muddy Waters, and later becoming session and backing guitarist for Muddy, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter and others.
“When I was 21,” says Buddy Guy, "some of my older friends, who are no longer with us, they’d say, 'You’re still a baby.' And then they said the same thing when I was 31, then 41, and I thought, ‘Man, when do I get old?’ I've been hearing that ever since I first went to Chicago—'You’re still wet behind the ears.' So when do I get dry?"
Buddy Guy has received 6 Grammy Awards, 23 W.C. Handy Blues Awards (the most any artist has received), the Billboard Magazine Century Award for distinguished artistic achievement, and the Presidential National Medal of Arts. He is ranked in the Top 30 of Rolling Stones ‘Greatest Guitarists of All Time’; and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005.
His last couple of albums have seen him trading licks with Carlos Santana, John Mayer, Robert Randolph, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks - and on his latest album – Living Proof - guests are Carlos Santana and a special appearance by BB KING.
The first single from the Living Proof album is ’74 Years Young’, a complete biographical look at Buddy’s Life and times...Asked what exactly it is that he considers himself Living Proof of, Buddy Guy doesn’t mention his talent or his influence, but focuses instead on his perseverance. “Do you know how many guys I started out with who just threw up both hands and quit?” he says. “My first wife said to me, ‘It’s me or the guitar,’ and I picked up my guitar and left. We still laugh about that. But I’m still picking away at it, I don’t know nothing else.”
What keeps him going, driving him along is best left for Buddy to explain: “Blues players don’t stop, they just drop. It’s like my mother used to say about religion—I’m too far gone to turn around!”
Jimi Hendrix once said: “Heaven is lying at Buddy Guy’sfeet while listening to him play guitar”..
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