Buddy Guy Interview : A True Blues Legend

By: Rick Landers
Photos By: Bill Bronson (Where Noted)
Introduction courtesy of Dick Boak, C. F. Martin & Co

Martin JC Buddy Guy Signature Guitar

With five Grammy Awards, 23 W.C. Handy Awards [the most of any artist], 65 albums, a place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and disciples like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy ranks as one of the music legends of our time. He reigns as the undisputed king of Chicago blues with his fine songwriting, potent voice, incendiary playing and electrifying stage presence. Remarkably, more than fifty years after he first picked up a guitar, he is making some of the most passionate and exciting music of his entire career.

While Chicago blues by definition is electric, Buddy Guy can play acoustic blues with the best of them when he chooses. He and Willie Dixon provided the instrumental fireworks on the 1963 album, Muddy Waters, Folk Singer. On 1981’s, Alone & Acoustic: Buddy Guy & Junior Wells, he used a 12-string guitar to full, bluesy advantage. His playing on the 2004 album, Buddy Guy: Blues Singer, is both subtle and powerful.

Still, when it came to creating a Martin Signature Edition with his name on it, Buddy Guy showed himself to be anything but a traditionalist. The JC Buddy Guy Blues Guitar may well be the most distinctive Signature Edition Martin has ever made! And we’ve been told that “he enjoyed working on his with the folks at Martin on his Buddy Guy model.”

Buddy Guy is as unique as the Martin guitar that bears his name. Born a sharecropper’s son in Lettsworth, Louisiana, he was a seven-year-old when he fashioned his first makeshift two-string “guitar.” He received his first real guitar as a teenager and served his blues apprenticeship as a guitarist with “Big Poppa” John Tilly and Slim Harpo in Baton Rouge before catching a bus to Chicago in 1957. Within days of his arrival in Chicago, he caught the attention of Muddy Waters, Otis Rush, Magic Slim, and the rest of Chicago’s blues elite.

After cutting his debut singles on the Cobra label, he went to work for Chess, becoming the house guitarist for recordings by Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, Little Walter and many others, in addition to making his own records, like “First Time I Met the Blues,” “Stone Crazy” and “No Lie.” His highly amplified, stinging guitar, emotional singing and flashy playing [behind his back, with his teeth, etc.] onstage inspired several young musicians, including Eric Clapton in England, and Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan in the United States.

Guy left Chess in 1967 to record with Vanguard. During the late 1960s and 1970s, in addition to working with his own band, he played and recorded frequently with harp ace Junior Wells, a relationship captured on the live album Drinkin’ TNT ‘n’ Smokin’ Dynamite. Sadly, the 1970s and 1980s were difficult decades for Chicago bluesmen. Guy bounced from label to label for several years and spent long stretches touring clubs in the United States and Europe. For several years in the late 1980s, he couldn’t get a U.S. record deal, even though he was revered by the best rock guitarists on the planet.

The difficult days ended in 1991 with the release of Damn Right I’ve Got the Blues, which won a Grammy and brought Guy a new generation of fans. A series of fine albums followed, including Slippin’ In, Sweet Tea and Bring ‘Em In, which featured an all-star cast of guest artists: Keith Richards, Carlos Santana, Keb Mo’, Tracy Chapman, and John Mayer. Buddy Guy was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2005. When not the road, he can often be found at his Chicago nightclub: the new Buddy Guy’s Legends. Most recently, Buddy has been nominated for a Grammy with the release of his new CD, Living Proof.

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Rick Landers: I’d like to congratulate you on your latest Grammy nomination for Living Proof. I expect the first time you’re nominated for something like that it’s a big thrill, but the thrill is gone after a while, or is each nomination still as big as the last one?

Buddy Guy: Where I come from, every little bit helps. Regardless, I just did an interview before I got to you. B.B. King and I have been best of friends forever, we go back to when I came here some 53 years ago and he says, “Something is better than nothing at all.” It’s almost like money in the bank. If you put your money in the bank, ain’t no good for one percent or less, but that’s better than nothing at all.

Of course, that first one was maybe sat on top of the car, but if you don’t be nominated for three or four more, you don’t get a chance to get on that limelight thing. It’s just another glimmer. But, it’s good to have because if you’re good enough to be nominated for at least one, somebody knows something about it.

I’m very proud of that, but I’d be proud if they’d nominated me for one or two more songs, because quite a few discs got played. A couple of stations are playing four or five of the tunes and very seldom do you get that off a blues guy, to have that many cuts being played on one radio station.

Rick: Yeah, I think it’s a great album. Do you have a favorite track?

Buddy Guy: You know, if I were to have a favorite track, I would win 19 Grammys every time I go there. But, I sit back and wait on my few friends to let me know what their favorite is. My first Grammy was for Damn Right I’ve Got the Blues and I accepted what they said about that. They told me that they liked that record. I love the one me and B.B. did. I love the one Santana’s doing on there and there’s a few more, “74 Years Young.”

I’m playing at my club now, every year for the whole month of January. It’s been sold out every night and people are screaming about “74 Years Young,” because I’m 74. I don’t know if that helps a little bit, but they been askin’ for that every night and coming out loud. You’ve got that one and Santana where the blues came from. “Stay Around A Little Longer,” with B.B. King and we got at least four or five songs on there that people are asking for and even with “Damn Right I’ve Got the Blues.”

I remember they would just ask for “Damn Right I’ve Got the Blues.” I think a little bit of “Mustang Sally” because that was my first video which they played on VH1 a couple of times. So that helps because you don’t see that kind of music on music television. You’ve got to be young and good lookin’. They don’t give a shit how good your music is. If you ain’t good lookin’, I don’t think you make it too easyily.

Rick: Well, Les Paul played till he was like 94 years old, so you’ve got a lot of years ahead of you.

Buddy Guy: Well, I don’t know nothin’ else to do now. Sometimes it crosses my mind, “Buddy, are you in the way?” or “Get out of the way.” But, I’ve got a young man that we’re fixing to produce and I’m gonna put the CD out myself. Little Quinn Sullivan. He played on Skin Deep. I’ve got a cut on there called “Who’s Gonna Fill My Shoes?” If you listen to him playing solo on it, he just turned 10. He played that solo on it when he was 8.

Buddy Guy at Legends Photo: Bill Bronson

Rick: That’s amazing.

Buddy Guy: If you hear him play, you’ll think he’s 74 years young. [Rick laughing] I’m gonna put a CD out on him. I think next week we’ve got some of the CDs we’re gonna sell at my club and we’re gonna release it in March. He’s gonna play a set at my club, I think it’s the last weekend.

I met him just before he made 8 and I called him to the stage out there in Massachusetts and I said, “Man, how did you learn to play all that? When I was 8 years old, I didn’t even know how to play a radio.” [Rick Laughing] All you had to do was turn that on. [Both Laughing]

Rick: Hey, when you get back home, what do you play besides the blues when you’re kicking back at home or just to have fun?

Buddy Guy: I learn how to play by listening, so they’ve got a spiritual station. Something went wrong with it this morning, otherwise you would hear it now if I wouldn’t have cut it off. I listen to spiritual more than I do anything, because, you know, all of us got that from that man.

Do you know in the late ’40s and ’50s, even before B.B. King started bending guitar strings, you had Lou Rawls with the Pilgrim Travelers, The Five Blind Boys, Mahalia Jackson. Do you know there was the one coming in through the South, singing in them churches. 50 cents to see them, and they were making more money than any blues cat you want to know, man.

This music we play is so closely related to everything we’ve got, and we didn’t have all the drums in the spiritual records then. It was all horns and later on they started using drums and bass and guitars and all that.

But, those guys have some voices that sound like a horn section when they were singing that stuff. We used to go to the levees in Louisiana at night and that was all you could hear, because we were so far out in the country, a bunch of us would go up there and sing and that was the thing.

All of a sudden came B.B., John Lee and Muddy Waters and those guitars took off and that’s what it is now. To answer your question, if you come here and I’ve got a good spiritual record playing on one of these old AM stations, I’m locked in on that, man, because I get a lot from it.

Buddy Guy at Legends Photo: Bill Bronson

Rick: How did the new Legends come about and are you happy with the outcome?

Buddy Guy: Yeah, blues clubs are like blues musicians and we disappear. And if it was still like it was in the heyday when I first came to Chicago, I wouldn’t think about a blues club. But, I saw them disappear right after the riots in the ’60s, the blues clubs started disappearing. Not in Chicago, they used to be in Washington D.C. I forget the names of those clubs. I asked somebody the other day if that Blues Alley was still there.

Rick: Yeah, it’s still there.

Buddy Guy: Because you had a couple of more blues clubs. I forget the name of them. Me and Junior Wells used to come there and play, so all that is gone in New York, Connecticut, Boston. They had them everywhere. Now I say to myself, I better do something where you can hear the next Eric Clapton or Stevie or Jeff Beck or myself or Muddy.

We all were discovered somewhere playing. You don’t come to Washington D.C. or New York City and drive down the street and say, “Oh, I’m gonna stop at this house and see if this young lady or young man is playing because I want to hear them.” That’s why the next record company might invite him in the studio.

I just said this a few minutes ago to someone else, my mother used to tell me, “Boy, you gotta crawl before you can walk,” and that’s what blues clubs are about. For the new to come in there, and they did pass a law because Jonny Lang came to the House of Blues underage and they told him he was too young and they had to change the law, because you can’t stop someone from working. So I have them play at my place.

As long as you’re with your parents you can come in there and play. You can’t serve them no alcohol. One family came up to me this week and said, “My son is 19,” I said, “He can play if you can get him in here, but you have to get him out by curfew time,” which is around 10:30.

Rick: With the gigs that you’ve got going or the series of shows you’ve got going at Legends this month, how about a rundown on who you’ve got sharing the stage with you and are you going to offer up any surprise guests?

Buddy Guy: The surprise guests usually just pop in, but I do have an opening band and my daughter is gonna open this weekend one of the nights.

Click to Download Buddy Guy Living Proof From Amazon

Rick: Your daughter, really.

Buddy Guy: Yeah. We have a local opening band most nights. I think Scott Holder’s gonna open one for me, which he’s in Tennessee, used to play with me. But, it’s mostly the local guys come out, like I just told someone, you have people buy these tickets every year to come see me from Japan, Australia and everywhere else and I can’t believe it because the way the economy is. I thought I’d stepped in a hole, because I got hooked with the club before the economy started falling apart.

I probably wouldn’t have changed my mind anyway, because what do you do? You stop living? You can’t do that. So, I just got the club and a lot of them closed. I remember one time in Chicago there were so many clubs I didn’t even have a chance to see them all. Now I can count them all on one hand. If I close mine, I think you might have three or four left.

Rick: That’s a shame.

Buddy Guy: Yeah. The other theaters were like that: Toronto, you had them in Detroit. I could go on. We had them in Boston, New York, Connecticut. We used to get in the van, man, and go all over the country. California where I played these small blues clubs and sooner or later somebody would know who you are.

Rick: You now have a Martin Buddy Guy Signature guitar; you played acoustic earlier in your career right?

Buddy Guy: Until Leo [Fender] come out with the Strat, the solid bodies, they probably go back beyond me, but everybody was playing that acoustic. I asked B.B. King, we were there at the Grammys, year before last and I asked him, “What size amplifier were you using when you made ‘Three O’Clock in the Morning?’” It looked like one of those little radios that come out that you put in your pocket. It’s just a little bigger than that. We all were playing that acoustic guitar with a pickup stuck on to the guitar.

So that’s when it all started. Then Les Paul and Leo Fender, Les Paul, I think, came up with the whole electronics and then Leo came out with the Fender and the guitar took off like hot soup there, man. B.B. King come out with “Three O’Clock in the Morning” and you didn’t have to look back for the guitars no more.

Buddy Guy at Legends Photo: Bill Bronson

Rick: If you had never become famous and ended up working a regular job, would you still be singing the blues?

Buddy Guy: Yes. Oh, yes. I’ve dedicated my life. There’s something about singing the blues, man, if I’m answering your question right. I watch the reaction of people and do you know I got this from my mom. My mother never got a chance to see me play.

You know what she told me once? You know what she said? “If somebody tell you they love you, they could be lying, but if somebody shows you they love you, you can’t lie about that.” And that’s the way I kind of look at the question you asked me. There’s something about me playing and singing the blues.

I don’t want you to tell me nothin’. I’m watchin’ you if I can see you. Some nights they put that big spot on me. I can’t see your face and I don’t know if you’re watching me. Sometimes I tell them take it off me because I want to see their faces and I can see some people out there some nights not even smiling.

I look in their face, I say, “I’m after you.” [Rick Laughing] When you leave here, you’re gonna say, “I didn’t like nothin’ he did, but guess what? I could tell he was giving me every damn thing he had.” And that’s what it’s all about.

Rick: Would you mind telling me what’s your favorite memory of Les? And tell me about your feelings regarding his contributions to music.

Buddy Guy: First of all, I got a chance to play on his CD just before he passed.

Rick: Yeah, the last one.

Buddy Guy: And to be invited to come play on a record with Les Paul, man, I don’t even have words to describe that. Maybe you could do that for me, because I’m saying when B.B. King first saw me and they said “Can you sound similar to me?” and I didn’t even want to answer him. I said, “I don’t think nobody can sound similar to you,” but when they asked me to go in there and play on that session for Les, I just said, “Do I have to go to the moon,” or whatever.

Let’s just say I played with Les Paul, I don’t know if it was the last CD or not, but I know a bunch of us did it. I’m saying I don’t give a damn about Grammys, whatever other kinds of awards I have; this is one of the biggest awards I could ever ask for, for him to ask me to play on it.

Buddy Guy at Legends Photo: Bill Bronson

Rick: Are there plans going out for another Crossroads gig?

Buddy Guy: You know, Eric had told me this was gonna be his last one, but I think he had a lot of fun at this last one. I haven’t spoken to him. I actually have been looking forward to seeing him this summer somewhere. He’s coming back on tour this summer. I’d a said he said he’d change his mind. We are going to have one more, because that first one I think was in Dallas, and then they moved it to Chicago, because Chicago is so easy.

It’s right in the middle of the country, and he had the last two here, but I think even though I saw the expression, like I said, I look at everybody else the same way I do my fans, and I saw that expression on his face and I kinda said to myself, “You’ll do another one.” So I don’t know if somebody twists his arm or he’s just there having so much fun, we’ll just do another one.

Rick: Let me ask you a question about B.B. I’ve seen him a few times and he seems to be such a gracious and charming man. Is he like that when you’re up close and personal?

Buddy Guy: You can’t beat him with a hammer and nails. Let’s put it like that.