by Guy, Buddy
“I’m seeing you, Andrew,” I said, “as a godsend.”
John Porter was cool. At the session in London he dropped “Mustang Sally” in my lap, but I didn’t mind because it’s a strong song and I love me some rhythm and blues. Also loved that John worked hard to let me sound the way I sound live. He also didn’t mind me cutting four of my own songs. One of them became real important. Happened ’cause I was trying to shoot pool before the recording session. Cat was joking around when he said to me, “Well, you can’t play pool, but can you play the blues?” My answer was “Damn right, I can play the blues.” That sparked an idea for a song: “Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues.” Turned into the album title and the biggest hit of my career.
Jeff Beck dropped by to play on a couple of tracks, and Clapton played on one. The pieces fell into place. If you listen to the album right, what you hear is a man used to wearing handcuffs flying free as a bird. And if you ask me my favorite track, I’ll tell you this story:
I wanted to honor Stevie. I thought about playing one of his songs, but that didn’t seem right. They was his tunes, not mine. Then I thought about writing a new song for him with words to express my love. But the words wouldn’t come. So I decided to do something different. I went to the studio, told them to cut off the lights, and just started playing.
“What are you doing?” the producer asked.
“Rememberin’ Stevie,” I said.
“Rememberin’ Stevie” became the name of the song.
While I was playing, my mind went back to Alpine Valley. That was such a beautiful night. After Stevie came off stage I was sitting in a corner fooling with my guitar while Eric started his set. Stevie came over to listen to what I was doing.
“Buddy,” he said, “you slay me with your licks.”
“After that what you done played out there you can’t stay nothing to me. You slayed everybody. I’m still recovering.”
“Know what, Buddy? We got to make a record. We got to do something together.”
“I’m ready, Stevie. I been ready.”
“It’s gonna happen. It’s got to.”
Rememberin’ Stevie, I thought that if it did happen, it was gonna happen in blues heaven. I pictured the band—Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, Fred Below, Little Walter, Stevie Ray Vaughan. That’s a band worth dying for.
Hoodoo Men
If an artist tells you he don’t care nothing about prizes, chances are he’s lying. I’m not saying that making the music isn’t the important thing—it is. That’s the real pleasure. And I’m not saying that pleasing people ain’t also important—I always wanna do that. But there’s another kind of recognition that feels good: being called up to the stage for one of them Grammys is a thrill like nothing else. It happened to me at age fifty-five when I won a 1991 Grammy for Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues. Thank you, Jesus.
Over the next twenty years, I’d win five more Grammys. I started getting a slew of recognition—Billboard magazine’s Century Award, membership into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Blues Foundation’s Keeping the Blues Alive Award. Every one of them was wonderful. Don’t take nothing for granted. But when these prizes came in, I felt like they really belonged to Guitar Slim or Lightnin’ Slim or Lightnin’ Hopkins—the cats who came before me and never got the right fame or the right money.
I was finally in the position I wanted: getting a good advance from an international music company that let me cut my kind of record. I also got fatter fees on the road. That let me invest more money back into my club until I finally moved it down the street and bought the building where it’s now housed at 700 South Wabash. I can’t say I’m at the top of the ladder, but I’ve moved up a lot of rungs since those days when no major label wanted to look at me.
These records on Silvertone, coming out so regularly, helped keep me in the public eye. Over the years Eric came back to play on some of my records—along with B. B., Carlos Santana, Keith Richards, Jonny Lang, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Tracy Chapman, and John Mayer. All the different generations helped me out, and we blended together real natural.
I had great producers—John Porter, Eddie Kramer, Steve Jordan, David Z, Dennis Hering, Tom Hambridge. They knew to give me the fun and freedom I needed. Also glad that these records are all different, especially the one called Sweet Tea that I made around my sixty-fifth birthday. That let me go to Oxford, Mississippi, to Dennis Hering’s studio and record the acoustic feeling of the old guys I love so well. I played songs by Junior Kimbrough, who’d made beautiful albums on the Fat Possum label. I never did meet Junior—he passed in 1998—but the style he built in North Mississippi was something I felt deeply. Him and cats like James “T-Model” Ford wrote like the men I heard as a boy—the men sitting on the porch, making quiet magic with their guitars, and singing the sun to sleep behind those white and gold fields of cotton and corn.
If you want to understand friendship among men, listen to the last thing I did with Junior Wells. Silvertone put it out in 1998, the year Junior died. It’s called Last Time Around—Live at Legends.
Hadn’t played with Junior in six or seven years. So much water had passed under the bridge. There had been hurt feelings on both sides. I had my issues, and God knows, he had his. But I’ll be damned if playing with him still wasn’t the best feeling a man could have. Between us, the blues was a blood bond. Didn’t matter none what had been said in the past. We sang and played in the present, and that night we fell in love all over again.
I liked that our last session was stripped down. The music was naked, mainly my acoustic guitar and Junior’s harp, my voice and his. What I liked best was when we went back to visit “Hoodoo Man Blues,” the song that made the world see us as a team.
Maybe you’ll be thinking I’m bragging, but I do believe that the Buddy-Junior team will go down in the history of the blues as a combination that worked real well. He brought out my funk. I like to think that I brought out his. When he sang over what I played, tears rolled down my cheeks.
Tears rolled down my cheeks when I went to Junior’s funeral. The cancer had gotten to him like it had gotten to Muddy. He was tired and frail at the end. He was ready to go home. That day we put him to rest, I looked around and saw certain females from his life that I thought should be laying out in that coffin instead of him. But I didn’t say nothin’. I just thought good thoughts about the man who left behind a musical treasure. Wrong or right, he lived his blues. He was the blues. My brother.
Three years later, in 2001, another one of my daddies died. Talkin’’bout the great John Lee Hooker. Got to say that it was one of the wonders of my life that a man whose “Boogie Chillen” got me started as a child turned out to be a friend. When I think of Johnny and his way of walking through the world, I got to laugh. I look at him like a tribal chief, a guru, and a sacred spirit.
Back in the seventies Marvin Gaye put out an album called Let’s Get It On. I loved it, but then again I loved everything Marvin put out. At the end of the record he sang this song called “Just to Keep You Satisfied.” Talking to his lady, he says something like, “I put up with your all your jealousy and bitching too, but I forget it all once in bed with you.” He’s telling his wife goodbye and feeling terrible about how he couldn’t give her what she wanted. He keeps saying that it’s too late to save the thing. Man, I related.
That’s what happened with my first wife, Joan, and my second wife, Jennifer. I tried, but I failed. Both times I was a-wishing that this was the relationship to stay steady till the end. I don’t like drama. Don’t like arguments and split-ups, don’t like to see tears, and don’t like to feel no heartaches. But the heartaches came, and so did the split-ups.
My kids suffered. They suffered because their mothers and me couldn’t keep it together, and they suffered because I was out there on the road. Now they all grown up, and I have me a crew of grandkids, and I’ve been able, best as I can, to make up for lost time. Me and my kids are together a lot. We talk, we laugh, and they don’t mind w
hen I fix ’em dinner. They know the old man can cook.
In recent years I lost my dear brother Phil, my bandmate and best friend for so many good years. Miss Phil every day.
Lately I been out there sharing dates with B. B. King. That’s a privilege. We get to talk about the days of picking and plowing. Just being in his company makes me shout with joy. B. B. played on my last record, Living Proof, on a song called “Stay Around a Little Longer.” We was singing to each other.
Another song on that album was “74 Years Young.” Now I’m seventy-five. My health is good. My fingers still work. My voice has held out. My fans haven’t left me. They accept what I offer and give back plenty love.
What else can a man want?
Good beans, good corn, fresh fruit, fish that ain’t polluted, pork that ain’t spoiled, and chicken without none of them crazy growth hormones.
If you see me walking up and down the aisle of the supermarket, you’ll know what I’m looking for. Food not pumped up with poisons and chemicals. Food that makes me think of Mama and Daddy and how they saw us through. It’s not that I think good food’s gonna let me live forever; it’s just that good food, like good blues, makes life better. It ain’t phony. It comes from nature. It nourishes and satisfies your hunger for something real.
So let me tell you goodbye the same way I said hello.
Let me invite you to Legends.
If you come by my club in Chicago, you probably won’t notice me sitting at the bar. Most people don’t. That’s okay. I’m happy to enjoy the music along with everyone else.
But if it’s a slow night at the counter where we sell my merchandise, I’ll get on stage to sing a song. That lets people know that I’m in the house and available to sign T-shirts, CDs, and my trademark guitars. I never mind drumming up business.
I also never mind thinking back on this long journey that keeps getting longer. I think about that train ride from Louisiana to Illinois on September 25, 1957, and the blues I found when I got to Chicago. Like me, that blues left home. The blues went traveling and wound up in every corner of the world.
I’m believing that the blues makes life better wherever it goes—and I’ll tell you why: even when the blues is sad, it turns your sadness to joy. And ain’t that a beautiful thing?
Selected Discography
THE SIXTIES
On Cobra: The Cobra Records Story (Capricorn)
On Chess: Folk Singer (with Muddy Waters)
Buddy’s Blues (Chess 50th Anniversary Collection)
“Wang Dang Doodle” (from Koko Taylor: What It Takes, The Chess Years)
On Delmark: Hoodoo Man Blues (with Junior Wells)
On Vanguard: A Man and the Blues
On Universal: “The Motor City Is Burning” (from The Definitive Collection: John Lee Hooker)
THE SEVENTIES
On Hip-O Select: Buddy and the Juniors
On Alligator: Stone Crazy
THE EIGHTIES
On JSP: D.J. Play My Blues
Breaking Out
THE NINETIES
On Silvertone: Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues
Last Time Around: Live at Legends (with Junior Wells)
2000 AND BEYOND
On Silvertone: Sweet Tea
Skin Deep
Living Proof
Acknowledgments
BUDDY GUY WOULD LIKE TO THANK
This book would not have been possible if it were not for the love of my family, the support of my friends, the hard work of my staff, and the unwavering dedication of my fans across the world. I am eternally grateful to everyone who has come into my life and played a role, whether that role has been great or small. You have all inspired me.
First, I would like to thank David Ritz for translating my life into this incredible story. Thank you to Vigliano Associates for believing in this project that is so close to my heart.
I would like to thank my family. My parents, Sam and Isabell Guy. My mother always worried about me, as I was her only child to leave Baton Rouge, so to keep a smile on her face, I promised her that I was going to Chicago to work and one day I would come back home in a polka dot Cadillac. Even though she never got to see me play, my polka dot guitar will always be a symbol of the promise that I made to her. Thank you to my siblings, Annie Mae, Fannie Mae, Sam, and Philip. Thank you to my children, Charlotte and son-in-law Mark Nunn, Carlise, Nanette, George Jr., Gregory, Geoffrey, Shawnna, Michael, and all of my grandchildren. I love you all.
I would like to thank my dear friends Junior Wells, Uncle Harry (aka “Babe”), Jack, and Homie for their unconditional friendship over the years. Although Junior, Babe, and Jack are no longer with us, they will never be forgotten.
Thank you to my producer, Tom Hambridge, who continues to be a source of inspiration before, during, and after the recording process.
To my band and crew, Tim Austin, Gilbert Garza, Ric Hall, Marty Sammon, Philip Vaandrager, and Orlando Wright. I couldn’t be more grateful for your dedication and hard work.
I also want to thank Annie Lawlor, Isabelle Libmann, and Michael Maxson of GBG Artist Management for always keeping me on track. Thank you to Brian Fadden, Myrna Gates, Michael Greco, Harvey Mc-Carter, Johnny Sims, and the entire staff of Buddy Guy’s Legends. Thank you for making Legends the greatest blues club in the world. Also, to our patrons—from our local regulars to those who come from around the world, I would like to thank each of you for continuing to support Legends for over twenty-two years. Your patronage means everything to me.
I would like to thank Michael Tedesco, Dan Mackta, and all of the folks at Silvertone Records; Garry Buck, Ron Kaplan, Paul Goldman, and the staff of Monterey International; Maureen McGuire and the folks at MacCabe & McGuire; Paul Natkin, Chuck Lanza, and Tom Marker. Your collective hard work is appreciated so much more than you will ever know.
Thank you to the city of Chicago for all your support in helping me keep the Blues alive. Thank you to New Roads (Pointe Coupe Parish), Louisiana for bestowing such an amazing gift upon me, for it is a blessing to receive such an honor.
Finally, I would like to thank all of the blues men who came before me who never received the recognition that was due to them. They were the red carpet that rolled out for us to walk up. When I went looking for their sound, there was no textbook to help me. I had to find the notes myself. I may not have found them, but I found something else along the way. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If I have failed to mention anyone, please forgive my mind and not my heart, for I am truly grateful to you all.
DAVID RITZ WOULD LIKE TO THANK
Buddy Guy, for honoring me with this collaboration.
Ben Schafer—great editor, great guy—Jimmie Wood—great pal, great guitarist—David Vigliano, David Peak, Ruth Ondarza, Harry Weinger, Herb Powell, Lou Ann Burton, Alan Eisenstock, John Tayloe, John Bryant, James Austin, Dejon Mayes, Dave Stein, Aaron Cohen, Juan Moscoso, Ian Valentine, Dennis Franklin, and Skip Smith.
Special gratitude to my dear friend Jimmie Vaughan, who many years ago said, “Why don’t you write Buddy Guy’s book?”
Endless love to my family, my beautiful bride, Roberta; wonderful daughters, Ali and Jess; wonderful grandkids, Charlotte, Nins, James, and Isaac; sisters Elizabeth and Esther; nieces and nephews; sons-in-love, Henry and Jim.
Thanks to the men’s groups from Tuesday and Saturday mornings.
I call my savior Jesus and love calling his holy name.
Index
Africa goodwill trips
Alligator Records
Alpine Valley, Wisconsin, concert
Altamount, California, Rolling Stones concert
Amin
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Antone, Clifford
Artigo (Lettsworth storekeeper)
Artistic label
Atlantic Records
Austin
becomes blues capital
Muddy Waters’s birthday
Autry, Gene
Avalon Ballr
oom, San Francisco
“Baby Don’t You Wanna Come Home” song (Guy)
Banks, Ernie
Barton, Lou Ann
Baseball
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
family moves from Lettsworth
lives with sister Annie Mae
plays guitar, sings, at roadhouses
Beatles
Beck, Jeff
plays on Damn Right . . .
recognizes blues, Buddy
Below, Fred
as best shuffle drummer
as Buddy’s drummer
in Four Aces
Bennett, Wayne
Berry, Chuck
Big Boy Crudup
Big Eyes (Willie Smith)
Big Poppa
Billboard magazine Century Award
Bishop, Elvin