Drowning on dry land buddy guy biography
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Above: kompis Guy preaches the blues via Cream, Hooker and Hendrix.
By Joel Francis
The Kansas City Star
Buddy Guy isn&#;t mentioned in the spelfilm &#;Cadillac Records&#; but he made a strong case for his inclusion among the Chess label&#;s pantheon of greats Friday night at the Uptown Theater.
After a brief introduction bygd his four-piece band, Guy walked onto the scen and straight into a guitar solo. When he finally tired of pulling notes from his cream-colored Stratocaster, Guy walked to the mic and began to sing. Rattling off the names of his mentors and influences &#; Son House, Muddy Waters, Howlin&#; Wolf, and Willie Dixon &#; he passionately cried &#;they&#;re the ones who made the blues, tell me who&#;s going to fill those shoes?&#; It was a reverent, but rhetorical question.
Guy has no trouble whipping a crowd into a frenzy, but he can silence them just as easily by placing a finger to his lips. He stayed in a quiet mode for most of the evening, dripping a spare,
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How can words describe it?
It&#;s not everyday a living legend takes the stage. A man who learned his guitar &#; playing craft, not by playing, by listening to the masters of the Blues themselves.
Think of J.K Rowling sitting next to John Steinbeck or Ernest Hemingway and learning how to write. That is exactly what Buddy Guy lived. In lieu of these famous authors, Guy sat down with legends such as Muddy Waters, T- Bone Walker and B.B. King. Friday night at the Metropolis in Montreal, the seventy- six year old passed on his lessons to a sold &#; out crowd.
Following a jaw &#; dropping set by Guy&#;s prodigal child; fourteen year old Quinn Sullivan, Buddy took the stage and made sure everyone knew what was on his mind .. &#; Damn Right I Got the Blues!&#;
That opening song, introduced Guy to a audience in fine style. The very same tune which placed him on the map to stardom in Fame may have come late in a career that saw Guy play on Muddy Water&#;s &#;Live at the Copacabana&#;
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In the late nineteen-sixties, Guy recounts, Leonard Chess called him into his office. “I’ve always thought that I knew what I was doing,” he told Guy. “But when it came to you, I was wrong. . . . I held you back. I said you were playing too much. I thought you were too wild in your style.” Then Chess said, “I’m gonna bend over so you can kick my ass. Because you’ve been trying to play this ever since you got here, and I was too fucking dumb to listen.”
Chess’s failure could have stayed with Guy as a bitter memory. But he has turned the episode into a tidy, triumphant anecdote. He refuses any hint of resentment: “My mother always said, ‘What’s for you, you gonna get it. What’s not for you, don’t look for it.’ ”
There is no indisputable geography of the blues and its beginnings, but the best way to think of the story is as an accretion of influences. Robert Palmer, in his book “Deep Blues,” writes of griots in Senegambia, on the West Coast of Africa, singing songs of praise, of Yoru