It took decades for the rock-and-blues world to catch up with trailblazing guitarist Buddy Guy.
Guy, a musical visionary and a guitarist’s guitarist, didn’t become really famous on his own until the white rockers he’d influenced started paying tribute to his sonic leadership. By then, he’d spent years as a slightly frustrated professional session player, and a bit of a problem for record executives who didn’t know what to make of Guy’s lighting-in-a-bottle style, which married old-school blues and high-voltage electricity.
If B.B. King enjoyed a long reign as the stately King of the Blues, Buddy Guy was like his court jester: faster, trickier, sharper and more dangerous.
The younger guitar heroes who stood on Guy’s shoulders knew the truth. At Guy’s 2005 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Eric Clapton said: “He was for me what Elvis was probably like for other people. My course was set, and he was my pilot.”
Now, at age 81, Buddy Guy is promoting a new record release with a busy concert tour that brings him to ilani’s Cowlitz Ballroom in Ridgefield on Sunday night. Tickets are $69.
Strutting his stuff
Guy hails from Lettsworth, La. He built his own guitar out of wood and hairpins when still a child; before he was 20, he was playing in bands while working as a janitor. Eventually he went to Chicago to seek his fortune, but nearly starved — literally — before starting to win audiences with burning guitar licks and flamboyant moves like jumping atop bars and strutting back and forth while soloing. He was eventually signed to Chess Records, but after one of the founders of the label described his frenetic playing as “noise,” he got put to work as a sideman — for talents like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.
Still, Guy was discovered and worshipped by the likes of Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix and Clapton. He left Chess and pursued a solo career in the 1970s and 1980s that went from hot to lukewarm. His career finally got the major jolt it deserved during the blues revival of the late 1980s and early 1990s; Guy’s individual resurgence can be traced directly to his appearance alongside Clapton during a long, celebrated run at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1991.
After that, Guy scored the international record deal he’d always wanted, and his next album, “Damn Right I’ve Got The Blues,” was a massive hit and Grammy award winner. Guy has been busy recording and touring — and strutting around adoring audiences while soloing and posing for selfies — ever since.
Famous friends
Guy’s new “The Blues is Alive And Well” is his 18th studio album; the 7th, 8th, 9th, 12th, 15th and 17th all won Grammy awards. He’s also released six live albums and too many compilations to count.
“The Blues is Alive and Well” features guest-star turns by some of those white, formerly young blues students Guy influenced and befriended: Mick Jagger plays harmonica on the song “You Did the Crime,” and Keith Richards and Jeff Beck add their own incendiary guitar lines to Guy’s on the song “Cognac.” British singer James Bay adds some smooth counterpoint to “Blues No More.”
That may sound like reaching for celebrity names to bolster sales, but anybody who’s actually listening to this album won’t spend much attention on those Brit-blues wannabes. Reviews of “The Blues is Alive and Well” have ranged from sincerely respectful to amazed raves. Guy’s guitar playing is just as fiery as ever, but his soulful, often-overlooked voice is also center stage on this album, as he wrestles with the sorrows and joys of a long life on “A Few Good Years” and inevitability of mortality on “When My Day Comes.”
None of this material shows any sign of slowing down or mellowing out. “Don’t go there baby, there’ll be hell you have to pay,” Guy warns his woman at the end of an adventure called “Bad Day,” while a wall of electric guitars focuses the feeling. “You pushed the wrong button, you know I had a bad day.”
Sounds like the blues is alive and well in Buddy Guy.
