GUY TALK

As he prepares to exit the world stage, blues guitar original Buddy Guy entertains Guitar Player with a dozen tales from his nearly 70-year career.

- GARY GRAFF

Buddy Guy’s reached that point in life, and in career, where he could wear the proverbial Grumpy Old Man tag with pride and purpose. But the truth is he’s anything but. With nearly 70 years of a playing career behind him, the Chicago-based legend prefers to be a wise and wizened gentleman, a gracious and enthusiastic representative of the Old School, with a sworn mission not to let his chosen music, the blues, fade away, even as he hits the road this year with his own Damn Right Farewell Tour. Guy, at 86, is certainly well-suited to the task. Hell, his story even sounds like a classic blues song.

Guy was born to sharecroppers in Lettsworth, Louisiana, and did his own time in the fields, getting $2.50 for every 100 pounds of cotton he would bag. He learned to play guitar first on a homemade two-string diddley bow, then on a Harmony acoustic given to him by a generous stranger. He journeyed from the country to the city, settling in Baton Rouge before moving to the Windy City in September 1957 and being mentored by greats such as Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Slim, B.B. King, Junior Wells and many other bluesmen. Guy was a house guitarist with Chicago’s Chess Records, and while his own style wasn’t fully appreciated by the label, it set him up for some redemption in the latter part of his career.

British artists like Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page revered Guy, along with other blues guitarists, and elevated him to a status in their country that was well above what he achieved at home. “The British Invasion is basically an American story,” Traffic co-founder Dave Mason acknowledges. “All we did is learn everything that was created there and sell it back to you — turn you on to your own music.”