WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1049 - Buddy Guy

Episode Date: August 29, 2019

Legendary blues guitarist Buddy Guy had many insecurities about performing and they didn’t really subside until musicians like Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck would tell him how big of an influence he was on them. Buddy tells Marc about is humble beginnings, growing up in Louisiana to sharecropper parents, picking cotton for small amounts of money. His high energy performances, inspired by Guitar Slim, helped Buddy stand out among his peers, but respect in the industry was hard fought and late coming, with his breakout record arriving when Buddy was in his 50s. This episode is sponsored by Starbucks Tripleshot Energy and Ben & Jerry's. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Are you self-employed? Don't think you need business insurance? Think again. Business insurance from Zensurance is a no-brainer for every business owner because it provides peace of mind. A lot can go wrong. A fire, cyber attack, stolen equipment, or an unhappy customer suing you. That's why you need insurance. Don't let the, I'm too small for this mindset, hold you back from protecting yourself. Zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance. Mind your business.

You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs and mozzarella balls, yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats. Get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Lock the gates!

Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fucksters? What the fucknics? What's happening? I'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it if you're new here uh just hang out you'll get the hang of it blues freaks this is your day maybe buddy guy is on the show today yeah i talked to buddy guy

and i'll talk to you about talking to buddy guy and why it was important to me to talk to Buddy Guy and the blues in general. Maybe some other stuff. But before I get into anything, I should tell you that this show was pre-recorded more than usual, longer back than usual. I'm recording this. It doesn't matter the day, but it's a few days ago from when you're listening to this. the day but it's a few days ago from when you're listening to this and the only reason i say that is because a couple reasons well i had to be done because my producer brendan is going to be on vacation this week and i have a few days off this week and we decided why not to be free of this for a week i'm not going anywhere i was just in texas and again i want to thank the people of dallas houston and austin texas for really being tremendous audiences and all the people that worked at the venues. The venues were great.

The Paramount in Austin, the Majestic in Dallas, and I think it's the Cullen over at the Wortham Center in Houston. Really, I mean, it was just like a perfect few days. It really was. Really, I mean, it was just like a perfect few days. Really was. So hopefully, here's why I tell you that this is recorded a few days in advance. Because if something major happens in the world that might require me addressing it,

it will not be heard about here because this was recorded before it happened. So hopefully nothing horrible has happened. On the outside chance, something amazing happened. I'm very excited about it, even though I don't know what it is. Also, what I'm hoping for is that with this week, I got it home to reassess, to reconfigure, to recontextualize, to reclaim my being. Hopefully, when you hear from me Monday, I will have gotten off nicotine lozenges. Why? Why are you asking?

Why are you asking why, Mark? Why, Mark? Why would you get off them? I guess that some of you would think, of course you should get off them. It can't be good. That's a good reason. I'm just saturated.

I am a nicotine sponge i just the kind of the arc of having the compulsion to do things that feel good without stopping has gotten me into a sort of a steady slightly nauseous state and i went to have a physical physical was okay. Some things were okay. Some things were, I'm not sure what that is. So I figure why not clear this, just clean the slate. Let's get down to ground zero of Mark's biology. Can we do that? I don't know what that entails really.

Obviously I have to eat, but I'm going to eat clean. I'm thinking about maybe no protein powders. I'm thinking about maybe no caffeine, definitely no nicotine, and just basic shit, clean, not many carbs. It might be boring to you, but I got to see what's up. I'm just curious. Because, you know, you spend all this time being healthy, and then it's sort of like,

I feel like I should be healthier than that on the page. And then you realize I'm getting old. How much longer do I have? And what am I really aspiring to? I don't know. But hopefully when you come back here after the weekend, I will have gotten off of them. I can't guarantee it.

See, I'm supposed to be off them tomorrow, and I'm already finding that space. I don't know, maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll kick. Tomorrow I'll kick. Buddy Guy's here. Buddy Guy. Look, man.

Yeah. The world is burning. And sometimes it's hard to know what to do. And I don't know if the blues make you feel better. I don't know what they do but they sort of either you've got the heart for them or you don't blues music now i gotta be honest with you i don't listen to a lot of new blues i don't listen to a lot of uh you know i don't listen

to a lot of blues made after maybe, I don't know. There's a few guitar players I've listened to, but not compulsively like I listen to some of the old guys. And I don't know why. I don't know why I've got the heart for it. I love to play blues guitar. I love it. It makes me feel better than almost anything i should do it more i love it more than i like listening to blues music to be honest with you at this point in my life

because to get into the real blues into the deep blues before the before the sort of like what would you call them uh the the noodling appropriators you know to get into the earlier evolution of them you know a couple maybe a generation from removed or generation past the source point of africa generation or two you know to really get that groove but i i got hip to it when i was a little kid for some reason you know i was played that groove but i i got hip to it when i was a little kid for some reason you know i was played that music by a guitar teacher i had that robert johnson record the crackly one but there was a couple of people like muddydy Waters, you know, specifically. And, you know, another way in, oddly, was some of the early Stone stuff.

And then I got hip to some chess recordings, Sonny Boy Williamson, J.B. Lenore. You know, I had some Lightning records. I had the Muddy records. I had Mississippi John Hurt record when I was a a kid and, you know, and it just never went away. My, my hunger for hearing some of the older guys, you know, like Skip James, you know, his sound, the way he played those notes, everyone played those notes so different. And so many of them were the same notes.

It fucking, it didn't fascinate me. It moved me. And so many of them were the same notes. It didn't fascinate me. It moved me. The falsetto blue sound of Robert Johnson or Skip, it kind of just went in and it moves me. It taps me into some sort of universal frequency that is elevating.

It's both melancholic and celebratory. And then as I got older, you know, I listened to, I was in high school. I was real into Stevie Ray's brother, Jimmy and the fabulous Thunderbirds. I got into that fast moving shit, that Texas jump blues, did a little Johnny Winter at certain points, early Eric Clapton. Yeah. And this is all always unfolding. When I was in college, I saw a big mama Thornton towards the end of her life. I saw Willie Dixon towards the end of his life. I saw John Hammond Jr. at the Tucson Blues Society with about 40 other people, completely channel Robert Johnson into Hellhounds on my trail. and it just blew me away. Then I got into other people doing those Johnson songs, like the Stones, like Love in Vain, even the Gun Club with Preaching

the Blues. I just kind of tracked it. I don't really love bar blues. I liked Can Heat. That guy, I think his name's Dave Wilson, was a real channeler. There were certain channels. You know, some of the white dudes that dug that shit and got into it and found their own voice in it. I was moved by them. Buddy Guy's early stuff. To hear Buddy Guy kind of, you know, find a place on his guitar that no one had found before. You know, there's a lot of cats that found it.

Albert King, Freddie King, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Lightning Hopkins. Get into that groove. Listen to that fucking Hooker and Heat album. Canned Heat and John Lee Hooker. That's some crazy shit. Yeah, that's where it meets up. Listen to those Peter Green records.

Peter Green, that Chicago record that he did with Fleetwood Mac back in Otis Spann and a couple other cats. I don't know. Paul Butterfield's first record. What am I, going to just list records? But there was a Chicago thing, Muddy. Muddy kind of, Muddy and Wolf.

Get those Wolf records. Fuck, man. But Buddy Guy always had a sound that you could identify. You know, I could hear it when he was playing backup with other people. Just the way he handled it. Got that Stratocaster going. I pulled mine out after I talked to Buddy. Albert Collins, another guy.

Not Telecaster, man. Searing. I'm not going to sit here and list them it's just if the shit goes into you and moves you you got the thing and this conversation might be fun for some of you if you have the thing i didn't know where it was going to go and buddy's been talking a long time and he's been around a long time but there's a couple of nuggets in this conversation about certain people little moments with bb kingB. King, John Lee Hooker, Earl Hooker, the slide guitar player who I didn't know about that were really exciting for me. It was exciting for me to meet him. And I saw him at the Hollywood Bowl the night that I talked to him with Charlie Musclewhite,

who I've talked to in here, real deal. Jimmy Vaughn and his band and Buddy. And they got to play. They got to play. They can't stop playing. Buddy's 83 years old, and he can still fucking, he's got a thing, man. It's the weirdest thing, you know, when you play guitar, but it's not a matter of being able to do anything fast or being able to do it like anybody else. You know, you got these, you got these licks,

you're going to make them your own. You're going to stack them. You're going to turn them inside out, but buddy, I just owned them. These are the same notes, a lot of them, but how are you going to bend them? How are you going to, how are you going to pull them? How are you going to pull him? How are you going to let him sustain and sing? I don't know, man. There's a lot of personality to a lot of the great players. And Hubert Sumlin, who played for Wolf. But anyway, it was a great privilege to talk to Buddy, and I'm glad he came by because the music does speak to me,

and I like to play it, and I like to hear stories about the old days. So this is me talking to Buddy Guy. He's currently on tour around the country and you can see all his tour dates at buddyguy.net. His most recent album is The Blues Is Alive and Well, is The Blues Is Alive and Well, one of many, many records. And he's 83, man, and he just jumped up these stairs and sat down, and we started talking. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats.

Well, almost, almost anything. So, no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea and ice cream, yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats, get almost, almost anything.? Yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats. Get almost almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly.

This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. I kind of felt bad because, you know, I do comedy and stuff myself. And after shows, people come up to me and they want to get their pictures taken. Oh, tell me about it. Yeah. Well, the funny thing is I've never done it to anybody before. And I was on a plane with you. And you wouldn't have known.

And, you know, I saw you and I'm like, yeah, he's on my plane. I saw you taking off. And one of your guys actually, I think, knows my show. I don't remember which guy, but he gave me a polka dot pic. But, you know, I get off the plane. I'm a baggage claim. I said, if I don't go get a picture with that guy, I'm going to be mad at myself. Well, that would have been easy because that was my guitar tech because he's the one who got the pics.

Yeah, yeah. But I ran up to you, you know, and I said what everyone says. Hey, man, I don't usually do this. You know, I don't want to be an asshole. No, you know, I done got used to that now, and it made it even. You know, you used to have to have just a camera. Now everybody who got a phone got a camera in it, you know. And I tell people now, I have people laughing.

I say every time i see somebody with a cell phone i just i just say cheese yeah well you know there's that moment where you do it after shows oh yeah and you're tired and maybe you're not looking like i i always say that there's about a hundred people that got pictures of me looking tired with them oh man i know you know i can give you a funny one a lady came into my club in Chicago, and I took about 100 and something, and I had my son standing beside me, and I made him print out a piece of paper on it saying, no more photographs.

And she came up. She said, I'm from Australia. Will you please take a picture with me? I say, well, okay. And I let her take it. And she went away, and about 20 minutes later, she came back. She said, could I please have another one? I said, if you only tell me what happened to the face one.

She said, well, it made me look too fat. I said, what you think the camera saw? That was it. You didn't do another one? You did. Yeah, I did. You didn't do another one? You did.

Yeah, I did. They got their way of figuring out how to get around whatever you're trying to get out of. Oh, yeah. They come back or they don't know how to use the phone or it takes five minutes. Sometimes it takes longer than that. You're just standing there waiting, holding a stranger. Sure, sure. So where are you playing? Are you playing tonight?

No, tomorrow night. Where at? At the Hollywood Bowl. Oh, man. So where are you playing? Are you playing tonight? No, tomorrow night. Where at? At the Hollywood Bowl. Oh, man, that's exciting. Yeah, you know, finally, you know, better late than never. First time? No, no, no. I mean, you know, I guess if you can, on promoters, if you can, I guess,

break even, make a little something, they'll call you back again. Because I passed there many times in my early, younger days with the late Junior Wells, and I'd look at it and say, I'll never make it there. And all of a sudden you go to sleep, you wake up, and you got eight Grammys. I've been there before. I made the eight Grammys, and they invited me me back because I remember once I was there with Bill Cosby. And I forgot who was on the show with me. And he said, man, you know you got the follow buddy guy?

Good luck. No, no. I don't look at it like that. I look at it like that. We're all entertainers. And we just, you know, we've been, I try to be friends with everybody, not just entertainers. Yeah. And it's fun to me to be on the show with some other people

because I didn't learn how to play my guitar or sing by the book. I learned it by listening to those guys who should have gotten more recognition than I got, and they didn't live long enough to get it, like the Muddy Waters, the Howlin' Wolves, I could go on until next week. I saw you, I actually saw you do the second show at a place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, maybe early 80s with Junior.

Yeah. And it was crazy, you know, because I remember there was one part of your show where you could play like other people. Oh, yeah. I still do that. You do? Yeah. You want to hear Jimi Hendrix? And you just do it.

Yeah. Well, you know, the way music is now, and thanks for having me, by the way, a lot of radio stations just don't play the type of blues that is the father of most music we have today. And we used to talk about that before Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, the late B.B. King was always said, hey, man, if you outlive me, please don't let the blues die.

Because that once was a music they call R&B. We didn't have all the names we have now, you know, like soul and rock and roll and all that stuff, everything. And in earlier days with the Louis Jordan, the early Ray Charles, it was just R&B. Yeah. You know, and now I don't know what it is. it was just r&b yeah you know and now i don't know what it is you know they got us separated so much now until you say you come up and some of the british guys my best friends yeah and they would say we're playing the same thing you know you all play my youngest daughter's in the hip-hop she came to me one day said daddy we're just playing your music we're doing it a different way

same groove same groove yeah yeah i was listening i i kind of you know went through all my stuff that the records i have of yours and i was listening to later because i was so happy when i got an original copy of uh hoodoo man blues oh man yeah and i got i got that one and then i had i had one called walking in the woods but that was a compilation walking through the walking through the the Woods. That was some of my first stuff when I went into Chicago. Yeah. A great pianist player named Little Brother Montgomery. Yeah.

I mean, the late Willie Dixon. They gave me that as soon as I got a chance to come into Chess Records. So you started, where'd you start? I was born in Louisiana on a farm. I tell people each night from the stage, you know, I didn't know what running water was until I was about 17 years old. Really? Yeah, my parents were sharecroppers, and I look at people right now, and when I say that from the stage, I can get a standing ovation. I say, you know, if I went home in the evening when I was 10, 11 years old, I couldn't tell my mom and dad to go

get me a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken. I'd have to go catch the chicken. My mom would have to cook that chicken, man. You know, oh yeah. How old were you when you started playing the guitar? Well, my dad finally, you know, they weren't able to pay for a guitar on average. Acoustic guitar back then was $298 or

$398, not hundreds. Yeah. Yeah. And they had a guy, they used to go get every christmas he would come through the house and they would have go from house to house and drank the gallon of wine and a quarter beer and no more until next christmas and he had a guitar and the rest of the kids would go and have toys if they could afford to get one but i would i would go pick his guitar yeah yeah and my dad finally uh what do you call he was a crosscut saw if you know what that is the apple king made a record by that and he finally bought this guitar for two dollars you

remember what kind it was or what it was it was just a little acoustic guitar with the round hole in it i don't even know if the name of it nylon strings no it had the regular strings on it but after i broke the matter of fact it had about three strings on it when he got it. Yeah. And then I had to take my mom's, what do you call it, halpins and things like that and splash it because I couldn't afford to buy other guitar strings. So did you have music in the family? What were you listening to? Well, back then, it wasn't before B.B. King and T-Bone and Arthur Crudup and all of them.

It was all gospel. Yeah. It was voices. So you see it once a week or you go here and there? No, you couldn't before B.B. King and T-Bone and Arthur Crudup and all of them. It was all gospel. Yeah. It was voices. So you see it once a week or you go here and there? No, you couldn't see nothing. I mean, at the church or anywhere? It was the church, but we didn't have no instruments in the church. It was all voices.

And finally, when the Five Blind Boys and the Pilgrim Travelers and people like that ran the record shop shops started coming out when we finally got a little battery ready for the rain and cloud. You couldn't hear nothing. No way. Once in a while you hear, and then you could hear Lou Ross

or somebody singing like the Five Line Boys. And then you would try to get the guitar to back you up with that voice is what you would. And then out popped B.B. King and T-Bone him and then said, oh, man, you know, you got something now. And when they amplified the guitar, that was it. T-Bone, it's like it's all T-Bone, isn't it? Yes.

Yeah, B.B. just made his little, they asked him questions about who he was listening to, and I was listening to mostly him. To Bebe? Yeah, well, I got a chance to hear Arthur Cruder, him, Lightning Hopkins, and people like that, because Lightning was there playing mostly acoustic stuff himself before Bebe and Les Paul amplified the guitars. Because the guitar in the harmonica was obsolete

before little Walter made juke with muddy and with the chess record they would you go in the music store and say how much is the harmonica you say i don't know man just give me anything to get it out the way man until they amplified it right and she right did you play on juke no no no no i was still picking cotton really oh yeah so like because when i listen to t-Bone Walker, it's like, you know, all the licks are kind of in there, right? Oh, yeah. It's like the Bible of licks. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, because B.B. would talk about it just years before he passed away. He'd say, Jack O'Learnhardt or somebody like that. And then he'd say, when I heard this guy, T-Bone Walker, it just turned him around. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And so they were a little older than you, so you're still listening.

So by the time they electrified it and Chess was putting out records, you were still in Louisiana. Still plowing the mew and picking cotton. Oh, my God. Yeah. And then when did you start taking it seriously? I mean, when did you get your electric guitar?

A stranger bought me my first real acoustic and it wasn't electric but you could go buy what they call a pickup right and you could stick it on stick it on there yourself so that was my first electric guitar head and then the first stratocaster guy found out i could play a little which had uh guitar slam had came out then with things i used to do and yeah and i learned how to play a little, which Guitar Slam had came out then with things I used to do. Yeah. And I learned how to play a little Jimmy Reed and stuff like that. And he said, well, you know, if you play in my band, I'll let you play my Strat.

Yeah. So I played that until I got able to go into Baton Rouge and work at a service station. Then I finally bought a Les Paul Gibson. So Les Paul was the first one? That I bought. That you bought. Uh-huh. But then you went back to Strats.

After I got to Chicago, they ripped me off for the Les Paul, and I laid ahead of a club, and she had found out I could play pretty well, and she let me borrow the money. If I would play at her place, that was my first Strats. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So you pretty much go between Strats and these like 335s i know i i don't think i ever had a 335 but i know gibson was uh offering me all those type of guitars because i you know i look at all guitars by the same what made me fall in love with this strat i first saw guitar slam and i didn't know what the hell that was

yeah and uh i found out you could drop it and just scratch it. But you could drop one of the hollow bodies, you know, acoustic. Even if it rained on it, it would swell up and break. And I said, this is a solid piece of wood. This is what I want. It can go. Because Slim was wild and crazy. I made this comment on several interviews I had that I wanted to play like B.B. King, but I wanted to act like

Guitar Slim. Well, with the theatrics playing with your teeth? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You got that from Slim? No, Slim didn't play with his teeth. He was just wired with it. I came up with some of these ideas that I better do something because I would never, never think I was good enough to play as well as B.B. or T-Bone or Slim. So I said, I got to put a little something else in there and make somebody pay attention to me. It's funny you say that about the strap because that's true. I just read this book about the creation of the solid body. Solid body, yeah.

And Leo Fender, I mean, the first tellies and the first strats, they were built to take a beating. To take a beating, yeah. And they were built so anybody could fix them. Right. It took years for Gibson to not be so arrogant because they didn't want to get into the electric guitar business because they thought they were pretty highfalutin.

They had the best guitars, so they didn't know how to keep the quality that they would with their acoustic instruments, with the electric. And that's always why I always felt, didn't you always feel like Gibsons were kind of the fancy guitar? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah.

I think a lot of people like that. Did you know that also when I changed the conversation, when I first went to England, it was 1965 before most of those guys got so big and famous. Do you know from Jeff Beck to Eric Clapton to Jimmy Page, they all came to me and say, I didn't know Strat could play blues. Really?

No. And I got this in black and white when they said it. I'm like saying, what do you mean, man? He said, I thought that was a country and western guitar, man, and you couldn't play blues. But now we saw you, we all got Strat. Yeah. So you're working at a filming station. You're playing some gigs in Baton Rouge.

Right. And then what makes you decide to go to Chicago? Because you knew all those guys were there? Well, you know you could see the Louis Jordan, the Ray Charles, but until you got 21, you couldn't see them until they come play in one of those places that they didn't sell booze. Right. And I found out if you go to Chicago before you got 21 years old, you wasn't going to be able to get in the club to see them no way.

Yeah. So as soon as I turned 21, which was July the 30th, 19, in 57, September that year in 57, I headed to Chicago, not to be a guitar player because I think at that time I was saying, you got a lot to learn. So someone told me, if you go to Chicago, now you can watch the Muddies, the Wolves, the Walters, and the Sonny Boys and all those people, and maybe you'll learn something.

And all of a sudden I got stranded, got there and got stranded, and somebody found out I could play a few licks of Jimmy Reed and the guys who was playing behind Muddy and all those people like that. And they said, you got to hear this youngster. He can play a little bit like this, that, but he's wild and crazy. And all the guitar players started coming to me, the late Wayne Bennett, Matt Murphy. And I'm like saying, what am I doing to make

y'all want to listen to me? And I'm trying to find out what you all are doing. I said, man, you kind of wire and people like that, you know, because I would jump off the bar with no big blues clubs and I would just be walking down the bar and everybody, most of the blues players back then were sitting in chairs. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Even with the electric guitar?

Uh-huh. And Muddy and all of them were sitting in chairs. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Even with the electric guitarist? Uh-huh. And Muddy and all of them were sitting in chairs and playing. I said, well, I can get some attention because I'm going to jump around on the stage, which I saw Guitar Slam do that. Plus, I went there with a, you got the wireless now. I saw Guitar Slam with this 100-foot lead wire from the guitar. Yeah. And the first time I saw him i said ladies and gentlemen guitar slam

and all i saw i'm right at the stage and i didn't see no no guitar player but i heard yeah and he was coming in the door he had a hundred foot wire yeah coming in the door with a red suit on with a white hat and i said my god what is that that's that's what I'm going to do. That's what I'm going to do. But like, so you get there, and before you get, you know, known, so all these guys were just playing at different places, like Wolf and Junior and Muddy. Just in a circle, because they never did highly come out and tour like we do today.

In the South, BB King, when he came out, you would have Big Joe Turner, the Fire, you would, B.B. King, when he came out, you would have Big Joe Turner, the Fire, a lot of doo-wop groups. Oh, they tour on a bus? No, everything was in a station wagon then. They wouldn't make enough money to get a bus back because the bus was...

I wish you could get the bus at that price today. But everybody was going around in the station wagon, all piled up in the station wagon because B piled up in the station wagon, because B.B. King told me that he once played 365 days, but he never would leave his house. So that wasn't a big, long tour. You could play 10 days in Louisiana, 10 days in Mississippi, which was joining, 10 days in Arkansas, which was joining.

So it wasn't a hard job. It is now. We play California. And as soon as I leave here, I got to be in, I think my next one is in Milwaukee. And you fly or you're on the bus? Well, all over, I think mostly all over four or five, I fly. But the bus, I have to make it there, and you have to give the bus a chance to get there. But I wasn't always able to do that. Sure.

So when I first started coming here, I was driving across country myself in a van with the late Junior Wells, and I was the manager. I was the tour guide and everything, man. And still, sometimes we didn't make enough money to make it from one gig to another. But what kept me going,'m thinking bb king and mud and them was doing wonders and they come to me and say hey man you ain't seen nothing yet yeah you know you know bb king told me when i first met him he said sometime i just make enough money to make it from one gig to the other and you and and what drives you is the the love of the music the love of music There's no such thing as love of money then.

It's just, you know, right now, when I see people smiling when I'm playing, I say, oh, man, you know, whatever problem you had, I made you forget it for five minutes anyway, you know. Because music has a tendency to do that, not just blues or old music. When you see people smiling and clapping their hands, I say, if you had a problem,

at least I made you forget it for a while. That's the power of the thing. You know, I've always, you know, when I play, I play blues. I listen to a lot of different kinds of music, but there's really nothing more satisfying than playing. Oh, man. You know, that's the joy of my life.

Yeah. You're lucky, then, because that's what you do. Well, you know, I that's the joy of my life yeah oh yeah you're lucky then because that's what you do well you know i try to tell young kids now i got uh two sons wait very late they first then went into the blues until they got 21 and saw me play one of my sons said oh my god i didn't know you could play like that because i old were you? Well, I never would go home and say, here's what your daddy did. I just let them make up their own mind. And as soon as they got 21 years old, they got old enough to come in the club,

that's when he said, oh, my God. He saw the whole show. Oh, yeah. And your brother played too, yeah? Yeah, he passed away. I'll be 11 years on the 20th of this month. Yeah. You did a few records with him.

Yeah, I played on a couple of his records. So when you get there and you're in Chicago, how does it start to unfold? I can tell you're playing in the back of anything. I was in a record store just recently, and they were playing some collection i think it was like coco taylor was on it was some sort of i made our first big record yeah it was right and it was a bunch of different artists on this one whole record and i'm like that's gotta

be buddy got like i could hear it so i mean they must people must be able to identify it and you can't you know that's just something that comes from your heart so like you know you're insecure about like i gotta learn something but other people are like nobody plays like that guy well you know that's what they were telling me but you do you know i didn't realize that yeah of course until um because you had your options well the claptons and the beckon people come say man you know I heard a lick, and I had to find out who played it. Yeah. And it was you. I'm like saying, I didn't know I played that, man.

Matter of fact, when they would call me in for a session behind the howler, whoever I played, they would give you like 20 bucks just to make the record. Yeah. And I needed the 20 bucks. I wasn't even thinking about one day somebody going to say, that's Buddy Guy playing. Right. I'm like saying, give me my 20 bucks and I'll put it in there for you.

Yeah. Well, how did that, like, what was it like with those guys? I mean, so you get to Chicago and it seems like you made a few singles. Yeah. First. They didn't give me much opportunity to play on my own. They knew I could play, and they said, which I couldn't blame. The chess people had made, I mean, the Mudders and Wolf Walters and Sonny Boy had made chess what they were.

What was Cobra Records? Well, that went their first, because chess refused me. And the first somebody who really helped me was the late Otis Rush, which passed away not quite two years ago. Otis Rush. Otis Rush. Yeah. And he brought you in over there to that smaller label?

Yes, he did. Him and the late Magic Sam. Oh, Magic Sam. Yeah. That boogie riff that he does. Yeah, man. I'm trying to figure it out. Yeah, man. I'm trying to figure it out. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, that stuff he was doing was Junior Parker out of Texas at first, you know, called Feel Good. Right, Feel Good. Yeah, uh-huh. And then Sam just could wear it out, you know. Yeah. Because we used to play all day on Sunday, so from 7 o'clock in the morning and on Monday. Yeah.

That's when we had all the jobs still here in America. The steel mill was 24-7, so in Chicago you had the steel mill and you had a stockyard there 24-7 with 100,000 people. Yeah. And when I went there, I'm like, what in the world is this? People playing music at 7 o'clock in the morning and you couldn't get in the club. Oh, because that was the only day off? Well, the shift, if the shift got off at a certain time in the morning, he don't go away.

At night, he's back at work. Oh, right. So his time was, let's go party now, because tonight I'll be working when they play in the clubs. And we used to have to play all day on Monday and then Monday night. And I wondered how could you stay up that long. And those guys, like Sonny Boy, Muddy Wolf, all of them was young, and they were drinking.

I'm like saying, when do you guys get so drunk you can't play? And they went all day and all night. Man, I've never seen one of them fall down yet. That's amazing. I don't know what it's like. As a matter of fact, I used to ask them, was there a bill out of iron? Yeah. You never drank too much?

No, they taught me how to drink. Because, you know, when I first went there, I was too shy to sing. And sometimes I feel like that right now. Yeah. But they used to call the schoolboy Scott. They said, man, if you drink some of this, you'll get out of that shot. And a drink don't cross my mind until I go to the stage. Then they have to give me a little sip or something to say, okay,

forget about it if you play something bad. This little drink of whiskey or cognac will make you forget about it and just do something else to make up for that mistake you made. Right, and it worked. Oh, so far it's done pretty good. But it never took over your life, which is good. No, no, no, no, because I got it at my house now. You can come to my house and my housekeeper don't dust my whiskey bottle,

which people give it to me. It's got fingerprints on it. Yeah. I don't ever take a drink at home. Even when I was smoking, I never did smoke when I got to my house. Yeah. No? No.

Just because that was the nighttime shit. Well, it was the music thing, you know, and I was right today as I speak to you, I'm still a little shy when I come out on the stage because the public is one of the things that is hard to please all the time. Yeah. And sometimes people look at you and say wait let me see what this like i heard about him but then that's my that then when i get the sip that's when i say i'm gonna see can i win you tonight yeah i'll show you and sometime i do yeah so after you do this stuff at cobra so you're

hanging around with those guys with uh otis and uh and and magic sam And the late Hal Baraj was just singers. Yeah. Betty Everett, she was just a singer. Yeah. And then after the Cobra guy died, that's when Chess came back and found Otis and sent Otis to my house. And that's when he signed both of us.

And what, now, was Ike Turner there? No, the Cobra record sent down to get Ike because, you know, Ike had a lot to do with B.B. Early's success. Oh, he did? Oh, yeah. How so? Well, he was the one. B.B. told me he just made some horn arrangements behind him in the early days.

And then he, you know, that was before him and Tina Turner would be. Sure. He was just in the house and playing. I heard Tina talking about that, how good. I don't like him, but I just like what he's doing, you know, because he was uptight with that music, man. He did that, was it Rocket 88? Yeah, Jack O'Branston.

Yeah, yeah. And he was on that. And then some people think that's the first rock and roll song. Well, I heard that. I heard that, too. Yeah. And I think Ike played piano on it or something i don't know what he played but he was good at it man because he was in love with

the guitar and one of the greatest slide guitar players that we all ever heard was earl hooker oh yeah yeah oh man yeah and and uh he made some thing with muddy because you know muddy was a slide yeah yeah because me and bees talked the same thing I tried it, but a slide guitar, you got to be so precise. You know, you can't just jump around on the stage like I like to do. Right. Yeah, and move the guitar in different positions. You know, that slide, you got to let it be. Stand still.

You got to be Elmo James and all those people like that. It's an open tuning, too, I think. Well, I don't know. Back then, but, you know, Derek Trucks and Earl Hooker, it wasn't no open tuning. That place, right. Oh, yeah, Full Fodder. I've talked to Derek.

He's something else, man. Oh, man. If you hear him play that slide, I'm like saying, that's not a slide you're playing. That's your finger, but it's a slide. Yeah, he's doing both. It almost sounds like Indian music. Oh, man.

You know, when I first heard that kid, I said, man, what did you do? He's just born with it. And do you know, he still asks me, what was it like playing with Earl Hooker? Oh, really? Oh, yeah. What do you tell him? I don't know, because Hooker was so crazy, man. You know, a lot of the musicians, we just call them crazy, because it looked like it was like, I don't care what I do.

It was like, I don't care what I do. The first thing Earl Hooker did to me when I first got to Chicago and got to know him was stole that 100-foot card from me. Because he figured it was something in the card that made me as crazy as I was. And he was living with his mom. Yeah. So I know I went to work that morning to play on a blue Monday morning. I couldn't find my card. Yeah.

And I just went straight to his house. And his mom answered the door. He's asleep. I just bust the door open. I said, I'm glad I swung my wire back. And he started like John Lee Hook a little bit. And I walked in the room. He said, I just want to see what you had in it. Yeah.

So, okay, so you get over to chess and you got those guys leonard and phil what were they like uh they didn't think i had what what just before he died i don't know if you read that or not but he called me in after the british guys started exploring phil or leonard yeah the british guys started turning those amplifiers up and and he was getting that British sound. Yeah. That's when he sent Willie Dixon to my house and said, go get Buddy and bring him down here. So I said, oh, my God, I ain't going to be able to make these little sessions

with Muddy and Sonny Boy no more because they was calling me in. You thought you were going to get fired or what? Well, I was going to – they wasn't going to use me anymore for some reason. That was just me. Yeah. And when I got there, he had on a suit, and I had never been to his office. And he said, come on in the office. I said, well, to myself, you can tell me now.

They don't come back down here no more. And I think it might have been a Cream record he put on for us. Yeah. And he said, listen to this. Yeah. I'm like saying, what's this? Then he bent over and said, I want you to kick me. Yeah.

And did you? No, I felt like I should. And he said, because you've been trying to give us this ever since you come here, and we were too dumb to listen. He said this is how you were ahead of the game, and they just stuck you with sessions. Yeah, and then he told me, he said, now you can come in here and do whatever you want. Wow. And he didn't live too long after that. I think it was less than a year he passed away.

Well, that's kind of interesting that it took that full circle stuff. Yeah. Because a lot of people say the British guys are the ones that introduced the music to the world in a big way. Yeah, right. And the thing was that you were opening that guitar up before them. Well, they didn't like that. Oh, yeah. That's what Littlewood kept saying.

Ain't nobody ready for that wide open noise and that feedback. Yeah. And it wasn't a lot of feedback. I just wanted that ring that the British finally went beyond me with it. Well, right. They were playing the same licks. They were playing your licks and Freddie King's licks. Right, right.

Because it seemed like at the beginning, Clapton was all Freddie and you, a lot of it, right? Yeah. And you just cranked that Marshall up. cranked apparently on that first blues breakers record the guy didn't even know how to record him because he refused to turn it down right and that was the sound well you know uh hendrickson saw me too and he was in new york and it was booing him but he was coming up with the special effects yeah and when he got to London, they said, bring it home. Yeah. But here, everybody was saying, wait a minute,

nobody want to hear that. You know, this smooth stuff, that muddy lightning and all of them was playing, it's doing very well. So how could you do better than that? But when the British struck it, they said, oh, my God, it is something better than that. It's not better than that, but it's like technology taking us now. Yeah, but also, doesn't it, because I've been watching some,

reading about jazz and listening to jazz, that there was a point where you had the straight-up jazz, and then those guys went out into space and changed the whole thing. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Right? So you're going to do that with the guitar, too. You got to go to space where you can just do the same old thing.

Well, every time I wake up and turn my radio on, I'm looking for something to say, oh, yeah, yeah, something new, you know. Yeah. But technology got a lot to do with music right now. And I tell people right now, some of the superstars I will not call names, when you see them doing those big shows on television, it's lip singing. I can't even follow myself

on the lip singing. I tried that. Because we had disc jockeys before the chess people died. They used to call you in. We'd get a new record out 45 and they would call you out and they would be spinning the record. They would have the mic on like this and you could

you know it wasn't on you was pretending you were singing but sometimes it would like to click it on to really yeah i said man don't turn that on because i can't even follow my own self but i imagine like when you're doing all those sessions like little walter was kind of a crazy guy too right not just walter all of them was crazy yeah i wouldn't even get into that with a man. You know, choirs is kept. If I was talking to B.B. King like I'm talking to you now, that music would have been gone 20 minutes ago because all the conversation you had with Muddy,

Walter Jr., B.B., it always ended up the conversation is something about a woman. Yeah.B. it always ended up the conversation was something about a woman yeah yeah you start talking B.B. what about let me love you

or whatever number I wanted to talk about right it was always he's back into that woman buddy you remember that woman this woman

I said I don't want to hear nothing about no woman I want to hear something about your career and your playing so I can learn something I can't learn want to hear nothing about no woman. I want to hear something about your career and your playing so I can learn something. I can't learn nothing you're telling about a woman. But you got to watch it.

When you were playing with them, you got to watch all those. You got to watch Muddy, right? Well, I would used to try to steal in after they found out I could play, and they would never let that happen. If they saw me, it's just like, come on to the stage. Yeah. And I'm like, I don't't read music i'm watching your fingers trying to steal a lick from you right with bb or whoever right you know and they would never let me do that

they would who wouldn't bb or bb or any of them you know bb would do his show but if he would look at me and because i used to would try to hire yeah because i just want to hear him and if he spotted me, he said, don't you go nowhere. Come on up here. I want you to play. And I said,

every time he took the guitar off and gave it to me. Yeah. Yeah. Because he didn't want you to steal? No, no. He just wanted me to, you know,

that's the guy he was. Play your own thing. Man, it was all good. So good. It was like an adopted parent. Yeah. You know,

and they were like saying, you can play. If somebody don't know you can play, I'm going to let them know you can play right now. Yeah. You know, and they were like saying, you can play if somebody don't know you can play, I'm going to let them know you can play right now. Yeah, right. And that helped me a lot. It was like that story

about Clapton having Hendrix on. Yeah. And that was the end of it. Sorry? What about Hubert Sumlin? He was good. Right?

Yeah. They, I heard this record yesterday morning too. i should have quit you and went to mexico they had been in the studio three days and leonard heard this rhythm and they couldn't get it and he said call buddy yeah and i got him about seven o'clock that morning because that's when they was making the old leonards and muddysnaps session was like six seven five in the morning yeah because they wanted them to come straight from the bar.

Yeah, while they were still hot. Well, while they were still half drunk because half of the time when you got there, they had the two bottles of whiskey sitting on the keyboard. It wasn't on electric keyboards then. It was the big piano, you know. And they had the whiskey sitting there. I want you to sound just like you did

when you left the club last night. So when they called me, Willie Dixon came and got me and he said, Leonard, I want you to see, can you hear this rhythm he want? And I said, I walked in there and within two cuts, he said, now that's what you got. How come y'all can't do that? And everybody was profane then, you know. Yeah. Everybody was MF. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. you got how come y'all can't do that and everybody was profane and you know yeah everybody was mf

yeah yeah oh man when i when i went in there i used to be sitting quiet trying to learn but i still was doing what they asked me and they said hey mf yeah turn your guitar up a little bit i don't hear enough of you and i'm like i don't know who you're talking to so i wouldn't look up they would come out the engineer room and punch me on my shoulders i'm talking to you mf i said oh okay six weeks when i was there when they say hey mf i say what yeah and what was the groove they were looking for was a hubert groove no it was something that uh leonard could hum it to you and i could hear what he was doing it was like boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom bum bum bum yeah yeah like uh killing floor yeah yeah that riff yeah yeah as soon as i heard i said yeah let the tape roll yeah so you start recording on chess and then you know how does delmark come

into it you started you were doing both you were recording with junior on delmark and then your own stuff on chess no well you, they were so slick then, they didn't want you to record for nobody else. And if you notice that album, what you're talking about, don't have my name on it. Right, I know. It's called Friendly Chap. Really?

Yeah, so that was me, what they call a friendly chap. That's the lot of that shit. Let them know that that was me playing on that. You were trying to hide it from women? No, you had to hide it from him because they could have a little contract on you, you know, and if they said you can't play for nobody but us, wish they had all the rights. It's like

baseball contracts. They done changed it. Now they can get rid of you, but you can't get rid of them. Of course. Yeah. And that album's all you. It's all you and Junior. Yeah. Uh-huh. It was early in the morning. I didn't know that Delmont Records, it was a record shop. And he just decided to catch us that morning and help me and Junior record something.

That's Bob Coaster? Bob Caster. Somebody just told me he just sold it, though. He don't own it no more because somebody's chasing my son now. The one I told you about didn't know who I was until he was 21. And they're trying to get him to cut something with it. Yeah, I guess, yeah, I think they saw it recently. But back in the day, it was like on Grand Avenue or something.

I forget where it was. But I think he moved once or twice since that Hoodoo main album. Well, you know what's interesting about that? That record is so clean, you know? I mean, it's just so clean. Well, you know, it was just straight things then. And you didn't have all the tech you got now. It was real to real.

We used to make a record, and if they heard a beat in there that they didn't like or lack, they would have to take a razor blade and cut that little piece out of the tape. Now they punch a button in it and cut it out of there. They can add it somewhere else. And because, you know, during the session back in those days, you would take a break and they'd be playing something and see if they need to play it again. You could tell that's yourself.

Sometime I'd be in the studio now and I'd use the bathroom and come back and say, all right, we're ready to go again. Who's that? Oh, that's you. That's you. That's what you just did. You know, that's just how much technology got into Bob and to music and whatever else you do now with tech. Well, you kind of mix it up, you know, because like on that record and on some of the earlier Chess records, the sound was like, you know, straight strat sound.

It was real clean. And you can't hardly get that no more. Yeah. Very few people play like that robert cray played like that right yeah right there's something about that you know that in between position that i know that no i know and that's what those british guys are giving me credit for because without them i don't know if i'd be talking with you now because i was like a unknown i was there but i was unknown and all of, they start saying, we got to find out who Buddy Guy is.

You know, because you used to bend those notes out there. And you ride the edge, and they're like, what's that sound? Oh, yeah. When did you start, though? When did you start using effects or wah pedal or crank it up? I don't hardly use that now. No. The only time I use it when I want to let the people know

about the late Jimi Hendrix or somebody like that, I just try to do each night on my show. I just don't go in the dark. I just let people know who John Lee Hooker was. Matter of fact, I go to the stage night before last, and I would ask the audience. There was a lot of people up there in California, and I said, I don't have to be right, but I want y'all to know, and y'all give me some names, who you think was the best guitar player,

and then I'm going to give you my opinion, and I don't have to be right. And they started calling you. I said, no, I'm talking about before me. How about Steve Varey? I'm talking about before me. How about Steve Varee? I'm talking about before Steve Varee. How about, and they just name and name and all. I said, now hold it, let me give you my opinion. And I hit a note by B.B. King.

Boom. Boom. Yeah. And John Lee, like that guy, like he had his whole own groove. Yeah. I listened to that, it was a weird record, that Hooker and Heat record with Can Heat. Yeah. And they're all trying to follow him.

Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I'm glad you asked that because, you know, we were the best of friends before he died. And day one when I met him, do you know, I never didn't meet him yet. The first time I met that guy, him and Big Mama Thorne was in Germany. Yeah. Oh, doing that weird show that they put on TV?

I think it might have been that, but I didn't know who he was and he didn't know who I was, so everybody was still drinking here by then. Yeah. So my thing was, I came downstairs

a little earlier than what me and you talking now, and I said, I just got to meet John Lee Hooker because that's the first thing I told myself how to play was Boogie Chillin'. Yeah.

So I walked down to this big table in the morning. It was like a big dinner table. It was eating breakfast. And everybody was just talking. And Big Mama was a big wise. You know, she had the flow. And I'm like saying, I just went over in the corner and picked up acoustic guitar like that and started playing

Boogie Chiller and a guy came over to me and said who you who's you and I'm like saying I don't want to be bothered with you you can't talk so I'm trying to get John Lee's attention and

he kept messing with me so much I said my name is Buddy. I'm just on the show. I'm trying to meet John Lee Hooker. And he just fell out on his knees and tears started coming out of his eyes. And he didn't say he was John Lee. He said, I'm Johnny. I said, I don't want to meet Johnny.

I said, I want to meet John Lee Hooker. And until his death, he laughed about that. Yeah. He didn't even know it was him. No, no, because I didn his death, he laughed about that. Yeah. You didn't even know it was him. No, no, because I didn't know you could sing like that. Don't stutter as you sing it. And after I got to know him as a good friend, when he was trying to tell me something, like we talking now, I said, man, don't tell me, sing it.

Yeah. Did he? Would he? Yeah. And then he would outlast me, because some people would get offended by that. He never did? Yeah. And then he would outlast me because some people would get offended by that. He never did. Yeah. No.

Yeah, there's some, like he's one of those guys where it's like he invented something. Well, and then he used to show me his hand. And a guy was, what was he? He was standing at the hotel. And I don't know how in the world he saw these calluses on my hand. And he was an elder guy, and this was yesterday. And he says, how long have you been playing guitar? And I looked around at him.

You know, I'm like saying, now who are you asking me this question? So my manager was there, you know, and the point I'm trying to get to, John Lee, who could have had no calluses? And he looked at me and wanted to feel my hand. It's soft in a woman. Yeah. I said, well, how do you play the guitar?

Because he just slapped his guitar and played that book of children, man. You ain't never heard him squeezing those strings or nothing like that. And he would joke, man. And I can tell you another joke. We was playing in Canada at a blues festival, and it was on an island, and it was light raining. So he had them played before me,

and I'm finna catch the ferry and go out there. So I met him. I said, I'm glad I met you, man. I said, now you can tell me what I do. If I play boogie or play some slow blues or whatever, whatever they're playing out there, let me know what to do and he looked at me and said I don't know

I just hit my guitar and said no no no give me my money laughter laughter oh man I miss that you know I really do man you know they don't make them like that no more I don't think there

will never be a B.B. Muddy, Wolf Walter, and John Lee now. They could make you forget about it if the promoter didn't pay you. They could make you feel like you got paid because you had to laugh at them whatever they were doing. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And also just the idea, I don't know what it was really, but it seems like a lot of players now and just in

general that that they don't they they can't get to themselves you know what i mean they get to somebody else you know and the style is the style but you know it seems like you guys in the generation before you they couldn't help but be themselves right right and i don't know what that is but it's i don't know i tried to, but it's great. I don't know. I tried to figure it out. Me and Bebe and all of them used to talk when it was in their good health. We just never could figure out what that is. But, you know, I used to look at them, and I thought when I went into Chicago,

I'm like saying, oh, I want to see these beautiful homes or beautiful cars or whatever they got. And I remember very well one Monday morning there was a high medical player named Shakey Harden, James Cotton, Junior Wells, and I forget who else, a couple more high medical players. And I looked and there was little Walter in the corner. And I said, let me start some crap here.

I said, hey, man, they want to know why you here because they're going to blow you out of here today. And guess what he said to me? He said, hey, man, go buy me a half pound of gin. Let me separate them in from the boys. Now, this is little Walter. Yeah. And I said, me buy you a half a pound of gin?

And a half a pound of gin back then in 1958 was 98 cents. Yeah. And I had about two bucks. I said, then in 1958 was 98 cents. Yeah. And I had about two bucks. I said, you can have both of them. Yeah. And I went to the stage and cranked up. And it was coming up one by one. And when little Walter came up, he started playing something.

And I looked at Junior Wells. I said, man, did you hear that? He said, yeah. I said, what did he do? He said, well, you know he plays this how might I go bottom side up? I said, oh, y'all should turn them bottom side up. He played it the other way?

Yeah, yeah. He didn't play it straight like the rest of the guys. And it seemed like he was playing almost like, it sounds like he took a lot from the sax players. I don't know what he did, but he had that tone, man, because I told my son a week ago, I said, just listen to him closely because there's something about what he was doing, and he never did how to show the harmonica.

Most of the harmonica players, Junior would turn it loose. Sonny Boy used to turn it loose and put it in his mouth like this and go, hold it. Right, right. I even seen him take it and put it on his, what do you call it, the Guza pipe right here. Yeah. And you could hear.

Sonny Boy? Sonny Boy. He is a showman, too, right here. And he could put that harmonica back in his mouth just like a cigar and blow like this microphone and hit the notes right with it. And I'm like, man. Yeah. But that Walter had something.

He would hide that harmonica in both hands. And play it right up on the mic too. Right. And every once in a while he would open that hand. And it was something when he opened that hand, you heard that you didn't when he closed it. Yeah. And I used to tell harmonica players, I'd that man that's the tone well that's what i saw bb and i said to myself

bb had a rhythm and that left hand yeah he didn't need a special effect right because he could vibrate that man on that pinky finger he could vibrate that better than i can with him the rest of the fingers i got yeah and i know a thousand guitar players looked at me and said, you right? Yeah. Yeah? It's that unique gift. It's something you have that God gave you that he didn't give nobody else. What was Wolf's, was it that voice?

It's just his voice. Yeah. You know, because first he was just a harmonica player, then for the end of his life he was playing guitar too. Yeah. A lot of people saw that guitar jump out front after Leo and Les Paul and them amplified it. Yeah.

A lot of people were saying, I need to go to the guitar, because the guitar players are getting paid a little more than the harmonica players. Oh, right. Once he electrified it and then it became, that's the thing people want to see. Right, right. Yeah. So now when the new guys started coming around, like you were around then when Butterfield, Bloomfield. All of them was coming up in Chicago.

Yeah. I can make you laugh about that. You know, when they first started coming up in Chicago to play the blues, the blues clubs then was 99.9 black people playing blues. When you saw a white face come into a blues club, you say, that's a cop, and we couldn't afford to buy the drinks, so we was buying the stinking wine and stuff, and you would hide it because you had to bring it in

under your coat or something and hide it. And so you would look and see a white face and say, don't pull up that bite of wine because they're going to take it and pour it out. Yeah. So that's a cop sitting over that table. And this is Michael Bloomfield, Charlie Musselwhite, and all these guys. Eric Clapton and them started coming in.

And all of a sudden, you get to know them. And now you can tell them what they was doing. Man, you make me miss drinking my wine. They was just cracking up, man. I said, I thought you was a policeman, man. I said, no, man. We come here to listen to the blues. So they were learning.

They were watching. Uh-huh. Michael Bloomfield and them, and I used to see him. Every time I saw a white face, if he wasn't a cop with a uniform on, I'd say he's a detective. He was an interesting player, huh? Oh, man. You know, his dad was a doctor. Oh, really? And I found out that his dad really didn't want him to play the stuff he was doing because he wanted him to i guess kind of follow his footsteps because a doctor back then you know you know you got a chance to make a decent living as a doctor not as a musician yeah sure but he's i guess his dad didn't know soon later music would make more than a doctor yeah if you're lucky enough

and good enough yeah yeah and betterfield he i think he learned a lot from walter huh well he could play man you know let's let's just face it and then when he left chicago and come out to california i think he got hooked in the well back in the 60s all of them was into a little oh yeah yeah it killed a lot of them uh you know i look at it like this we ain't gonna live always you know i looks at them and they used to try to introduce me to him for something i just didn't never like it you know i ain't never i ain't never tried the cocaine uh the grateful dead made me draw for a reefer in berkeley california one night yeah and we walked he walked me around behind the blues club uh-huh yeah and i drawed off that thing and he said now you're gonna play some stuff you never heard. And I said, okay. And I got in the club.

Eric Clapton was sitting out there. And the next day he called me and said, man, you played some stuff you never heard. I said, you're right. I didn't hear nothing. How'd you get involved with that? I saw you in that movie about that bus, about that Festival Express bus.

The guys from the band and everybody. Yeah, that was Janice and the Grateful Dead and all that. That was that guy in Canada, almost like C.S. Roebuck here, Eden and Walt. They would rent that train in Montreal. Oh, it was a train, right, yeah. And it would run all the way across the country, too. But we never did make it to Vancouver.

No. They had them tow the train up and drank all the way across the country, too. But we never didn't make it to Vancouver. No. They had them tow the train up and drank all the whiskey and smoked all the dope by the time we got to Winnipeg. And that was it? That was it. Yeah, because they was jumping on top of the train, man. It was, if I had to do it, I'd do it all over again. Well, there's that footage of you with that 100-foot wire.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, because they had me. That's why, you know, Mick Jagger finally got it because they had me on a tractor there once and they lift me up in there on the tractor. Yeah, right on the cherry picker thing. Uh-huh. Oh, yeah. That's where Mick got it, huh? Well, I seen him on do that and he had

a safety belt on him with a chain, but I didn't have nothing on me on that one, you know. You just had the guitar. You were focused. Oh, yeah. And that's when my youngest brother had just come and joined me man and he didn't live you know like i say he lived on it on the 20s this money if he can go 11 years yeah so like i noticed that what we it's interesting because you know you talk about you know getting the respect that you deserve it seems like it it took a while but

like there was a a period there with did you not make records for a decade well 80 to 90 it was somewhere in there that i went to a guy come from england with a record company called gsp yeah and the late willie dixon was living and I didn't want to get, I learned my lesson from how the record company was ripping off all, not just blues, jazz and everybody else. Because none of, you know, none of those guys had as much education as I got. And I don't have a high school education. But I sat back and tried to learn from what I'd seen was happening to them. Yeah.

And I stayed blank there until I think it was JSP I did one, then Vanguard came and got me. Yeah. In the 60s, that's when the things come right after Delmont Records. Yeah. And I stayed with Vanguard. It must have been about, was it one or two albums? Yeah.

Because one of them was live in Berkeley. I did that. And I forget the other one. They made me and Junior do one with a jazz piano player named Junior Mance. Yeah. Uh-huh. And all that went on and went on. And finally, what was that?

In 1989, Eric Clapton had invited me to the Royal Albert's Hall and that's when a guy come up to me in Royal Albert's Hall and say I want to sign you and he was British and I didn't know the record company was in America because all the Americans used to how old his buddy got 99 years old and they would say I don't give up on him yeah and the first thing i did was went to england and made and i wrote the damn right i got the blues and that's when they come back and find out the label was here yeah in new york and they said i said oh man i thought it was the british label but it's a british guy yeah who signed because the british would listen

to us more than americans would so far as what we had to offer right and then I like I couldn't even find that record the one that's uh DJ play my blues yeah yeah was that like sort of like that was it I think that's that's uh I think that is that I'm not sure on that but I think that might have been the JSP I might have did that because that's when he came in and he was a ripoff too because I'm trying to ask got an attorney in New York, and I'm trying to chase him down. I went to his house 30 years ago in London, and he said, I owe you some money, but I ain't checked my books yet. And the record was 20 years old then.

I said, when do you check your books? Yeah, but it just seemed like there was a lot of time between them. And then damn right, I got the blues. That's the one that blew up. Blew up. That's what took me to my first Grammy. And that was like, you know, how old are you at that point? Oh, that was 19, I think that was 1989 or something like that.

That was that guy, John Porter? John Porter. Because you did a few records with him. Yeah. Uh-huh. And I don't know how much anything influences it because I was looking at his credits, you know, he was, you know, kind of a new wave kind of, you know. Right. Yeah. And then you get a couple of guys like that, that you work

with that shows, I don't know how the relationship works, but it does change the sound, doesn't it? When you have a producer, how closely do you work work with those guys you just let them do it well you like you you know like i said earlier i like to listen yeah and i like to listen to you or whoever else can come in and may give me an idea and it's it's like if you know you drank too much but you need somebody else to tell you you don't need nobody else to tell you already know that but when. But when they tell you, you say, oh, yeah, you're right. You're right. That's what I was looking at with that. That's how it works, huh?

Because you did a few albums with him, and then I guess it must have changed your whole business, the touring, everything, the Grammy, record sales. Well, the Grammys and the record sales helps anybody if you can do it. And right now, now today like I said I talked to B.B. early

before they passed away blues and I heard George Benson doing a kind of hardcore blues lately and I'm like saying blues must be ain't quite dead yet because you used to you know you used to be so good

listening when you just turn on an AM station. Before all the big FM stations came in, you could hear Mahalia Jackson. Yeah. You could hear Lightning Hopkins. And then you could hear Lou Rawls. I mean, they played everything. And now you turn on a radio station and disc jockeys, I was telling my manager coming in yesterday,

some of the disc jockeys used to talk for you. Yeah. Just like if B.B. King would hit a good note, you'd hear the disc jockey cut right and say, come on, B.B. And this used to get me, you know, and it was a good feeling for them to say that. Look out, B.B. You know, look out, Howlin' Wolf, you know. Look out that look out bb you know look out howling wolf you know look out big joe turner you know and those little things like that was getting next to me that would make

me jump and say whatever they did they made they made the dish that i could recognize yeah and that's a good that's the good stuff don't happen on that holler anymore no and i think also the blues was like one of those things where there was a certain point it seemed where everybody just tried to play it like every bar band everybody in the world that they could do it but and then i think sometimes it's good that the music's getting out there but but then the public gets a sense that well that's just a blues and anybody can play it and then they forget about the guys that really play it right Right. Because they always stand out. Oh, yeah. You know, but like I can pick up that guitar and play some blues,

but, you know, who cares? I mean, I like it, but, you know, but the dudes that really, you know, that stand out, they stand out. Yeah, it's almost like my mom used to tell me, you know, a ladder is easy to climb. But she said if you let one foot slip, your butt is easy to hit the ground. And that's the way blues is, man. You know, you're lucky as the devil in the world if you can hit a record.

And this was happening back then in the late 50s and 60s. You could get one book. I remember some blues players had one hit record and it just bloomed, never had another one. Right. And I don't know how that worked, but I'm like saying they had a guy called High Heel Sneakers, Tommy Tucker. Leonard Chestnut was going crazy. And I think he made one or two more, but it never did get bigger

than that first one, High Heel Sneakers. Well, that's the weird thing about hits. Sometimes they'll kill you. Yeah. Uh-huh. And I guess it seems like what you were saying before is that Chess and those guys at the time,

it took them a minute to come around to real blues and they were trying to do soul, right? And they were trying to do R&B music. Well, they had the jazz too. You know, when they got going, they had the Gene Ammons and all the big jazz guys there, man man but they never let you

step in the way of muddy and wolf and walter because that's who opened them up yeah and they was checking on because they was like it was so bad once that you could go there and open a little label and if it take off if it took off leonard chess would come in and say i'll buy that yeah and he'd offer you a little money and buy the whole little label from you, and he would take it over. Just to get the artists. Well, at first he had to turn you down, but he didn't know you could do that. I remember a guy named Bobby Saxon made a record called

I'm Trying to Make a Living. And a black guy would come down on 47th Street and just say, this is my record company. Put that out on the musical, just let one radio station or two radio stations play. And if it took off, Leonard found that out. He would come and find you. Man, I want that record, man. You know, I'd buy it.

Oh, yeah. But he didn't have mob connections or nothing, did he? I don't know about the mob connections. because someone told me even the Cobra record had some connection with that, but I never get that deep to find out whether it was or not. But I do know that Duke records out of Houston,

Chess, and all of them had some connection. Like if I screwed up with Chess, they called it a black ball. So Duke didn't want me. Of course, back then, RCA and those labels like I'm with now, they didn't think about no blues.

Because I'm with RCA now, and that was a hand-me-down. I bought this label. But because this label was the one who signed me in 89 after Eric Clapton's show. Yeah. And then I think they might have went out of business.

And next thing I know, they say, you know you with RCA. I said, no, I didn't know that. Yeah, because they bought it. What was that show that Eric did? Like 23 guitar? It was a big guitar show? No, it was the Royal Albers Hall. He did it for, I don't know if it was every year, but every year.

It was a big thing. Because he was, I think he might have been the only blues guy that was going and was selling that thing out. You look at him as the guy that turned it around for you a little bit? Yeah, because he brought me in there. And when he brought me in there, that's when I got signed by the bigger label. It's amazing the lack of respect sometimes. Because I read years ago, I think I read a Muddy biography that said that Chess had him painting the place sometimes early on.

I didn't ever see that. Yeah. Because I was in Chess studio doing a record called My Time After Why. And the Stones come in there to do an audition. And they line up in the wall.

Well, mine was this size so they would lock me up to sing, but I could look out the window and see the rest of the band. Yeah. And I'd look, and these guys, they stood them against the wall, Mick Jagger and Bill. Keith and Bill and Charlie. Yeah, and I'm finna get angry.

Yeah. And all of a sudden they say, that's a Rolling Stones, which wasn't nothing to think about then, just a Rolling Stones. So Muddy Waters, they helped them brought the instruments upstairs so they could do their little audition for chess. Now that's the most, because I think they got some clips of paper on that now. Yeah. In Chicago.

I had it, but, you know, when I get something like that, if some people get a chance, I'll never see it again. They'll take that. That was the first time the Stones came to chicago and they were watching everybody yeah did you meet hendrix yeah yeah do you know the first night i met him i was in new york and i was had that wide long wide i was putting on this show man and i had a guitar i think behind my back yeah and somebody was coming and we got a clip on that too at my club. I think they still got it in the reel-to-reel tape.

Oh, really? And he was coming plugging this tape up reel-to-reel, and all I heard was, that's Jimi Hendrix, that's Jimi Hendrix. But I said, so what? Who is Jimi Hendrix, you know? And he laughed about it before he passed. He said, man, I've been trying to want to see you all my life. I canceled a gig to make

sure i catch you tonight he had a gig that night and he canceled so he could come see me play in new york yeah yeah nice guy yeah he was in all of us into the thing then you know we never did like i told you earlier about mud and bb and him about the women we never did talk about nothing but it was the music yeah uh-huh and half of the time he was feeling pretty good. So we didn't ever have one of those conversations. But Jim and I, and then I knew his dad very well. And, you know, his sister still do the Henrik Experience shows. And we got two of them to do later on this year.

And all these guys seem to come and pay their respect now. I mean, you play with, you know, Derek and Keith and Eric and Jeff Beck a lot. Oh, yeah. And Billy Gibbons on a little bit. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And what do you think of Gary Clark? I've talked to him. Oh, he's a good guy, man. You know, oh, yeah, man. Yeah. You know, I was at about five or six years ago. I was playing a concert in New York and he was sitting there. I said, man, come on up here and play, you know. I don't know if you heard it, but when Quinn Sullivan, I found him, he was seven years old, man, and he was playing them Henry's licks like that at seven. Wow. You got to check him out. Quinn Sullivan. Uh-huh. He's great. Just check him out, and if you can pull him up, he was seven. Yeah. And I'll call a kid up a little, you know,

if it's a little girl boy, and sometimes he'll hit one or two notes and I'll say thank you. When he came up, I couldn't get rid of him, man, because he was playing like Hendrix. He was playing BB. He was playing me. He was playing everybody. What is that? I don't know.

This is something you can't teach. No, I know. But there's a few of them around. Derek's that way too. They're just these prodigies. Oh, yeah, yeah. You can't teach that what they got. You know, you can learn, but when you catch them that young already playing like that,

that's just some God-gifted talent. Yeah, it's like magic. Oh, yeah. And you play with Kim Wilson, too, on the harp. Oh, a lot of times. You know, when I first started going to Texas, I was back to the old conversation. When I'm from Louisiana, we used to pick up some of the radio stations coming out of Texas and all country and western.

Eddie Arnold and people like that. The horseback wrestling movies with the acoustic guitar. And when I first went down in Austin, Texas, and I'm like saying, who's this, including Stevie Ray Vaughan? And I'm playing the blues, and the guy on the club, Tiffany Anton,

passed away as a white guy and he was just sitting there smiling because he knew I, I'm like, blues being white by playing by a white man in Texas? Yeah. What is this?

And you got to hear B.B. King singing by Johnny Winters. He said, he was there and they called Johnny up. He said, no, this is not a white guy

playing like this. Yeah. Especially the blues, you know. And Jimmy's good, too. Jimmy Vaughn. Oh, Jimmy's on the show with me tomorrow. Is he? Yeah, yeah.

I've talked to Jimmy. He's great. Oh, man, yeah. Him and his little family, man. You know, his wife, he got two daughters, teenagers now. And I think I introduced him to his wife. He got now. Oh, wow.

Oh, yeah. Well, I'll tell you, man, it's been great talking to you. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's been a real honor. And, you know, are you back in the studio soon, or what are you going to do? Well, I think they got me coming in November, and, you know, I'm always surprised when a record comes,

like RCA said, can we get him back in there? I say, yo, I must have broke even. The blues record must have made y'all feel like you didn't lose nothing on me because I'll be looking for that red pink slip every time I finish the album and it's time for another one. I'm waiting to say, well, he's not doing well,

so we can't record you no more. But they done asked for it, I think like three or four, five months ago when we get him back in the studio. So we planned it. I think sometime in November. Who's your favorite guy other than your own songs? Whose songs do you like playing the best?

Because you play a lot of people's songs. I like Muddy. You know, I like Muddy and B.B. That's not a night pass. I won't hit that lake. Very few nights I won't just say, here's a Jimi Hendrix. And then I would get up there and say, now, I got to thank the British because here's what they were playing and brought it back to you

because you didn't know who Muddy Waters was until the Rolling Stones came here on a television show called Shindig. Yeah. And they was trying to get the Stones to do it. And Mick Jagger said, I'll do it if you let me bring Muddy Waters and white America said who in the hell is that and he said you mean to tell me you don't know who Muddy Waters

is and we named ourselves out of his famous record Rolling Stone and some people like saying what? and it's true because that's what they named themselves Rolling Stone, yeah. Well, now I want to come.

Are there tickets? Oh, we'll get you one. Talk to the manager when we get out here. I'm excited. All right, buddy. Thanks, man. You got it. Buddy Guy.

Love it. Love the stories. Really great to talk to him. Currently on tour around the country. You can get all his tour dates at BuddyGuy.net. The most recent album is The Blues is Alive and Well, but go back and listen to some of that chess stuff. Listen to some of his early stuff.

Now I'm going to play my Stratocaster through an echo box. Thank you. Boomer lives! Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category,

and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Discover the timeless elegance of cozy, where furniture meets innovation. Designed in Canada, the Sofa Collections are not just elegant, they're modular, designed to adapt and evolve with your life. Reconfigure them anytime for a fresh look or a new space. Experience the cozy difference with furniture that grows with you, delivered to your door quickly and for free. Assembly is a breeze, setting you up for years of comfort and style.

Don't break the bank. Cozy's Direct2 model ensures that quality and value go hand in hand. Transform your living space today with Cozy. Visit cozy.ca, that's C-O-Z-E-Y, and start customizing your furniture.