Buddy Guy occupies a unique place in guitar history. He learned from blues giants including Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, Lightnin’ Hopkins and John Lee Hooker before going on to influence Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

As the blues legend prepares to celebrate his 90th birthday in July by returning to the road on his BG90 tour, it’s a fitting time to revisit a conversation with Guitar Player in which he explained why, despite everything that changed around him, he never felt the need to change himself.

“I’ve learned a little more, but it’s still Buddy Guy,” he told Guitar Player in 2001. “If you put me through a modern amplifier, somebody is going to say, ‘He don’t sound like he used to.’ Well, of course, the guitars and amps aren’t the same today. But the man is still the same. I’m using the same fingers I left Louisiana with.”

For Guy, that continuity wasn’t stubbornness so much as an understanding of where his music came from. The more he reflected on his own career, which began in 1953, the more he saw himself as part of a tradition rather than a singular talent.

“I can’t really say how my style has changed,” he said. “I used to tell T-Bone Walker, B.B., Lightnin’ Hopkins, Muddy, and John Lee Hooker — all those guys I learned from — that I didn’t have anything unique. Guess what they said? ‘Buddy, we got it from someone else, too.’”

The biggest lesson those legendary musicians passed on had little to do with technique.

“Oh, man, lesson number one is be cool,” Guy recalled. “They weren’t making any money, but they were having fun playing.”

Watching those pioneers of acoustic and electric blues shaped his outlook long before the genre found a larger audience through the British blues boom.

“I used to look at them and say, ‘Buddy, you ain’t never gonna be that good, and nobody is ever going to fill those shoes.’ Those guys weren’t superstars then, but I thought they were living the high life. It made me think, This is as high as you can go.

“Then the British groups got into the blues, and were able to live decently from it. But I still worked in the daytime. I drove a tow truck.”

Ironically, it was those same rock musicians who later helped introduce Guy to millions of listeners.

“It makes me feel great, because some of the things that people like Eric Clapton and Keith Richards and the late Stevie Ray Vaughan said about me have helped me more than any record company,” he said. “So many kids come up to me and say, “I didn’t know anything about you until I read what Eric Clapton said.’ That gives me a big lift.”

That gratitude didn’t stop Guy from acknowledging the inequalities he’d witnessed throughout his career.

“Let’s be honest — when you’re Black, it doesn’t matter how good a blues record you make, you’re not going to get it played on these big radio stations unless some super guy like Eric Clapton or Stevie Ray Vaughan plays the same thing you played,” he said.

“Blues has been like that ever since I’ve been alive. It has been ignored until some rock group gets it, plays it to big audiences, and tells them whose music it is.”

Still, Guy never lost faith in either the music or the people who loved it.

“I guess that’s why we still sing the blues,” he said. “I just look at it like a prizefighter — if I don’t get in that ring and risk getting knocked out, I ain’t got a chance to win.”

It was three years ago that Buddy Guy announced his Damn Right Farewell Tour and talked about winding down his touring career.

But you might have noticed that, at 89, the dude is still performing and enjoying the success of his latest album, Ain’t Done With the Blues.

More to the point, Guy is preparing to return to the road in celebration of his 90th birthday on July 30. His BG90 North American Tour kicks off on July 15, 2026 at Massey Hall in Toronto.

Guy tells Guitar Player he’s given serious consideration to retirement but feels an obligation to keep going.

“I thought about retiring twice,” he says. “But, y’know, I thought about all those great blues players who are no longer with us — B.B. King. Lightnin’ Hopkins, all those guys — and they used to tell me, ‘You need to keep playing and keep representing the blues,’ ’cause they don’t play it on radio or anything anymore.

“So I said to myself, ‘Well, Buddy, you better hang on a little longer. My health ain’t doing too bad, so I’m still doing what I’ve always done. Every time I get onstage, just try to play the best I can.”

Guy has certainly been rewarded for that over the past 60-plus years. He has nine Grammy Awards — including a Lifetime Achievement nod — a Kennedy Center Honor, a National Medal of Arts, a Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement and inductions into the Rock and Roll, Musicians and Louisiana Music halls of fame.

There’s a marker honoring Guy on the Mississippi Blues Trail, and his profile was bumped again last year by an appearance in the hit Ryan Coogler film drama Sinners, playing the elder version of one of the story’s main characters and performing the song “Travelin.’”

“He’s inspirational,” says Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, who counts Guy as a valued mentor.

“When you hear him play, you just know that’s the way it’s supposed to be done.”
Tom Hambridge, the Nashville-based producer who’s helmed Guy’s last seven albums — from 2008’s Skin Deep through Ain’t Done With the Blues — is not at all surprised that farewell did not really mean goodbye.

“This is what he knows,” Hambridge explains. “He seems very content living on a stage — ‘Put a guitar in my hand and lead me to the stage and I want to play with people.’ That’s what he’s been doing his whole life.

“And I think he really means it when he always says he wants to keep the blues alive and keep the word he gave to Muddy [Waters] and all of them. He thinks if he’s out there doing it, making new music, he’ll be keeping the blues alive.”

You can still hear exasperation and anger when Guy — the son of Louisiana sharecroppers who learned to play on a two-string diddly bow — addresses that mission, as he has for a great many years now.

“The blues has been treated like a stepchild,” he says. “Your big FM station don’t play our music anymore. When I was coming up you could turn your radio on and you could hear everything. You didn’t just hear B.B. King or Lightnin’ Hopkins all day. They played everybody — horn players, keyboard players, guitar players, gospel, jazz, blues. We don’t have that no more. If you’ve got satellite radio, you can hear a little more, but they don’t play the deep stuff.

“My own son didn’t know who I was until he could turn 21 and get into the blues clubs. He said, ‘Dad, I didn’t know you could play like that!’ And whenever we play these little outside theaters, you get these kids — seven, eight, nine, 11 years old — they come and come up, like, ‘Wow, man, I didn’t know who you was!’

“And not me — the blues. When they hear it, they love it. They just ain’t hearing it enough, so...that’s why I’m still here.”

Buddy Guy’s BG90 tour launches July 15 at Massey Hall in Toronto and continues through October 29 at Graceland Soundstage in Memphis.

Jimi Hendrix changed the music so entirely in 1966 that, within months of his arrival in England, established guitarists were wrestling with how to respond. Jeff Beck told Guitar Player, “It was a horrible time, really. Not because of him, but because of the fact that he swept us all aside and put us in a bin.”

Pete Townshend, realizing he could never better or even equal Hendrix’s guitar talents, decided to focus on his song craft. “He came along and, kind of like in early punk, just swept everything aside,” Townshend told Guitar Player in 1989, in terms remarkably similar to Beck‘s. ”I had to learn to write, and it became like a new art, from a new angle.” The results were revealed in the Who’s pioneering 1969 rock opera, Tommy.

But what about Clapton? From the start, he knew he’d met his match in Hendrix. When, just a few weeks after his arrival in London, Jimi crashed a Cream gig and asked if he could play, Clapton was so stunned by what he heard that he had to leave the stage.

Rather than run from his challenger, Clapton forged a friendship with him. He also permed his hair and plugged his electric guitar into a wah pedal, making him the first, and most visible, guitarist in rock to try to channel Hendrix’s mojo.

But inside, Clapton was as frustrated as Beck and Townshend. That was partly because Hendrix had achieved what he had hoped to when he first saw Buddy Guy perform with a trio in London. Clapton had been so thoroughly convinced by Guy that he left John Mayall and the Blues Breakers in July 1966, at the height of his fame, to form Cream, with the intention of following in Guy’s footsteps with his own power trio.

But Hendrix got their first. What’s more, Hendrix was the real deal, not a copy.

“Although I was with Cream, I had fantasies of incorporating all of that Buddy Guy–like showman stuff into my act,” Clapton told Guitar Player in 2004. “But when Jimi showed up and did it all for real, it burst my bubble. I realized then that I had to look at Cream as a band, and forget about my little solo odyssey.”

Clapton was also floored that Hendrix, an American, had come to England to find fame. Like his fellow British musicians, Clapton was looking toward America as the place to stake his claim in rock.

“What was even more of a shock was that Hendrix was part of America coming to England to take over, while we were all going to America trying to take it by storm,” he said. “Cream was cutting Disraeli Gears at Atlantic Studios in New York while he was cutting Are You Experienced in London. Then, when we came back to England with that album, no one wanted to know, and I was pissed for a little while.”

Speaking of which, Disraeli Gears is the album that most shows Hendrix’s influence on Clapton. “I was full-tilt on the wah pedal for a year-and-a-half,” he says.

But Clapton was also cutting his own path. It was here that his famed “woman tone” came about, the result of rolling off his Gibson SG’s tone control.

“I used the bridge pickup, but with the tone control all the way off, so it was all just bottom end, and then I played on the high strings, getting a really fat tone and feeding back,” he explained. “I just played like that all the time. Even with power chords, there was never any variation in my tone.

“It was much later that I came to the Stratocaster, and I think that was because of Jimi. He could get more tonal variation out of that instrument than I ever thought possible. I knew about the Buddy Holly, thin bridge-pickup sound, but I didn't know that it was possible to get the Strat to sound really big, or get it to feed back in tune-which was very easy with a Les Paul. And then, when I started playing around with the Strat, I realized it was nice to be able to play clean, too.”

Like Beck and Townshend, Clapton eventually found a path through Hendrix’s scorched earth. Through the stripped-back roots music of Band guitarist Robbie Robertson and the influence of American country guitarist Delaney Bramlett and his group, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, Clapton was led to the birthplace of the blues and the music of Robert Johnson. Unlike the world of late 1960s blues rock, there was nothing to compete with — just music from which to live and learn.

“The blues is a strange phenomenon,” he concluded in his 2004 chat with Guitar Player. “I’ve always thought it was rather funny and ironic when I'd see footage of interviewers actually asking people like John Lee Hooker what the blues is. I've heard those old guys say some really funny things — either profound or ridiculous.

“My way of putting it is that it's a set of rules imbued with deep emotion. But, of course, that doesn't really describe anything at all. The blues is a strange phenomenon, and I'm certainly not bigger than it.”

As living legends go, Buddy Guy is the last man standing. One of Chicago’s pioneering electric guitar–slinging bluesmen, he played in clubs, jammed and just plain hung out with fellow legends like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Junior Wells, and B.B. King.

He is a living link to the first generation of Chicago blues players, and he has the stories to go with it, including a tale about meeting Muddy and how the elder blues guitarist took Guy under his wing when he landed in Chicago.

Why did a young player like Guy stand out to an older guitarist like Muddy? As Guy told Guitar Player, he made quite a sensation when he landed in Chicago in 1957. But his act owed nearly everything to what he learned while growing up in the south, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Guitar Slim was a particularly strong influence on Guy, and one of the hottest and most theatrical guitar players in New Orleans in his time. Guy was still a teen when he saw Slim perform, and he was blown away. Slim’s performance was a big part of why he continued on his path to become a guitarist and stage performer.

“He used to have a sort of heavy-set guy,” Guy told Guitar Player, “and he’d play the guitar with this long 150-foot cord, and this guy would pick him up on his shoulders and walk him all through the crowd while he played.

"I was about 14 years old then — goosebumps just jumpin’ all over me! ‘I got to learn how to play a guitar so I can ride somebody’s neck someday with this long cord.’ And I think I wound up getting the long cord before I learned how to play,” he added, with a laugh.

At the age 21, Guy moved to Chicago hoping to find better work and get his music career off the ground. “I had heard so much about Chicago — how I could double the salary I was making. Not as a guitar player, just as a worker. So I went up to Chicago after I had just turned 21.

“But in Chicago in the ’50s, man, if you didn’t know anybody, it was like trying to talk to a herd of cattle. I stayed there until I ran out of money, and I was going to call my mother collect to send me a ticket to go back to Louisiana.

“I had my guitar in one hand and a suit in the other, and this stranger asked me, ‘Can you play?’ I said, ‘Yeah. If you loan me a dime to call my mother, I’ll play for you.’

“He said, ‘I don’t loan nobody no money. I’ll buy you a drink, though.’ I didn’t even drink at the time, but this was the third day without any food. I started to cry, but I said, ‘This isn’t going to help.’ Chicago was too cold to stay out all night, so I figured maybe I’d take a drink from this guy; anything is better in your stomach than nothing at all.

“So he bought me a drink, and after he heard me play a Jimmy Reed and a Guitar Slim, he said, ‘You're the best I ever heard. I’m gonna take you in where these guitar players are trying to play.’ I’m shy, so I said, ‘I can’t do this.’ He said, ‘Oh yes, you can.’”

After one more drink, Guy found himself transported to the 708 Club on 47th Street, then one of Chicago’s famous blues joints. “Muddy Waters played there, Junior Wells, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter,” Guy recalled. On this particular night Otis Rush and his band were onstage.

“The owner was there that night, and I got up and did ‘The Things I Used To Do,’” Guy said. “The owner told the manager, ‘Whoever that is, hire him. Give him $25 a night for three nights a week.’ I was making $30 a week when I left Louisiana.

“So I told a big lie. He said, ‘If you got a band, you start work Tuesday.’ I said, ‘I got a band.’ I didn’t even know anybody.”

Unable to find musicians, Guy decided to face the music.

“I got up enough nerve to go back the next day and tell him, ‘I lied about the band, but I come to play.’ So they found me [drummer] Fred Below and a piano player.

“Anyway, after a couple of days at the 708 Club, Muddy Waters was sitting outside. He said, ‘I heard about you. I come to feed you.’

“It was so funny; he took me in, and I was trying to say no about the food, but he just made me eat a sandwich. He said, ‘Just call me your daddy.’

“We joked around, and from then on I didn’t look around no more. I played at these guitar battles. I had that long cord, and the clubs in Chicago had the bandstand right as high as the bar. I walked out there one night, and there was Dave and Louis Myers, Earl Hooker, Magic Sam and Otis Rush.

“I said, ‘I got a lot to learn. But right now I got a lot to do.’ I wasn’t going to let them outdo me. So I just walked out with this 150-foot cord, and it was snowing, and I just went straight on out the door.

“The next day the news media was there, wanting to know who I was. From then on every guitar player in the city started coming to see me, and so did Junior Wells. That’s how I met Junior. They wouldn’t talk to me at first; had to play my way to make them come and say, ‘Who are you?’

“Then Magic Sam came, and we had a battle of the guitars on a Sunday afternoon at 1:00, and the winner won a b“I said, ‘I got a lot to learn. But right now I got a lot to do.’ I wasn’t going to let them outdo me. So I just walked out with this 150-foot cord, and it was snowing, and I just went straight on out the door. ottle of whiskey. I had these friends, and I said, ‘Just hold that cord. Don’t let nobody snatch it out of the amplifier.’

“And I won.”

It's well known that Buddy Guy had a huge impact on the direction of Eric Clapton’s career. What's less frequently noted is how much Clapton and his fellow British blues guitarists breathed new life into Guy's career, helping him reach a younger white audience.

Before traveling across the pond, Guy struggled to make a name for himself in America. Radio stations, if they did pick up his music, would get him confused with other Black artists.

In England, however, he found himself at the heart of the British blues explosion, and the scene’s most influential players were falling over him.

“When I went to England in 1965 with this Strat, all the super British guitar players, like Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, they all looked at me and said, ‘Man, I didn’t know that kind of guitar could play the blues,”’ he told Guitar World. “Then they all went out and bought Strats.”

They also loved the tone that emanated from his Fender Bassman amp (which would later be accidentally left behind on a runway).

During a new career-spanning chat with Rolling Stone, Guy reflected on those evocative formative years. He tells how upon seeing “a white face” in the crowd at one of his shows, he assumed the man was with the police.

“It was Eric Clapton,” Guy recalls with a laugh.

And although Guy was embraced by the British blues community, he didn’t understand every facet of its culture.

“I saw the [Rolling] Stones coming with the high heels on, almost looked like a woman,” he says. “I’m saying, ‘What is this?’ I got to San Francisco, and I said, ‘Man, look at this.’ I didn’t know what a hippie was. I saw men with long hair. But they were going crazy [for my music].”

His career did a full 180 degrees. But it was a long road to get there. Growing up on a farm in Lettsworth, Louisiana, with no electricity, Guy didn't know about the blues until he heard a fieldhand playing John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillen" on a guitar. That same fieldhand became his guitar teacher, and his first guitar — a gift from his father — only had two strings.

Guy found work as a session musician, notably playing on Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor," and his rhythm chops found him in great demand. “They would call my house because they couldn’t get this guitar player down to play the rhythm they wanted,” Guy remembers.

Fast-forward to 2025, and he’s refusing to retire until the genre he’s so tirelessly pushed for one hell of a lifetime gets the recognition it deserves.

“I’m the last old man still walking and playing the blues,” he tells Rolling Stone. “That’s what we talked about with Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf before they died. They said, ‘Buddy, please keep the blues alive.’ And I’m tryin’.”

His role in the Ryan Coogler-directed, genre-blurring film Sinners has helped introduce the blues to a new generation of players, but he isn’t resting on his laurels yet.

“My grandkids know about it,” he concludes. “But what about your grandkids? What worries me most, the young person don’t hear it anymore because they don’t play it no more.”

Meanwhile, Samantha Fish has named the next-gen guitarists keeping the blues alive, and Grace Bowers has reflected on her fast-rising star in the face of sexism from the industry.

Buddy Guy has some 70 years of experience as a blues guitarist and has played his electric guitar on stages all over the world . From the two-string diddley bow he made as boy growing up in Louisiana to his first proper guitar — gifted to him by a stranger — to his rise in Chicago, where he was mentored by greats like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King and Guitar Slim, Guy rose to become a signature blues artist in his own right.

Guy fortified his innate guitar talent with a wealth of knowledge and skills he gained over his formative years. He then passed it on to players like Eric Clapton, who saw Guy onstage in England in the mid 1960s and was moved to form his own blues trio, Cream. And while Guy announced his retirement from the road with his 2023 Damn Right Farewell Tour in 2023, his influence lives on in a new breed of guitarists. That includes players like Gary Clark Jr., John Mayer and Johnny Lang, who learned to play blues authentically by watching — and learning — from the master, who honed his craft with a Fender Stratocaster in his hands.

As for Guy, his blues expertise came the hard way. He's a self-taught player, with no formal training—except for a couple of lessons with a high school music teacher who, to Guy's chagrin, couldn't show him the things he really wanted to learn.

"I moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to go to high school," he recalled to Guitar Player in our January 1999 issue. "And they had a music teacher there, and I thought, 'My God, I've got what I've always wanted. I'm gonna let this guy teach me how to play the guitar.'

"I went in, and the teacher showed me some scales, and I said, 'I don't wanna play that; I wanna play like this' — I had a Muddy Waters record and a John Lee Hooker record at the time. He looked at me and said, 'I can't teach you that.'

“So I said, 'Well, then I can't take a music class!'

“I was so excited by the way Muddy played the slide, how B.B. King squeezed the strings, and how Lightnin' Hopkins and T-Bone Walker played their things. I said, 'If they don't teach this in school, I've got to find it myself.'

"Nowadays," Guy continued, "young people have advantages that I didn't have. It wasn't until 20 or 30 years ago that you even saw blues written in music notation—they claimed they couldn't write it.”

One tremendous benefit that Guy did have — after moving to Chicago in 1957 — was seeing Chicago blues legends such as Muddy Waters, Wayne Bennett, Matt Murphy, and Earl Hooker when they were at the height of their powers.

But no matter what a musician's cultural advantages — or disadvantages — might be, Guy maintains that anyone with enough heart can play the blues.

"If you love the blues, you can play it. Every interview I've ever had, I get asked 'Can a white man play the blues?' I hate that question! It's a human being, man. If I had eight fingers on my left hand, then! would say, 'No, a white man probably can't play like me.'

“But these guys, man—the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, this young Jonny Lang, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck, to name a few — there's some things they do that I wish I had known.

"Look at athletes — boxers, football players, baseball players—they come in all sizes and all colors, and all those guys are great. Music is the same way. There's no advantage or disadvantage. If you want to learn this thing, man, and you love it the way I love it, you can do it."

Buddy Guy was a hero to the electric guitar players of the British blues boom. When he first showed up in England with his trio in the mid 1960s, he thrilled all of them with his revolutionary, high-energy style, using amp overdrive, feedback and a dynamic, approach that blended raw emotion with powerful technique.

But as the blues guitar legend says today, those same guitarists took what he did and went too far with it.

In fact, he even had to warn JImi Hendrix to watch his ears when he entered clubs where the British blues players plied their trade. And as he notes, Jimi was no slouch when it came to playing loud.

“You’ll laugh, but I thought he used to play too loud,” Guy says of Hendrix in the December 2025 issue of Guitar World magazine. “When I first came up, Muddy Waters and those guys had two little speakers at each corner of the blues club, and it was a clean sound.”

But he said even Hendrix was no match for the British blues guitarists of the time. “When the British guys started playing, they had stacks of Marshalls! After I got to know Jimi, I’d go see him and [warn him], ‘Before you go in there, you ain’t gonna hear nothing.’ That type of sound just took over.

“That clean sound went away because, with the amplifiers, it was a dogfight. And then all the special effects came in, and Jimi, I think he was one of the greatest that ever took advantage of the special effects, because a lot of people used them after him.”

Though Hendrix’s take on the blues was a world away from the cleaner, more controlled blues playing that Guy was accustomed to, they had a lot in common. Hendrix idolized Guy and went to see him perform in 1967.

“I got invited to play in New York City. I was putting on the ‘Buddy Guy show,’ with my guitar behind my back and throwing it around,” he told Guitar Player of their first meeting. “And somebody said to me, ‘Look out, man, that’s Jimi Hendrix over there!’ – ’cause those were Jimi’s moves.

“But I said, ‘So what? Who the hell is that?’

“Eventually, Jimi came over to me and introduced himself. He said, ‘I just canceled a gig, ’cause I wanted to see you.’ And that’s how we became friends.”

Still, there was a degree of separation to their receptive takes on the blues.

“I was into Arthur Crudup, T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, and all the old blues guys,” Guy told GP on a separate occasion. “I wasn’t into all the special effects. I liked what Hendrix was doing when I heard it. But I decided to let him have that. I figured my time would come.”

Eric Clapton was another player rapt by Guy’s talents. He says seeing his power trio play in London inspired him to leave the Bluesbreakers and start Cream.

In related news, Guy has discussed the one thing every guitarist needs to play the blues and has reflected on his slightly unusual relationship with his son.

“He didn’t know who I was until he could turn 21 and get into the blues clubs,” Guy has revealed. “He said, ‘Dad, I didn’t know you could play like that!’”

“If you call me up to play, I’ve got to give you my best,” says Buddy Guy, whose ready-to-rumble attitude and no-holds-barred Strat attack have earned him eternal icon status.

Since B.B. King’s passing on May 14, 2015, Guy may have inherited the mantle of “Elder Blues Statesman,” but his in-your-face stage presence is a far cry from King’s gracious and kindly “grandfather” persona. Guy carries the torch with the devil-may-care attitude of a punk rocker.

“Thanks to the rappers, I can say whatever the fuck I damn well please these days,” announced Guy from the stage of the San Francisco Masonic while supporting Jeff Beck in 2016.

A few folks probably don’t appreciate Guy’s litany of f-bombs — or his over-the-top guitar antics — but most people find Guy’s firebrand blues a welcome presence in a genre watered down with each passing cliché. On his recent tours — Guy’s Damn Right Encore Tour wrapped this past August — the 89-year-old came across like a man possessed, as if he’s making up for lost time in the spotlight.

Throughout much of the ’70s and ’80s, Guy couldn’t even land a record deal, much less fathom being honored as a living legend at the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors by an African-American president.

No one can deny that Guy — who was born George Guy in Lettsworth, Louisiana — represents the ultimate long shot. The atomic energy he channels through a Fender Stratocaster and a Fender Bassman would be thrilling and impressive at any age, but it’s almost supernatural for an octogenarian to rock so hard.

In 2017, Guy sat down with Guitar Player to discuss the blues’ legacy, Jimi Hendrix and the finer points of his guitar tone. Here's what he had to tell us.

B.B. KING

Most blues musicians I learned my lessons from are no longer with us, and they didn’t print a lot of stuff about those guys. Every night I go to the stage, I stop and imagine the history of some of the guys like Lightnin’ Hopkins and T-Bone Walker.

The media didn’t get us until the British started playing blues. That’s when major newspapers started interviewing Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and people like that. Before then, we were playing to a 99.9 percent black audience. When the British started playing blues, the audience completely changed.

My late friend, B.B. King, and I were in Memphis once, and this lady ran up to him, and said, “Hey man, these white people are taking the blues from us.” B.B. said, “No, ma’am. They didn’t take it. You just quit listening to it.”

It’s a little lonesome now. B.B. and I talked about it before he passed away. As a matter of fact, we used to talk about it before Muddy and all of them passed away. They would tell me, “Man, if you outlive me, don’t let the blues die.” That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.

STRATOCASTERS

When I was coming up, it was Lightnin’ and T-Bone, and then up stepped B.B. King, Gatemouth Brown, and, of course, Guitar Slim. There weren't many guitar players way back when, because it was unheard of. You literally couldn't hear an acoustic guitar onstage. The guitar was getting obsolete until Leo Fender and Les Paul electrified it

When Leo Fender came up with that Strat, man, I didn’t know what the hell it was! Guitar Slim was the first I saw play one, and I thought it was a joke. But you had to keep the acoustic guitar out of the weather, and this solid piece of wood Leo came up with took more wear and tear. Guitar Slim’s Strat had scratches all over it. Well, you can’t do an acoustic like that. I’m not sure if Leo made the first solidbody, but his was the one that exploded. The Stratocaster got the guitar heard.

THE BASSMAN THAT GOT LEFT ON THE RUNWAY

Some people tell me I have a tone. I barely pay attention to that. Back when the British guys started mentioning my name, players like Jimmy Page would come up to me, and say, “Man, I didn’t know anyone could play blues like that on a Strat. What are you doing?”

The Chess brothers used to say, “If you want it played right — go get Buddy.” But even I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I got my tone from a ’57 Strat and an old Fender Bassman. You can’t get that tone anymore. The Fender people do a good job at trying to replicate that ’57 tone, but there’s something different about the wood, or something else that Leo took with him. I’ll tell you what else Leo took with him: whatever he had in that [original] Bassman transformer.

I turned the bass [control] all the way off from day one. There was no reason to do anything else, because that was exactly the sound I wanted. I never had to worry about changing the tone. All I would do was wrap up the guitar cord and come home. Nowadays, you get different tones at different clubs, but that thing had the same tone wherever I played — except some of the smaller clubs where grounding issues would produce a scratchy sound that you hardly hear anymore.

I’ve still got that old Bassman. I almost lost it when I went to Africa around 1969. I was sitting by the window watching my bags being loaded, and my amp was just sitting there. As the plane was going to take off, I jumped up. The stewardess said, “Mister, sit down. You’ve got your ticket for your bag.” I said, “My amp is out there past the wing of the plane!” They kept that amp for five years. When it finally came back to me, it was all rusted out.

JIMI HENDRIX

There’s a video clip of the night we met. When I first went to New York in 1967, I was into a solo with the guitar behind my head when somebody started hollering at me, “There’s Jimi Hendrix!” I was like, “Who in the hell is Jimi Hendrix?” And he came up and said, “Can I tape your show?” He had a reel-to-reel tape recorder.

I was into Arthur Crudup, T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, and all the old blues guys. I wasn’t into all the special effects. If I had been [into Hendrix], I probably would have got hooked myself. I liked what Hendrix was doing when I heard it. But I decided to let him have that. I figured my time would come.

THE WHAMMY BAR

I used a whammy bar. Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix would tell you that if you check your history. I cut a side at Chess [Records] using a whammy bar, but they weren't ready for it. They were like, “Nobody wants to hear that.”

These days, though, I don’t put a whammy bar on my guitars. Honestly, I stopped back when I was using very light strings because it made them break easier, and I couldn’t afford to keep buying new ones. Beck puts that whammy in the palm of his hand, and Stevie Ray Vaughan was good with that, too. Stevie, Beck, and Jimi are the best I’ve ever seen with that. A lot of guitar players couldn’t figure out how to work with it, but if you do it right — like Hendrix — it works.

ERIC CLAPTON, JIMMY PAGE & THE BRITISH BLUES BOOM

I couldn’t be B.B. or T-Bone, but they kept telling me, “Man, you got something there. You got a Buddy Guy tone.” I was so dumb. I didn’t even know that.

Even the Chess brothers told me. When I first went in there, they didn’t want to hear my noise. But when Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton all said, “I’ve been listening to Buddy,” the Chess brothers said, “Wait a minute. Let him come in and do what he wants.”

I was surprised. I said, “Man, what are you talking about?” They said, “These British guitar players are selling millions, and they’re eating up the shit you’ve been playing!”

It was just two years ago that Buddy Guy announced a Damn Right Farewell Tour and talked about winding down his touring career.

But you might have noticed that, at 89, the dude is still on the road. And he’s coming out with a new album whose title is a straight-up statement of his attitude — Ain’t Done With the Blues.

“Yeah, I thought about retiring twice,” the Louisiana-born Guy tells us, with a chuckle, by phone from his home in Chicago, where he operates his Buddy Guy’s Legends club. “But, y’know, I thought about all those great blues players who are no longer with us — B.B. King. Lightnin’ Hopkins, all those guys — and they used to tell me, ‘You need to keep playing and keep representing the blues,’ ’cause they don’t play it on radio or anything anymore.

“So I said to myself, ‘Well, Buddy, you better hang on a little longer. My health ain’t doing too bad, so I’m still doing what I’ve always done...every time I get on stage, just try to play the best I can.”

Guy has certainly been rewarded for that over the past 60-plus years. He has nine Grammy Awards — including a Lifetime Achievement nod — a Kennedy Center Honor, a National Medal of Arts, a Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement and inductions into the Rock and Roll, Musicians and Louisiana Music halls of fame.

There’s a marker honoring Guy on the Mississippi Blues Trail, and this year his profile was bumped again by an appearance in the hit Ryan Coogler film drama Sinners, playing the elder version of one of the story’s main characters and performing the song “Travelin.’”

“He’s inspirational,” says Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, who counts Guy as a valued mentor.

“When you hear him play, you just know that’s the way it’s supposed to be done.”
Tom Hambridge, the Nashville-based producer who’s helmed Guy’s last seven albums — from 2008’s Skin Deep through Ain’t Done With the Blues — is not at all surprised that farewell did not really mean goodbye.

“This is what he knows,” Hambridge explains. “He seems very content living on a stage — ‘Put a guitar in my hand and lead me to the stage and I want to play with people.’ That’s what he’s been doing his whole life.

“And I think he really means it when he always says he wants to keep the blues alive and keep the word he gave to Muddy [Waters] and all of them. He thinks if he’s out there doing it, making new music, he’ll be keeping the blues alive.”

You can still hear exasperation and anger when Guy — the son of sharecroppers who learned to play on a two-string diddley bow — addresses that mission, as he has for a great many years now.

“The blues has been treated like a stepchild,” he says. “Your big FM station don’t play our music anymore. When I was coming up you could turn your radio on and you could hear everything. You didn’t just hear B.B. King or Lightnin’ Hopkins all day. They played everybody — horn players, keyboard players, guitar players, gospel, jazz, blues. We don’t have that no more. If you’ve got satellite radio, you can hear a little more, but they don’t play the deep stuff.

“My own son didn’t know who I was until he could turn 21 and get into the blues clubs. He said, ‘Dad, I didn’t know you could play like that!’ And whenever we play these little outside theaters, you get these kids — seven, eight, nine, 11 years old — they come and come up, like, ‘Wow, man, I didn’t know who you was!’

“And not me — the blues. When they hear it, they love it. They just ain’t hearing it enough, so...that’s why I’m still here.”

He’s hopeful that Sinners’ success will help build that audience, too, even though Guy says that “I didn’t pay too much attention to it” after he filmed his parts. “They say it’s doing pretty well, which is good,” he notes. “I’ll do anything to help the blues, and that family [in the film] is kinda based on the blues. I think Sinners might help it a little bit, ’cause maybe some young kids will be like, ‘Wow, I saw that movie. I like what he played. I wanna try that.’”

Hambridge says that, like the other projects, Guy made the call for Ain’t Done With the Blues. Then he went to work writing and accumulating songs.

“Every time he asks me to do another one, I try to reinvent it, somehow, and think, ‘How can we do it so it’s not like what we did before?’ and I’ll throw ideas at him,” the producer explains. But, he adds, “Buddy is a creature of habit. I’ll even say, ‘Let’s go somewhere else. Let’s go to London to record. How about we do this?’ And it’s, ‘No, just do it the way you do it, because it works.’

“That’s probably why he’s so successful — ‘If something’s not broke, just do it that way.’”

For Guy, meanwhile, it’s simply a matter of “when I go in the studio, I just try to give you my best. I even wrote a song from what my dad told me one time — ‘Buddy, don’t be the best in town/just be the best ’til the best come around.’ And he meant pickin’ cotton, driving tractors or a truck, whatever. He didn’t say, ‘That’s just music I’m telling you about.’ He meant, ‘Whatever you do, do the best that you can.’”

Their process remained the same as always on Ain’t Done With the Blues. Hambridge sent batches of songs ideas to Guy, who’d weigh in on what he liked best and which Hambridge would then continue to develop.

“Sometimes we go in with 20, 25 things we’re possibly going to record,” Hambridge says. “And there’s time he comes in and says, ‘Hey, I got an idea about a line that came to me when I was sleeping’ and I’ll sit down with him in the studio and we’ll write that song and he’ll go, ‘Yeah, let’s record that.’”

Guy’s take? “They give me the song and I don’t want to listen to it, ’cause I might overdo it or underdo it. I just say, ‘Lemme hear it’ and hopefully I can play a note or something or say a lyric somebody will pay attention to.”

Covers, according to Hambridge, tend to be a hard sell to Guy.

“He really wants to be original,” explains the producer, who also wrote tracks with Nashville cats such as Gary Nicholson and Richard Fleming. “He really wants to say something. If it doesn’t touch him, he doesn’t want to sing that song. I really respect that in him.”

That said, Ain’t Done With the Blues starts with “Hooker Thing,” a John Lee Hooker vamp, and also includes “One From Lightnin’,” which apes Hopkins, both featuring Guy alone with just his signature Martin acoustic guitar. And it was Guy’s idea to record Earl King’s “Trick Bag,” while Hambridge has been lobbying for J.B. Lenoir’s “Talk To Your Daughter” “for a long time.

Recording Guy with his Martin is a particular joy for Hambridge. “When he plays that, he plays different,” the producer says. “It sometimes sounds electric; we put different things in, run ’em through an amp. A lot of people will think that’s an electric guitar, but I like it because he does play differently.

:I kinda try to trick him a little bit, because he’ll say he just wants to play electric and fast, and I’ll say, ‘Can you just go out and test the mic, maybe sing something? Sing me a John Lee Hooker song? And he goes, ‘Here’s a Hooker thing’ and he’ll start and it’s unbelievable. I’m standing there next to him and tell the engineer to just roll it. he’ll say, ‘Is that okay?’ and I’ll say, ‘Sure, but can you give me a little more...’ and we’re recording the whole time and getting great stuff.”

Both Guy and Hambridge agree that the former’s playing has gone through a bit of an evolution during their time together.

“When I started working with him, he was playing fast and doing all this [sings a run] really crazy stuff,” Hambridge says. “I remember him saying to me, ‘They like when I do that — the audience, the crowd.’ And I said, ‘Well, you know better than me...but we’re making a record here. I miss some of the more spacious, clean, B.B. King kind of notes.’

“So we’d try that on stuff, and it’d be beautiful. I try to get some of that on these albums and still let him have the faster stuff on there as well.”

Guy — who recorded most of the album on a 1988 blonde Fender Stratocaster and more recent versions of his signature polka-dot Strat — recalls that, “B.B. King and even Aretha Franklin told me, ‘You can’t holler that loud your whole life — meaning the way I play, too. I used to laugh at them when they’d tell me that...I just play what I know. Every time I pick up my guitar I just hope I hit something nice and play the right note at the right time.

“Some guitar players say to me, ‘What do I need to do, Buddy?’ and I say, ‘Just keep playing, ’cause you never know what will happen.’ That’s what I do.”

Ain’t Done With the Blues also features a variety of guests: Kingfish on “Where U At?;” Joe Walsh on “How Blues is That?,” Joe Bonamassa on “Dry Stick,” Peter Frampton on “It Keeps Me Young,” and the Blind Boys of Alabama on the gospel-flavored “Jesus Loves the Sinner,” along with top-shelf players such as Rob McNelley on guitar, Glenn Worf and Tal Wilkenfeld on bass, Chuck Leavell on piano and others.

“All these guys, they’re such superstars themselves, but they just love Buddy,” Hambridge says. “Everybody I’ve reached out to through the years, especially on this record, nobody says no. They all go, ‘Are you kidding me? I’ll drop everything to do this!’ That’s Billy Gibbons, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, Mick Jagger...whoever. They all want to be part of it.”

Will there be more coming to be part of? That’s a question only Guy can answer — and he doesn’t necessarily have it yet.

“I don’t know if I know how to say ‘no,’” he says with a chuckle. “I really didn’t say I was through. I know a lot of groups that have thrown their farewell tour and they’re still out there, so I don’t know if that made a couple more people come to see them or not. I didn’t want to do that.

“The Muddys and all of them told me, ‘Know when it’s time for you to get out of the way and let these young people take over.’ I want that to happen to me. But whatever I can do to help the blues stay alive, I’m still gonna try to do that.”

Buddy Guy is the youngest of the OG blues gurus who has faithfully carried the torch lit by mentors and friends including B.B. King and Muddy Waters for nearly as long and far as he’s capable, but before hanging up his polka dot touring shoes for good he’s making one last trek.

Named after his 1990 comeback album, Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues, his Damn Right Farewell is a must-see affair for blues lovers, Stratocaster zealots, and all aficionados of true-blue American artistry. Guy has always provided a link from the past to the future, and he’ll have rising star Taj Farrant kicking down the door to tomorrow on the second Tuesday in August.

The whole hootenanny will take place at one of the most surreal spots to see a show in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Mountain Winery is Another Planet Entertainment’s key concert venue in the South Bay with spectacular views, food and, of course, finely aged wine.

Buddy Guy turns 89 on July 30 and his new album Ain’t Done with the Blues drops everywhere in celebration! It features a gang of groovy guitar guests including Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Peter Frampton, Joe Bonamassa and Joe Walsh. The illustrious Eagle adds some slinky slide and signature vocals to compliment Buddy’s raucous reverb and elastic string bending on the first single, an autobiographical romp called “How Blues is That.”

Another notable recent release is “Last Man Standing,” a crossover cut where Buddy joins forces to rock the blues with Switchfoot. Guy also makes a cameo in the supernatural blues-period horror flick Sinners, and his cover of Alvin Youngblood Hart’s “Travelin’” is featured on the original motion picture soundtrack released on April 18 by Sony Masterworks.

Sixteen-year-old phenom Taj Farrant is already a virtuosic player and a capable singer who brings the heat from a land down under to the greater blues-rock landscape. He released his debut album, Chapter One, in the fall of 2024 and the mixture of originals and cover homages represents a solid start.

The opening cut, “Beautiful Things,” is a lovely instrumental that brings the playing of David Gilmour and Stevie Ray Vaughan to mind. Vaughan’s influence looms large in Farrant’s style, and he closes the album with an edgy take on SRV’s “Tightrope” with a shredding outro solo that’s pure fire.

While the album does a decent job of representing Farrant’s prodigious talent, his live show is superlative. Come get a feel for this youngster’s passion and you’ll become a believer.

Check out Farrant’s original tune steeped in classic blues lore, “Crossroads.”

Guitar Player is proud to partner with Another Planet Entertainment to welcome Buddy Guy’s Damn Right Farewell with opener Taj Farrant to the stunningly gorgeous Mountain Winery in Saratoga, California, on Tuesday, August 12.

Secure your seats now to get the best spots left before they’re gone.

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For a chance to win a pair of tickets to see GP Presents Buddy Guy in Saratoga, California, on Tuesday, August 12, , send an email and put “Buddy Guy” in the subject of your email. Include a sentence about yourself and why you want to go. Phone contact greatly appreciated for confirmation.

The winner must provide their own transportation to the Mountain Winery in Saratoga, California, on Tuesday, August 12, and have his or her own accommodations in the area.

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EVENT DETAILS
GP Presents Buddy Guy plus Taj Farrant

Tuesday, August 12

5:30 p.m. doors, 7:30 p.m. show, All Ages

The Mountain Winery

Saratoga, California

We'll be handing out free packs of Martin Strings

Feedback was once a problem to be avoided like the plague — that is until a few inventive guitarists began to use it effectively in their stage shows and even in their recordings.

Some, like Pete Townshend, discovered how to harness its power by searching for new guitar techniques.

“I'm afraid I was an arty little sod and I was actually experimenting,” he told Guitar Player when asked if his early innovations were the result of genius or dumb luck. “It shows that radical experimentation really is worth pursuing, because even though it might feel stupid and pretentious if you do discover something new, it's your property and you're identified with it forever.”

For others, feedback was a happy accident. That includes the Beatles, who chanced upon feedback in the studio when Paul McCartney's bass note caused John Lennon's Gibson J-160e electric-acoustic guitar to vibrate and generate feedback through the amplifier it was connected to. The result became the introduction to their hit 1964 single "I Feel Fine."

And then there's blues legend Buddy Guy, who learned about feedback while playing electric blues in Chicago in the 1950s.

“In Chicago then, we didn't have stages,” the 88-year-old tells NPR. “We'd always go in a corner and play. They had jukeboxes during their breaks, and they would play tunes. And that's how I learnt, by listening to other people, greats — Muddy Waters, [Howlin’] Wolf and so on.”

It was during this period that the guitarist's lightbulb moment came.

While on a break, Guy left his Fender Strat still plugged into an amp that was still turned on. As he says, there was no stage, so his electric guitar was exposed to the venue’s audience.

“A lady passed by, and her dress tail hit the G string, and it just stayed there with distortion for about 20 minutes,” he recalls. “We were just in the corner playing. And she got up from her table to probably go get a drink or use the bathroom or something like that. And I said, ‘Wow, I forgot to cut my guitar off.’

“It was right in tune with the particular tune that was playing on the jukebox. I'll never forget that. I went up, and it worked with me, and I've been doing it ever since.”

In that moment, his mindset switched, and feedback became a tool in the arsenal; something to embrace and utilize, particularly when it came to guitar solos. He’s expressive with it, taming it like a lion under his command.

“After I found out it would stay and distort that long, I just went up one day and played and stood right there where it was, and it worked,” he concludes.

Jimi Hendrix, in particular, would take great inspiration from Guy’s use of feedback as did many others, including Jeff Beck, Robert Fripp, and My Bloody Valentine, have followed in their wake.

Derek Trucks is one such player to have learned a great deal from Guy, and he says playing with him in blues clubs before he hit his teens proved a vast education.

“What I remember about Buddy Guy is that when he wanted to, he would bring the band down to a whisper," Trucks recalled last year. “I could hear the amps humming.

“I remember that discipline and that use of dynamics just being a huge thing that went off in my head. It’s powerful when you can bring things down to that level, but still hold the intensity. Then, when you take the lid off of it, it’s a big trip that you've taken.”

Guy has also been dishing out his best blues guitar tips to Guitar Player and revealed the one question he's sick of being asked by interviewers, delivering feedback of a very different kind.

Ryan Coogler's new high-budget move Sinners puts 1930s blues and horror on a wild collision course, and its soundtrack, which features Buddy Guy, Christone "Kingfish" Ingram and Alice In Chains' Jerry Cantrell, has been masterminded to be as historically accurate as possible.

Set in the Mississippi Delta in 1932, the film stars Michael B. Jordan who plays twin brothers who, upon returning to their hometown, cross paths with a supernatural evil. The score plays a pivotal role in its storytelling and treats the history of the genre with the utmost respect.

Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson (The Mandalorian, Tenet, Oppenheimer) was sent Robert Johnson and Tommy Johnson recordings for references and ultimately wound up recording much of the soundtrack on three 1932 Dobro Cyclops resonator guitars, which Jordan's protagonist also plays onscreen. Getting hold of those nearly 100-year-old instruments, however, proved exhaustive.

“I was able to find three of them in the world,” he tells Classic FM. “One in London, one in Nashville, and one in L.A. Playing it with a slide, you use the guitar almost like a voice. It creates this beautiful note and gives you a lot of variety on how you can play.”

Göransson also worked closely with blues producer Lawrence "Boo" Mitchell, whose Royal Studios in Tennesssee became the base of operations. Mitchell introduced the Swede to a cluster of the other musicians who would stamp their mark on the soundtrack, including Guy and Ingram, to help bring what, for Göransson is a project that means a huge deal.

“My dad is a guitar teacher, so when I was about six or seven years old he started giving me lessons. Then when I was eight or nine I heard [Metallica’s] 'Enter Sandman' for the first time and that's when I got really passionate about music,” he explains.

“It was kind of my own thing. My dad was into the blues and I was into heavy metal, [even though] at that age I didn't even understand that like all music, even heavy metal, comes from the blues.

“It's something that I think came out in this score, and it's a very personal score,” the Swedish composer continues. “It starts mostly acoustically. I wrote almost the entire score on [the 1932 Dobro], and then, as the story develops, it transitions into heavy metal, orchestra, strings and big drums. So the guitar tones transitioned from acoustic to electric.”

One key scene in the film — minor spoiler alert — which took several months to film showcases the then-and-now of the blues. It shows how the stylings of Robert Johnson and company originated in Africa and morphed, over time, into funk, and far beyond. It’s a scene, he says, that unfolds “in a surreal kind of dreamy state,” and provides a powerful history lesson for those unaware of how much of a cornerstone the blues was for genres that followed it.

Like Göransson, Coogler had found himself drawing lines between his musical loves and those of the generation before him, which inspired him to write the film. Across its 138-minute playtime, it explores the appropriation of Black music and culture via colonialism.

Alice in Chains were, strangely, a key driver in his wanting to explore that theme.

“I started listening to it, bro, and I was like, ‘This shit is like what my uncle used to play’: the blues,” he told The Breakfast Club [via Metal Hammer]. “I’m listening to the guitar riffs and what they’re talking about and the passion they’re singing with, and I’m like, ‘That’s odd.’ I dug into the research, man, and that’s exactly what it is: it’s just blues music sung by white people.”

As a result, Cantrell features on “In Moonlight” alongside Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. His contribution saw him taking a portion of the score and “writing a song out of it” with the haunting track a collaborative effort.

Speaking of his involvement in the film, Buddy Guy — who features on "Travelin'" and plays Sammie Moore — has said he used the opportunity to fulfill the wishes of Muddy Waters and B.B. King that he helps “keep the blues alive”.

Sinners was made with a lavish budget of around $90 million, meaning the Dobros were likely a drop in the ocean of the film’s expenditure. The movie has already amassed nearly $300 million at the box office.

Buddy Guy has some 70 years of experience as a blues guitarist and has played his electric guitar on stages all over the world . From the two-string diddley bow he made as boy growing up in Louisiana to his first proper guitar — gifted to him by a stranger — to his rise in Chicago, where he was mentored by greats like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King and Guitar Slim, Guy rose to become a signature blues artist in his own right.

Guy fortified his innate guitar talent with a wealth of knowledge and skills he gained over his formative years. He then passed it on to players like Eric Clapton, who saw Guy onstage in England in the mid 1960s and was moved to form his own blues trio, Cream. And while Guy announced his retirement from the road with his 2023 Damn Right Farewell Tour in 2023, his influence lives on in a new breed of guitarists. That includes players like Gary Clark Jr., John Mayer and Johnny Lang, who learned to play blues authentically by watching — and learning — from the master, who honed his craft with a Fender Stratocaster in his hands.

As for Guy, his blues expertise came the hard way. He's a self-taught player, with no formal training—except for a couple of lessons with a high school music teacher who, to Guy's chagrin, couldn't show him the things he really wanted to learn.

"I moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to go to high school," he recalled to Guitar Player in our January 1999 issue. "And they had a music teacher there, and I thought, 'My God, I've got what I've always wanted. I'm gonna let this guy teach me how to play the guitar.'

"I went in, and the teacher showed me some scales, and I said, 'I don't wanna play that; I wanna play like this' — I had a Muddy Waters record and a John Lee Hooker record at the time. He looked at me and said, 'I can't teach you that.'

“So I said, 'Well, then I can't take a music class!'

“I was so excited by the way Muddy played the slide, how B.B. King squeezed the strings, and how Lightnin' Hopkins and T-Bone Walker played their things. I said, 'If they don't teach this in school, I've got to find it myself.'

"Nowadays," Guy continued, "young people have advantages that I didn't have. It wasn't until 20 or 30 years ago that you even saw blues written in music notation—they claimed they couldn't write it.”

One tremendous benefit that Guy did have — after moving to Chicago in 1957 — was seeing Chicago blues legends such as Muddy Waters, Wayne Bennett, Matt Murphy, and Earl Hooker when they were at the height of their powers.

But no matter what a musician's cultural advantages — or disadvantages — might be, Guy maintains that anyone with enough heart can play the blues.

"If you love the blues, you can play it. Every interview I've ever had, I get asked 'Can a white man play the blues?' I hate that question! It's a human being, man. If I had eight fingers on my left hand, then! would say, 'No, a white man probably can't play like me.'

“But these guys, man—the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, this young Jonny Lang, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck, to name a few — there's some things they do that I wish I had known.

"Look at athletes — boxers, football players, baseball players—they come in all sizes and all colors, and all those guys are great. Music is the same way. There's no advantage or disadvantage. If you want to learn this thing, man, and you love it the way I love it, you can do it."

Throughout his career, the ever-humble Buddy Guy has used his status as a blues player to help promote the next generation of guitar greats.

Eric Clapton has recalled how seeing Guy's trio in London inspired him to quit the Bluesbreakers and form Cream in 1966. More recent followers of the bluesman include, Quinn Sullivan, who arrived on the scene after backing from Guy at just eight years old, and Christone "Kingfish" Ingram who has shared the stage with Guy on several occasions.

Derek Trucks is the latest guitarist to sing Guy's praises. Like Sullivan, he was gracing stages from a scarily young age and getting support from more experienced hands.

“I was really lucky to play with a lot of my heroes early,” Trucks says during a reflective conversation on the podcast of Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett. “I started touring at nine or 10 years old, and remember doing shows with Buddy Guy and sitting in with Bob Dylan at 11.”

Indeed, by his 20th birthday, he'd added Joe Walsh and Stephen Stills to that list, having found Gibson SGs to be his preferred six-string.

Asked whether he was shy or boisterous at those early gigs, Trucks replied: “I was reserved naturally so they would have to pull you out of your shell a little bit. Buddy Guy was always great about that. He’d let you know, like, ‘Get your ass out here.’

But his time playing intimate blues clubs with the blues legend proved the most insightful. Guy had yet to see the revival that gave his latter career a shot in the arm, and it was in these low-profile venues Trucks learned something important about being a band leader.

“What I remember about Buddy Guy is that when he wanted to, he would bring the band down to a whisper," Trucks says. "I could hear the amps humming.

“I remember that discipline and that use of dynamics just being a huge thing that went off in my head. It’s powerful when you can bring things down to that level but still hold the intensity. Then, when you take the lid off of it, it’s a big trip that you've taken."

Guy has more than 70 years of playing beneath his fingers, and while he finally retired from touring last year, at 86, his humility is as resonant as ever. He's dedicated his life to the blues, and in that, has been a determination to see its flame still burning bright long after his days are over.

Selwyn Birchwood, who first saw Guy as an impressionable 18-year-old, is another award-winning guitarist — including the Albert King Guitarist of the Year award in 2013 — that he has inspired to greatness.

“Anyone who’s seen Buddy live knows what an incredible showman he is, and it was then and there I said to myself, 'Whatever this music is, this is what I want to learn, and this is what I want to do,'” he told Guitar Player.

Last year, Guy sat down with GP to reflect on his early career, from his first guitars to moving to Chicago and never leaving.

By the mid-’60s, Eric Clapton was one of the hottest guitar players on the planet, spearheading a new and exciting virtuoso guitar movement. Transitioning from John Mayall’s Bluesbreaker's slow licks to Cream’s adrenalized blues solidified his reputation, but it couldn’t have been forged without Buddy Guy laying the foundations for him.

From Howlin' Wolf to B.B. King and beyond, a litany of talent helped propel blues guitar playing into the spotlight, but Clapton believes that no artist changed the perception of what a guitarist could do like Guy.

Speaking at the bluesman’s inauguration into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005, Clapton said: “Buddy did far more than just hold his own. In my humble opinion, he stole the show.”

In 1963, Guy had been part of the Folk Festival of the Blues LP which, recorded over several nights in Chicago, also featured Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, and Sonny Boy Williamson.

“He let everyone know that he was the new dangerous kid on the block,” Slowhand extends. “It is still one of the great debut albums of any artist in any genre and it started me on a relentless mission to find out just who this man was.”

A deep dive into his piecemeal discography ensued, with many becoming “milestone recordings” for the guitarist.

He'd starred on Chess Records tracks since 1958, often featuring on songs by Otis Rush, Muddy Waters, and Little Walter, “and no matter how great the song or the performance, my ear would always find him out,” says Clapton.

“He stood out in the mix simply by virtue of the originality and vitality of his playing.”

It wasn’t just his playing that encapsulated his attention, either. Despite plying their trades on different sides of the Atlantic ocean, he saw a lot of himself in Guy's story.

“He was a younger blues musician in a field totally dominated by much older guys. I could identify with him,” he says. “There he was, standing beside the masters of his craft, holding his own and confidently pushing the blues into the 20th century.”

In ‘65, he was able to see his idol live, backed by a bass player and drummer for a show at London’s prestigious Marquee Club. It proved a change-making moment in Clapton’s career.

During his Hall of Fame speech, he'd called the show “earth-shattering,” with Guy playing electric, forward-thinking blues and pulling out tricks – like playing with his teeth – that Hendrix would later make his own.

“What it said to me was 'this was possible,’” he recalled in a 2005 interview. “If you were a good enough guitar player, you could do it as a trio. It seemed to be so free, you could go anywhere. With Jack [Bruce] in my filing cabinet, and being in a fairly rigid structure like John Mayall's band, I was thinking about that as a way of breaking free.”

Clapton left the Bluesbreakers a year later, in ‘66, with Peter Green craftily talking his way into the spot he'd vacated. Suddenly the guitarist could spread his wings like he’d admirably watched Guy do.

Clapton has previously gone on record calling Guy the greatest guitar player alive. When the Dallas Observer asked for his response to such an accolade, he was quick to repay the compliment while remaining characteristically humble.

“It's nice of Eric to say that, but I still have to go out and prove that I can play a few licks,” he had said. “I don't take that for granted. Hell, if Eric says that I am the greatest guitar player ever, then maybe I am.”

The argument over whose talents are better could rage on for centuries after both are long gone, but what cannot be understated is how much Guy excited Clapton.

Without his sonic influence, and seeing the flexibility a trio could give him, Clapton may never have gone on to form Cream and elevate the blues to another level. Just like he felt Guy did when he first played his way into the scene.

At age 25, Quinn Sullivan is already a music veteran. That’s what happens when you begin your career before you’re out of first grade. The singer/songwriter and guitarist has cemented his transition from child prodigy to mature adult performer with his new, fifth album, Salvation (Provogue/Mascot Label Group). The wide-ranging set touches a lot of musical bases, with riff-driven hard rockers reminiscent of classic radio rock, like Dark Love, rubbing shoulders with R&B falsetto groovers, like Once Upon a Lie.

“Musically, Salvation is truly where I’m at in my life, and it touches on topics of loss, trauma and love,” Sullivan says. “It’s a very personal album.”

Sullivan became nationally known when he appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show at age six. Two years later, he met Buddy Guy backstage at a concert near his New Bedford, Massachusetts, home, and the blues legend invited him out to play the night’s last few songs.

“That night truly changed my life, both professionally and personally,” Sullivan says. His mentorship with Guy lasted a decade, as he often appeared with him and even recorded a solo on Guy’s 2008 album, Skin Deep.

“I’m forever grateful for Buddy’s support for my music,” Sullivan says. “His mentorship lasted about 10 years, but we have a friendship that is eternal.”

You started playing at age three and were on The Ellen DeGeneres Show when you were six. How the heck did that happen?

“My parents knew that I had a natural ear for music, which I was always around because of them. When I was three, I saw Dickey Betts at a blues festival in my hometown and was mesmerized. I had a First Act acoustic guitar that I brought everywhere, and a photographer snapped me strumming along. It ended up on the front of our local newspaper.

“My father, Terry, had been almost jokingly emailing TV show producers with some videos of me playing around town. The Ellen show producers got back to him almost immediately, and a month later my dad and I were flying to Los Angeles. I had never been on a plane before!

“Ellen was super-kind and gave me a Gibson ES-335, which was double my size. I still have it today and got it signed by B.B. King and Buddy Guy. It’s my own personal national treasure. The show aired about a week later and propelled me onto the scene nationally. People still come up to me and say they saw me on Ellen.”

Tell me about how you met Buddy at a concert in New Bedford.

“Some people we knew at the theater were aware that I wanted to meet Buddy, and they very graciously got us backstage for a meet and greet. Buddy was so kind and soft spoken. He had an American flag rugby shirt on, with a brown fedora, a gold Rolex with gold rings... He was the coolest person I had ever seen! He signed my Squier Stratocaster and asked me to play a few notes for him, then said, 'Be ready when I call you.'”

Can you point to a few things you learned from him?

“I learned so much musically from Buddy. The main thing was his showmanship – his way of commanding a crowd like no other. He can have the audience in the palm of his hand in less than a second, then go into a blistering solo that just knocks everyone out. I try to bring that fire into my live shows.

“Another valuable lesson I’ve learned from Buddy is to put 100 percent of your heart and soul into every performance, whether you’re playing in front of 10 people or 10,000, because you never know who’s watching. I sometimes have to remind myself of that when I’m gearing up to play for a room of 50 to 60 people. His voice echoes in my brain and helps immensely in those situations.”

Was there a specific point where music transitioned from something that a parent pushed you toward to being your own thing?

“I was lucky in that I was never pushed into anything by my parents, although they certainly lifted me up and allowed me to follow my dreams. I think exposing children to music at a young age has nothing but positive outcomes, but parents come up to me and ask for advice on how to get their child into playing an instrument and I always say never force him or her to do anything. It’ll never be natural if they don’t seek it out themselves.

“I think it started becoming my own thing at around 11 or 12. I put out my first album at that age and was touring heavily, mostly in the summer and on school vacations. I knew that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, but I have had that feeling for as long as I can remember. Being an artist is something that I feel is a need for me as a human being. It’s the best way I know how to express myself.

The new album covers a lot of ground, including R&B and rock. You do a great cover of the Beatles’ Dear Prudence. I love the arrangement, which adds a guitar coda that makes it very much yours.

“Thank you! I wouldn’t be a musician if it wasn’t for the Beatles. They have by far had the biggest impact on me musically. I just love how they never let anyone define them. They changed with the times and pushed the boundaries in the studio and did things that hadn’t been done before. I still find new things about songs I’ve listened to since I was three. Every time I’m in the studio, I think about how they would approach things.”

Who are some of your other primary guitar and musical influences?

”There are so many guitar influences, but if I had to narrow it down to a few, I’d say Eric Clapton, Derek Trucks, Carlos Santana and David Gilmour. They shaped guitar playing for me, and they all have one thing in common: They play from their heart to make every note count. I am a fan of guitarists who tell a story with their playing that can move you emotionally.

”All of them do that for me, and I listen to them every day. I’ve been lucky enough to meet, hang and play with all of them, except Gilmour, who’s still on my bucket list. I’m also influenced by modern music, like Tame Impala and Post Malone, and even Harry Styles. I’m a big fan of their albums and am influenced by their songwriting.

“Recently, I’ve been getting into Middle Eastern, African and Indian music, via Derek Trucks. I’ve heard him talk about how much those styles have influenced his approach to playing the guitar, so I’ve been digging into some of the people he’s mentioned, like Ali Akbar Khan, D’Gary and Bismillah Khan. It’s such beautiful music.

“I’m also a fan of soul singers like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Otis Redding, Sly Stone and, of course, Susan Tedeschi, who is the best singer I’ve ever witnessed live. My influences keep evolving and changing. I’m always keeping my ear open for new music and discovering new artists every day that I add to my arsenal of inspiration.”

Salvation feels like a very emotional album. Tell me about the recording process.

“Thanks. This was a very therapeutic album to make. It touches on loss, trauma and love. I lost my mother unexpectedly a year and a half ago, so this album was made while grieving this unimaginable loss. I felt her strength pushing me through. I probably wouldn’t have been able to make an album at that time if it wasn’t for the strength of my mother carrying me through the entire process.

“I called the album Salvation because that word echoes what I’m going through right now: being saved by the love and the people around you, through the pain of loss and the trauma that comes along with that. That feeling speaks in all of the songs, touching on several topics.

“I recorded it in Minneapolis with producer/mixer John Fields and wrote the album with John and songwriter Kevin Bowe. My live band is on two tracks, but we used session musicians for most of the album. I’m the only guitar player and played bass on some of the tracks too, which is a first for me.”

What gear did you use?

“The electrics were Fender Stratocasters and Telecasters, Gibson Les Pauls and SGs, and a PRS Silver Sky. My acoustic was a Martin Eric Clapton signature 00-28. For amps, I used a Fender Deluxe Reverb and a Vibrolux Reverb. The pedals were a Vemuram Jan Ray [boost overdrive] and Myriad Fuzz, an Ibanez Tube Screamer, a Fulltone Octafuzz, and Strymon Lex and Flint pedals.”

Tell me about a few of the songs on the album, starting with Don’t Wanna Die Today, which has a great guitar tone, and two others that are special to you.

“I was inspired by the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack, and the groove to Don’t Wanna Die Today began with that album in mind. I was also going for that Wheels of Fire Cream sound with my guitar. I played a Gibson SG ’61 reissue. I wanted it to sound like the ’60s, and I have to give credit to John for capturing that sound.

“Once Upon a Lie is one of my personal favorites. The inspiration came from the school of soul music. I had the initial riff for years but never really touched it until I was in the studio and found the old voice memo on my phone. I’ve always loved singing in falsetto, and this song just felt like the right song to do it. Lyrically, it’s about the feeling of being lied to by someone you love, which is about the worst feeling. It’s about being tired of being lied to and moving on with your life.

“The third song I’ll mention is Salvation. I wanted a song that paid homage to Jimi Hendrix, with some of that fire, but without copying Hendrix, because let’s face it, nobody can do what Jimi did. Michael Bland plays on it, and he’s one of the greatest drummers alive. He played with Prince for a long time, so he put his vibe on the track, which I think really lifts it. I’m excited for people to hear Salvation and take on their own meanings to the songs.”

Is it fair to say that you started as a blues guy and keep expanding while staying rooted there?

“You know, I haven’t ever felt like a blues guy, despite being rooted in it and having a mentor who is the genre’s biggest star. I have a major love for blues, which I think is the purest music ever, but it’s not necessarily the genre I gravitate toward when working on my own music. I’m influenced by everything: soul, rock, Latin, Indian, hip-hop rhythms and some pop.

“I’m a singer/songwriter and guitar player who draws inspiration from a lot of styles and mixes them all into my music, which leans toward rock and soul. I never want to be defined by one genre because I never want to have a lid on my creativity.

“A lot of people have looked at me as some sort of ’savior of the blues’. That’s certainly not a one-person job, and we have to look more at how we can keep that music alive in a way that speaks to young people. We have to push it forward but not be stuck in the past.

“There’s a lot of people who expect players like me to stay rooted in one area, because of their own nostalgia. But I have to be my own artist, and that’s the place I’m moving toward now in my career.”

Richie Sambora, to the more casual listener, may be known as the Talk Box guy behind Bon Jovi’s mega-hit-cum-wedding-party-anthem Livin' on a Prayer, but beyond that is a deep-set love for the blues. 

He started playing guitar at 12, idolizing the likes of B.B. King, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton. Later on in life, they'd become far more than heroes. 

He'd go on to enjoy a strong relationship with King; Jimmy Page signed his early band, Mercy, to Led Zeppelin's Swan Song record label; and in 1995, Eric Clapton, ordered him to join a dream jam session at the Roxy. There was no asking. 

Speaking in the latest issue of Guitar Player, Sambora charts his career with candid anecdotes about life after Bon Jovi. More importantly, he also discussed being accepted by the blues community, and the moment Slowhand delivered a poetic full-circle moment to him. 

“In 1991, when I was finishing up Strange in This Town, I wrote a song, Mr. Bluesman, about a young man like me following blues guys around,” he remembers. “I asked Eric if he would play on it, and he obliged. 

“One day [in March, 1995] he called me and said, 'Richard, this is Eric...' I'm like [drops his mouth in amazement] because I'm still crazy and starstruck. He says 'Buddy, George [Harrison] and I are playing the Roxy tonight. You're going to come and jam.' 

“I'm like 'No, I'm watching the fucking Price Is Right, Eric?! … I will be there, I promise you!' Meanwhile, I'm shitting my pants.” 

Strangely, Harrison “didn’t show up”, with John Lee Hooker present instead, perhaps as a last-minute replacement as one of many legendary names in Clapton’s address book. 

“I played every lick I knew about three times faster – whatever I had to do to get through the whole thing,” Sambora continues. “Buddy's like 'Come on, come on!' and Eric's just laughing. 

“We blew the roof off the place, and we were backstage at the end. Hooker looked at me and said, 'Hey boy, was that you playing them strings up there?... You keep playing. You're good.' I got on my knees and kissed his hand.” 

It’s no doubt a moment that lives rent-free in Sambora’s mind. As he goes on to say, his own address book started filling out, and idols turned into peers and mentors.   

“Every time Buddy was around or I was anywhere near the vicinity,” he concludes, “we'd just call each other. B.B. was the same way. I was accepted by the blues community. But I did the work, man. I did the stuff. I played blues clubs for a reason and I loved every second of it.” 

Sambora released four new singles in 2024, his first new solo music since 2012’s Aftermath of the Lowdown. 

I Pray, Livin' Alone, Songs That Wrote My Life, and Believe (In Miracles) were released across consecutive weeks in April and May.   

Sambora left Bon Jovi in 2016 to have more time to spend with his family. You can read about his recent reflections on his departure from the band here.  

Head to Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitar Player, which includes the full interview with Sambora, alongside discussions with John Fogerty, Sue Foley, Thorn Florentine Empirial. 

Though he's only 25 now, blues guitar ace Quinn Sullivan already has just about two decades of time in the spotlight under his belt.

At the tender age of six, Sullivan made his debut as an electric guitar prodigy on Ellen, and barely two years later, he came to the attention of one of the greatest bluesmen of all time, Buddy Guy. From there, Sullivan would quickly fall under Guy's wing, forming a close bond with the blues legend that holds to this day. 

It all began, Sullivan told Guitar Player in a recent interview, with a chance backstage meeting when the guitarist was just eight years old.

“Some people we knew at the theater [in Sullivan's hometown of New Bedford, Massachusetts] were aware that I wanted to meet Buddy, and they very graciously got us backstage for a meet and greet,” Sullivan recounted to GP. “Buddy was so kind and soft spoken. He had an American flag rugby shirt on, with a brown fedora, a gold Rolex with gold rings... He was the coolest person I had ever seen!

“He signed my Squier Stratocaster and asked me to play a few notes for him, then said, ‘Be ready when I call you.’” 

With such a high profile at such a young age, however, came “blues savior” baggage from certain corners. Sullivan is certainly no traditionalist, and – similarly to fellow Gen Z blues maestro Christone “Kingfish” Ingram – has emphasized that the blues needs to be fluid, and not stuck in the past, in order to survive. 

“A lot of people have looked at me as some sort of ‘savior of the blues.’ That’s certainly not a one-person job, and we have to look more at how we can keep that music alive in a way that speaks to young people,” Sullivan explained to GP. “We have to push it forward but not be stuck in the past.

“There’s a lot of people who expect players like me to stay rooted in one area, because of their own nostalgia. But I have to be my own artist, and that’s the place I’m moving toward now in my career.”

To read the full issue with Sullivan – which also covers the eclectic set of influences, and the tragedy, that shaped his new album, Salvation – pick up a copy of the new issue of Guitar Player at Magazines Direct.

Back in 1998, Guitar Player caught up with Jimmie Vaughan following the recording of his maverick solo album Out There. The following interview originally appeared in the July 1998 issue of Guitar Player.

To hardcore fans, Jimmie Vaughan is a virtual deity -- a living legend with a guitar style so deep that it defies description. Since emerging in the Fabulous Thunderbirds 23 years ago, Vaughan has walked the long walk and earned the respect of blues superstars such as B.B. King, Buddy Guy, and Eric Clapton. He has spun his signature licks in dives and stadiums, shared a bill with Jimi Hendrix, and toured the world with Clapton, ZZ Top, and the Rolling Stones. Not bad for a guy who traded high school for an endless stream of roadhouse gigs.

During his tenure with the T-Birds, Vaughan developed a wicked guitar style that would eventually evolve into using a capo and plucking the strings – some call it digging – with his forefinger. After all but disappearing from public view following brother Stevie Ray's death on August 27, 1990 (soon after the two had united for the highly acclaimed Family Style), Vaughan re-emerged in 1995 with his first solo album, Strange Pleasure. To the delight of worshippers of all things Vaughan, Jimmie was squarely on the scene again.

His latest release, Out There, is a swampfest of greasy grooves and maverick guitar playing, and underscores the Texan's knack for pulling rabbits out of some very old blues hats. During a recent conversation with Vaughan, he offered GP readers some insights into how he does what he does onstage and in the studio.

Out There really has a classic, old-school vibe. How did you get that blend of funk and finesse?

I like fat tones, and I try to use the best of the old and the best of the new. The whole album was recorded digitally. All that stuff about having to use tape – that's all bullshit to me. You just have to use the right limiters and mic preamps. If you put this album on any kind of stereo and turn it up, it sounds badass – at least to me. It's a bit out of tune, which gives it that little edge and dissonance. We didn't deliberately get out of tune, though.

You made a big instrumental change by having an organ play the bass parts.

Well, it was just a teenage fantasy. I've always loved the organ trio stuff. And I've always loved the Hammond B-3. The sound of it just rips your guts out. It's all wood and tubes, and it's got so much feeling. I wanted to have that behind me because I knew it would make me want to play guitar.

It sure makes the guitars stand out.

Yeah, because you can hear the bass drum go "boom." You can hear the whole drum kit, because there's no bass guitar covering up everything. You hear bass from the organ, but it's more of a hmmm – it doesn't have the attack of a bass guitar.

Has your recording process changed much since the Thunderbirds?

No, it really hasn't. Back with the Thunderbirds we got our sound by using the room. Instead of recording the signal and putting an effect on it to make it sound good, we moved the microphones away from the amps and the drums. There's almost no reverb or echo or anything on this record. For the most part, it was mixed by just setting the fader levels.

That's really how I get a good guitar tone. It's the room. Now I'm giving away all my little secrets. It's also the amp and the guitar, of course, but you record everything where there's enough room for the sound to breathe. You don't put the mic right up on the speaker. This is the same way I've recorded every record I've made -- the ones that sounded good, anyway [laughs]. You can go too far with that room sound, though. It can sound like you're out in the street or something.

Do you cut rhythm tracks with the whole band?

That's exactly what we do. I overdub a lot of my guitar parts, but I'll go in and play with the band because everybody gets excited and we start playing off each other. Then, I'll come back and sing it and play it, and fix whatever we have to. In the old days, you'd just do the song 20 times and pick the best take -- which is a very good idea. I'd like to do that again someday.

Were you the only guitar player on the record?

Yeah, except for "Feel Like a King." That's Nile Rodgers playing rhythm guitar. He wrote and produced that song.

Your voice sounds especially warm and rich on this record. In fact, the signal seems like it was pushed into overload.

Yeah, we're not past distorting the shit out of something if it sounds good. You want everything to sound like it's fixin' to explode. Just almost, though, not already exploded. [Laughs.]

Have you found any particular mics that work best for your voice?

No. I just set up a bunch of mics and sing into 'em until it sounds right. Whichever one sounds best, that's the one we go for. It's pretty difficult for me because I'm just a guitar player who's learning to sing.

You're being humble. In "Lost in You," there are moments where you almost sound like Al Green.

Well, thank you. Maybe the chord changes sort of remind you of that. Al Green is a phenomenal singer. He's like Mister Vocal, and I'm sort of urping it out. I'm getting more confident, though. The singing on this record is a lot better for me than it was on Strange Pleasure. Likewise, on Family Style -- which was the first time I ever sang -- it was pretty close to horrible, but it was fun.

"Tick Tock" was pretty tingling.

But, see, I only talked on that. Stevie sang that one. I always wanted to sing, but I was scared. Then I got backed into a corner and I had to do it. I can't sing like Bobby Blue Bland, Buddy Guy, or B.B. King, but if I sing like me, then it's okay.

Getting back to guitar -- once you've cut your rhythm tracks, do you move your amp to another room for overdubs?

No, it's the same room. We just set up a close mic and a room mic, and we can get any kind of sound by turning up the level of one mic or the other.

Does a close-mic position work better for rhythm parts?

Yeah. But there's only "Out There," "Kinky Woman," and "The New Ironic Twist" where I play a little rhythm thing in the background. Mostly, it's just lead stuff. I sort of think of my guitar as a saxophone, and I play it that way.

You started using a capo some time ago. How does it affect your playing?

I started doing that on the third Thunderbirds album. I wouldn't do it all the time, but I started using it more and more. See, I'm always in E, and I've got all those open strings. It just makes me think different. It's bluesier to me. When I play with a pick and without a capo, I have a tendency to go right over to B.B. King's or Buddy Guy's house. I can't help it because that's the way I learned. But when I use the capo, I think I sound more like me.

So you're moving the capo around a lot.

I just put it where it sounds right. On "Astral Projection Blues," the song starts with the capo in F and ends up with it in G. I actually move it right in the middle. You can almost hear it go "clunk."

You employ it a lot differently from, say, Albert Collins -- who used an Fm tuning and regularly capoed at the seventh fret.

He was completely on his own planet. Mine is sort of that Houston, Gulf Coast style of Guitar Slim, Gatemouth Brown, and Johnny Watson. Another guy who uses a capo is Lonnie Mack.

Your playing seems to get wilder all the time.

I like wild. Wild is good.

How did your style evolve?

Well, I've been at it for a long time, and I've copied all my heroes. When I first started, it was B.B. King and Buddy Guy. I was just a student, and I tried to learn what they were doing because I couldn't believe the sounds they were getting. I bought every B.B. King record I could get, and I'd sit there and learn the intro, the solos, the ending, and all his little licks in between. You know, I'd just play along with it and try to copy what he was doing. Same thing with Eric Clapton.

What made you choose a Strat?

It was just the whole Fender thing because I use Teles too. When I was a kid, I used to ride the bus downtown on Saturdays and just look in the window at Stratocasters, Telecasters, and Gibson SGs. I'd think, "I'll never be able to have one." I don't know how it happened, but, over the years, I just became aware of what I wanted to hear, and I tried to get that. I've narrowed it down to what works and what doesn't work, and what works is getting that fat tone on a Fender guitar – which is not necessarily known for that.

So, how do you get that sound?

It's not really any trick. You just turn the amp up and use your fingers to get a good guitar sound. I like the treble pickup because it has a pure tone without a lot of overtones. It almost sounds like a steel guitar, you know? That's what my tone is -- it's always the treble pickup. But you can say different things tonewise by where you pick. For example, depending on where I pick the string – closer to the bridge or farther away from the bridge – and whether I use a pick or a finger is sort of like my three pickups. We're gettin' pretty deep now. [Laughs.]

You've always gone for maple fretboards.

I don't think it makes any difference. I mean, Stevie used maple and rosewood, but he got the same sound. I think it's just whatever you like. I just always liked to look at the maple. It's cool. It looks like Gene Vincent. You know that famous picture of the Blue Caps with all the Mary Kay guitars? ["Mary Kay" is a common term for the white-blond, translucent finish used on some ash-bodied Fenders.] I look at that picture and go "Man, look at that!" It's just what I got used to, because my first Strat was a '58 maple-neck.

Have you experimented with different pickups?

Yeah, a little bit. But I always ended up back with the stock pickups. See, I like my guitars to be pretty much stock -- there's nothing on my guitars that's not pretty regular. You're going to think I'm kidding, but I used my Fender Tex Mex Strat on this record. The only difference is that its treble pickup is a little hotter than standard. I guess they put more winding on it, but I don't know. They all come that way. I used my old Strat on "Kinky Woman" -- my old white one -- and I used a '54 reissue Strat on "Astral Projection Blues." But the rest of it is the Tex Mex.

How do you adjust your pickups?

I don't know if this is good advice for anybody else, but I raise up my treble side and lower the bass side. It just seems more balanced that way -- you know, the ratio of the volume between the treble strings and the bass strings. But I really just want the treble to just blow the shit out of it. Now, if you get the pickup too close it'll start making a beating sound. One thing I do that I don't think nobody else does is raise my action up real high. I don't necessarily use big strings, but I have the action up pretty high so that my strings really ring. I know Fenders were designed to play really easy, but I like it when you've got something to hold on to.

Your guitars feel like they're strung with .010s or .011s.

That's about right. Some guitars feel tighter than others. I go to it guitar by guitar, but usually I end up with just a regular set of .010s. If I go on tour and start playing hard every night, I'll move up to .011s because I'm getting stronger.

Do you prefer any particular brand?

I use D'Addario.

Do you always keep your trem bridge flat against the body?

Yeah, and I've got all the springs on. That's the way my Tex Mex and old white are set up. I don't really even use the thing. I like it, though, and occasionally I might do something with it.

How important is a guitar's weight to you?

I like 'em kind of light. Some people say that heavy guitars have more sustain, but I can't tell. You know when a guitar sings through you -- through its back? I like it when you hold the guitar, and it sort of breathes through itself.

What amps did you use on the new record?

I used an old Fender Pro that I borrowed from [Austin musician] Denny Freeman, and an old Silvertone with one 10" speaker -- just a cheap, garage-looking thing. I also used my Matchless, the one with four 10s. When I go out on a gig, I use two piggyback models. I think they're Chieftains -- the ones with two 12s in each cabinet. I used a Bassman on a couple of things. As long as it has tubes and it's a Fender-type amp, you can't beat it. I've used a pair of Fender reissue Bassmans for gigs, and I've used them on records from Family Style on.

There's a photo of you using a Fender Super Reverb with the Thunderbirds, and from the back of the amp you can see that it has mismatched speakers. Was that something you did intentionally?

I think it was just what we had. The Jensen speakers sounded the best to me, but when we couldn't get those, we probably ended up with EVs. They were real durable. In the Matchless amps, I've got stock Celestions. They're the perfect speakers for that amp.

Are there other new amplifiers that you like?

I just bought three Kendricks. I got a 4x10, a 2x12, and one of their Black Gold 35s. Man, the Black Golds sound fabulous! If you can get a better guitar tone than that, I want to hear it. There really are some good amps now. There was a time when you had your old Fender, and that was it. Now, between Fender, Matchless, and Kendrick, a guy can get anything.

Are any effects added to your amp sound in the studio?

Nothing. I just get a good tone from the amp. There's always an exception to the rule, though. I'm not going to say that I'll never do this or never do that, but effects usually don't sound good with the room sound. The room mic is the effect, if you can call it that. On all my favorite old records, no matter how they had the band and the guitar miked, when the guy stepped away from the vocal mic to play his guitar, they would turn up his vocal mic. That's what makes it get all crazy-sounding. When B.B. King's playing and singing, you hear his guitar coming through the vocal mic, which has a little distance on it. When he steps away, they turn it up, and bam!

You've pretty much avoided effects pedals.

Well, I had an Ibanez Tube Screamer when I was in the Thunderbirds. I also had some kind of tremolo gizmo that made the pitch go up and down, and I ran my guitar through a Leslie on Butt Rockin'. But I just decided that the guitar was enough of a gadget. I have nothing against effects, but I just want to play the guitar. I'm not trying to be a purist or anything, it's just what I like.

You have a very identifiable guitar sound. Are you completely satisfied with it?

No, I'm never satisfied. What keeps you sounding good is when you're always trying to keep it fresh. The best advice I could give anybody is just to play, play, play. The more you play, the better you're going to get because you'll get bored with yourself, and then you'll learn new ways to express yourself.

Has the guitar ever been a struggle for you?

Truthfully, it has always come pretty natural. I don't want to say it was easy, but it seemed the perfect thing for me. I'd be in sad shape if I didn't have this.

This interview originally appeared in the July 1998 issue of Guitar Player…

Selwyn Birchwood can recall exactly when he committed himself to the blues. “When I first heard Jimi Hendrix as a kid, it sounded to me like I was hearing music from another galaxy,” the Florida-based guitarist/vocalist/lap-steel player explains. “I started reading a biography about him to find out what possessed someone to make sounds like that, and it was there I first came across the name Buddy Guy. Coincidentally, Buddy happened to be playing in town that same week, so I bought a ticket, not knowing what to expect. 

“Now, anyone who’s seen Buddy live knows what an incredible showman he is, and it was then and there I said to myself, 'Whatever this music is, this is what I want to learn, and this is what I want to do.'”

Birchwood’s devotion to the blues quickly took root. While still in his teens, he was asked to join Sonny Rhodes’ band. In 2013 he snagged the Blues Foundation’s Albert King award for Guitarist of the Year, which led to a deal with the legendary Alligator Records label. Now 38, Birchwood has established himself as one of the preeminent voices in contemporary blues. His smoky baritone vocals blend seamlessly with his fiery and emotive electric guitar and lap-steel lead lines, and his original compositions cleverly blend elements of traditional blues, cool jazz, funk, Stax-flavored R&B and psychedelic rock into a cohesive and compelling artistic statement. 

With his latest release, Exorcist, Birchwood feels he’s come full-circle in some ways. “I still have the ticket stub from that Buddy Guy concert — it was September 2002,” he reveals. “Now it’s 20 years later and not only have I had the chance to perform with Buddy onstage, I got to work with Tom Hambridge, who won a Grammy for producing Buddy.”

The 13 tunes on Exorcist are a masterfully produced, arranged and executed sonic tour de force, from the funky headline-inspired tongue-in-cheek Florida Man to the autobiographical Underdog and the expansive and cathartic title track.  

It seems as if lap steel is becoming increasingly popular in blues music. What inspired you to start playing one?

When I was 19, I was hired to be in Sonny Rhodes’ band. He became a mentor to me, and he was the first person I saw and heard play a lap steel in person. During my first tour with him, I decided I was going to save up my money and buy one as soon as I could, because I was so blown away by the sound.

What kind of lap steel do you currently play and how often do you use it?

I currently have a couple of Gibson lap steels from the ’50s that I keep in E tuning [low to high, E, B, E, G#, B, E ]. On the new album I play lap steel on Swim at Your Own Risk and Underdog. During a typical show I’ll alternate between guitar in standard tuning, slide guitar in open tunings and lap steel. I usually bring the lap steel out toward the end of the set, because people really seem to dig on that.

What slide tunings do you normally use?

It depends on the song, but for example, Florida Man is in open D tuning — D, G, D, G, B, D. I’ll also use open E and open D [low to high, D, A, D, F#, A, D]. Lately I’ve been using these Ernie Ball Comfort Slides that have silicone inside, because it fits pretty snugly to my finger and gives me more control.

You pose with two Gibson semi-hollowbodies on the cover of Exorcist. Are those your main guitars?

Yes. I’m very partial to hollowbodies and semi-hollowbodies. The cover shows my Gibson ES-345 and ES-335, which was the prize when I won the Albert King Award at the 2013 International Blues Challenge. You can see the International Blues Foundation Logo on it. I also use an ES-135 that I like to play at home, and a smaller-bodied ES Les Paul that I take on the road with me. They only made that guitar between 2014 and 2016. I guess people didn’t like them, but I love mine. 

What’s the rest of your signal chain?

First off, I only use Mogami guitar cables. When you A/B them against other cables, it’s amazing how clear they are. For amps, I use a 1980s Peavey Bandit that Kingfish Ingram and Mr. Sipp turned me on to for recording solos. For everything else, including live performances, I use a 1x12 Fender Deluxe Reverb reissue. For effects, I just use a Dunlop Cry Baby Mini Wah and an Ibanez Tube Screamer Mini. I figure if I can’t do it with a wah and a Tube Screamer, I can’t do it. I’m also concerned about stuff failing live, so I like to keep it simple. We’re often doing these festivals where there’s a 10-minute changeover between acts, so I like to travel light. 

Can you talk a little bit about your approach to improvisation?

For me, it’s mostly about having your ears open and responding to what the band is doing. I’ll try to listen for what’s not there and play what I hear. I’m not a highly-schooled musician, so I just try to match my playing to the feeling in the song. It’s not based on what techniques I know as much as on what I think will make the song better. 

You have a real ensemble approach to your arrangements. The guitar certainly cuts through but it doesn’t dominate.

I’ve always been drawn to music where there was interplay between instruments, and stuff can breathe. I think it makes the music more interesting if you let the other colors through. I didn’t put a guitar solo on some songs, because I felt they simply didn’t need them.

Regi Oliver’s baritone sax often plays a song’s riffs. When did you decide to incorporate that unique sound into your band lineups?

When I first got my group together, I didn’t have a keyboardist and Regi was playing tenor sax. He switched over to bari because he felt he could comp behind the guitar better with it, and over time it just grew into our sound. With the addition of keyboards, it gives the music a lot of heft and it’s allowed me to write with that in mind. I don’t think there are other bands out there that sound like we do, and I feel like on this album we’ve really found our sound.

Is there a song on Exorcist that you feel best encompasses your sound?

If I had to choose one, I’d say it’s the title track. I try to take the things that I enjoy listening to and put them into my own music. I feel like that song really has a lot of these elements — arrangement, emotional content and storytelling. The instrumentation included extra percussion, female background vocalists and the whole horn section. You can even hear us hitting an anvil with a piece of metal in the background. There’s a lot going on in there, and it all builds into this big, intense cacophony of musical sounds. 

I figure that people don’t normally gloss over the title track, and when we got done recording it, I said, “Man this has to be the title of the record!” 

Exorcist is out now and available to buy or stream

Ally Venable has been releasing records for nearly half her life – which is saying something considering the fact that the guitarist and singer is all of 23 years old. “Nobody told me that I couldn’t start putting out records when I did, so I just did it,” she says. “Thank goodness I didn’t know about any of these supposed rules, because they probably would have held me back.” She laughs, then adds, “Of course, I do like breaking rules.”

Over the past decade, the Les Paul-toting Texan has become a hot commodity in contemporary blues circles. Her 2021 release, Heart of Fire, hit number two on Billboard’s Blues Albums chart, and she’s proved to be a reliable draw in concert. But as she graduates to the big leagues, Venable makes it clear that she has more aspirational goals in mind.

“I want to be an inspiration to young girls,” she says. “I’m starting to see it. After my shows, I’ll sign stuff at the merch table and there will be a line of young girls who want my autograph or to talk to me. It’s so cool. If I can be a role model to girls and get them to pick up the guitar, then I’ll feel like I made a real impact.”

Venable’s forceful playing – a vibrant mix of traditional influences and modern flash, delivered with a highly theatrical flair – has attracted admirers such as Buddy Guy and Joe Bonamassa, both of whom turn up on her new album, Real Gone. On the blues stomper “Texas Louisiana,” Venable and Guy intertwine high-energy vocals and guitar solos as if they were part of one body and mind. Bonamassa takes much of the six-string spotlight on the soulful ballad “Next Time I See You,” turning in a corker of a lead matched only by Venable’s emotive singing.

Other highlights, such as the half-acoustic, half-electric grinder “Blues Is My Best Friend” and the hard-driving blues-rock title cut, belong to Venable herself. Her extraordinary instrumental command – she simply never seems to repeat a phrase or nuance – elevates the best set of material she’s ever had.

“I give a lot of credit to my producer, Tom Hambridge, and a songwriter named Rich Fleming,” Venable says. “We got together in Nashville and wrote the whole album in two days, which is crazy. On my other albums, I had complete control, but this time I handed the reins to Tom, and we made a pretty magical record together. I never felt so comfortable in the studio before. With Tom calling the shots, I could focus on singing and playing, and I could just let go.”

As the story goes, you got into the blues at the age of 12. That’s not exactly normal.

No, I guess it isn’t. [laughs] I just really connected with it. My dad and I would listen to music every morning when he dropped me off at school. He liked ’80s hair bands and stuff. One day I noticed he had a CD of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Texas Flood in his truck, and I was like, “What’s this?” I popped it in and said, “Wow, this is different!” I didn’t know anything about the blues, but I really liked the sound of Stevie’s voice. Then I watched YouTube videos of him, and I was like, “Oh, he’s playing guitar. Wow, he’s amazing!”

This was around the time that I started learning songs and playing guitar. I had an acoustic, but seeing Stevie play made me really want to rip into the electric. I got one and started learning his songs and then some Buddy Guy songs. It just started snowballing into the rest of the blues.

Did you just go down the YouTube rabbit hole?

Exactly – the rabbit hole of the blues music. I had a Mexican Strat, and then I got an anniversary model Strat. I just played and played. I could play by ear, and I could sing and match pitch really well. I think that played a big part in how I learned to play. I could hear things and emulate what players were doing.

You’re saying that learning to play wasn’t a big struggle for you. It came to you pretty naturally?

Pretty much, but I still had to work at it and practice the delivery of everything. I studied how songs were structured. Once I got to that point where I could play a full song, I’d hone in on my emotions to really deliver the song to an audience. That’s something I worked at, because there’s so much you’re thinking about during a performance.

What kinds of gigs did you do at first?

I played anywhere I could. I played at a crawfish stand and in front of a grocery store. I played at coffee shops. I would play and I would practice with my band. Every week we would play four-hour shows for tips.

Guitarists often have quirks to how they play. I notice you bend your thumb over the neck.

Yeah, I do the thumb thing. That’s how Stevie played. I learned that by watching his videos. I saw other players do it too. I always noticed their thumb was on the top of the lowest string, and it seemed like a good way to get the bass note and play the high strings at the same time. People always point out that I don’t use my pinkie much. I tuck it back a little. I guess if I lost my pinkie, I could still play.

You’ve always had a very musical feel for how you use a wah, especially on the new album.

Oh, thanks! The guitar players that I look at for a wah are probably Buddy Guy and Jimi Hendrix. Stevie, too, but mainly Buddy. I like using a wah because it lets me glide more. It’s like this other frequency. I just think I play differently with a wah.

You’re also a great acoustic player. I love the way you dig into the acoustic on the opening of “Blues is My Best Friend.”

That was fun. Different guitars require different approaches. I play a Les Paul differently than when I play a Strat, so it figures that I’d play an acoustic differently, too. You do have to dig into it a bit more.

I was expecting you and Joe might sing together on “Next Time I See You.”

No, he just plays.

How did you and Joe work out your guitar parts?

[laughs] We didn’t. I thought the progression of the song was perfect for Joe. It just called out for the “Joe B. sound.” We recorded the song, and I even did a solo on top, kind of anticipating what he might do. But then we took my solo out and sent the track for him to play on.

After Joe sent the track back, did you tweak your playing at all?

I think we just left it. It’s Joe Bonamassa, you know? I didn’t want to take away from anything he was doing. [laughs]

You and Buddy sing and play together on “Texas Louisiana,” though. Were you together in the studio?

We were. It’s a pretty magical thing working with Buddy. It feels like a kind of passing-the-torch thing. It’s just a dream being around him. We have a dialog with our guitars – we’re friends, and we’ve toured together. I’ll play a lick, and I can kind of anticipate what he might do, because nobody else sounds like him. I don’t know if he’s anticipating what I might do, but I do think we’re sharing a moment when we play.

In a new interview with Guitar World, blues legend Buddy Guy – who is currently in the midst of his farewell tour – revealed how his style was shaped by watching his heroes – and learning what he could, and couldn't, do from them.

It was one of Guy's own idols, B.B. King, who once said “listen to me and anybody else you like. I won’t use the word ‘steal,’ but try to ‘borrow’ a little bit from each guy. And, like that, you become you.“

Indeed, King was one of the figures who most influenced Guy, but the latter recognized early on that it made little sense to incorporate certain King quirks into his playing.

“I had to find my own unique voice on the electric guitar,“ Guy says. “Because I had heard guys like B.B. King and T-Bone Walker, I said, 'I’ll never be that good. I’ve got to do something different from them or I’m done for.' A guy like Guitar Slim was wild, and B.B. King had a left hand that could do things that were not of this Earth. I knew I could never do any of that. 

“So, I told myself, if I can ever become any good at guitar, I’d like to act like Guitar Slim but play like B.B. King and T-Bone Walker.”

In an interview with Guitar Player earlier this year, Guy also pointed to King as one of the reasons why he chose to end his touring career on a high note. 

“I think Muddy [Waters] died at 70, and he was still okay, but B.B. King was [still touring at] 89 years old,“ Guy told Guitar Player. “Every time I would go play for a promoter that had him six months or a year before me, they’d tell me he was forgetting his songs.

“He was doing the same song three or four times a night. ‘You Are My Sunshine’ – that was his favorite. And everybody was afraid to tell him he was singing it three or four times a night, ’cause he was the boss at all times. So I started thinking about that, and I don’t want it to be that way for me.“

To read GP's full interview with Guy, step right this way.

In September of 1950, 15-year-old Eddy Harrington (1935-2018) boarded a Greyhound bus in Birmingham, Alabama, a $15 one-way ticket in hand, and embarked on a northern journey that would change his life dramatically.

The migration of Harrington, who’d one day be known as bluesman Eddy “The Chief” Clearwater (pictured above) wasn’t altogether unique, but it was undeniably one with purpose. Between 1900 and 1960, nearly five million other African-Americans did the same thing.

They brought more than their dreams and worldly possessions to Chicago. They brought their culture, and their blues. When Chicago blues came to life in the late ’40s and early ’50s, it was essentially amplified Delta blues worked into the framework of a small band, usually drums, piano, and bass. It eventually grew to encompass a subgenre, West Side blues, which often featured a louder, minor-blues sound anchored by gutbucket guitar.

“I had always heard from many people that Chicago was more like a promised land,” said Clearwater. “That if you wanted to better your life and broaden your horizons, you went to Chicago, because there were so many opportunities, and so many different walks of life. 

"Sweet home Chicago!”

1. “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” by Muddy Waters

Few performers in recorded history in any genre can lay claim to having the kind of impact that Muddy Waters (1913-1983) had on Chicago blues. Powerful, immediate, and uncompromising, Waters’ quintessential Chess recordings stand out as a veritable blueprint for much of the blues guitar discs that followed.

“In his living room [in suburban Westmont, Illinois], I used to play Muddy’s old songs on my portable cassette recorder, just loud enough for him to hear them in the kitchen,” wrote Waters sideman “Steady Rollin’” Bob Margolin in a 1995 article for Blues Revue. “Sipping champagne, he’d enjoy his songs – he said they were like ‘old friends’ – and then he’d come in and start pointing out parts to listen to, or telling stories about the recording sessions. You better believe I remember every word.”

2. “Forty-Four” by Howlin’ Wolf

Chester Arthur Burnett (1910-1976) was born in West Point, Mississippi, and named after President Chester A. Arthur, arrived in Chicago in the winter of 1953. It’s unlikely that any other blues man in history could have been so simultaneously entertaining and downright frightening. At times, the ferocious-sounding Wolf, whose growling voice was augmented by vicious, rhythmic harmonica blasts, tipped the scales at nearly 300 pounds.

Two guitarists, Willie Johnson and Hubert Sumlin – the latter favored single-­note runs and played few chords – were instrumental in Wolf’s art, as was songwriter Willie Dixon, who penned virtually all of the Wolf’s recorded output from 1960 to 1965, including classics like “The Red Rooster,” “Spoonful” and “Back Door Man.” 

3. “Damn Right I’ve Got the Blues” by Buddy Guy

In 2023, Chicago is still Buddy Guy’s turf. And when it comes to onstage action, the 86-year­-old Guy has few contemporary peers. 

It’s hard to believe there was a time when the Louisiana native couldn’t even find a worthwhile record deal. He went through most of the ’80s without a domestic release to his credit. But, difficult commercial periods aside (Guy still laments radio’s reluctance to give his music more airplay), his legacy and reputation as a formidable stage presence remain completely intact. 

This tune, from 1991’s Grammy-winning comeback album of the same name, marked the beginning of a resurgence that Guy enjoys to this day.

4 “Funky Bitch” by Son Seals

It’s hard to deny the blues credentials of a man who’d had a leg amputated (due to diabetes) and been shot in the jaw. But Son Seals’ recorded work is all he ever needed. 

Hound Dog Taylor may be the most important artist in the history of Alligator Records, but Arkansas native Seals was only a small step behind. His early releases for the label, which proudly endure, demonstrate his stinging, staccato guitar style. 

“Funky Bitch,” which first appeared on 1978’s incendiary Live & Burning, was given new life by Phish on 1999’s Hampton Comes Alive. Frontman Trey Anastasio also lent his guitar work to a new version of the song that Seals cut for Lettin’ Go, a 2000 release for Telarc. 

Sadly, Seals died in 2004 from complications of diabetes.

5. “Soul Fixin’ Man” by Luther Allison

Few players blended soul, rock, and funk sounds into blues as well as the late Luther Allison, who was possibly at the top of his game when he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer in July 1997. He died in a Wisconsin hospital a month later.

Allison’s unlikely comeback, hatched in 1994, was more than a bit dramatic. He’d been living in France since 1980 (he enjoyed steady work in Europe), and American bookings were few and far between. But by the mid-’90s, Allison was born again. 

Soul Fixin’ Man, from 1994, his first American recording in nearly two decades, signified his triumphant studio return, and Blue Streak, released late the following year, kept Allison’s fiery, stinging guitar and gritty vocals front and center. 

He would soon become a festival favorite, and that momentum continued through 1997’s Reckless, released just months before his passing.

6. “I Just Want a Little Bit” by Magic Sam

B.B. King (1925-2015) had the honor of closing the inaugural Ann Arbor Blues Festival in August 1969, but many contend that Magic Sam – whose last name was Maghett – actually stole the show, despite showing up more than an hour late for his afternoon set and performing with only a bassist and a borrowed drummer. 

Sadly, the 32-year-old Mississippi native – whose family had moved to Chicago in 1950 – was dead by the first day of December that year, the victim of a heart attack. At the time of his death, his rising star was short of its apex. In 1967, he’d released his seminal West Side Soul, a record that still sounds fresh and vibrant. The following year he delivered Black Magic, yet another engaging soul-­blues elixir.

“When I first heard his records on WGES [Chicago’s premier black radio station in the ’40s and ’50s], I thought his sound was so different from any blues that I’d ever heard,” said Eddy Clearwater. “The sound that he made with his guitar, with the tremolo sound and minor-sounding chords. And he had this vibrato in his voice that coincided with what he was playing. It was just a different kind of approach to the entire thing.”

7. “All Your Love (I Miss Loving)” by Otis Rush

Otis Rush (1934-2018) remembered visiting his sister, who was already living in Chicago, in 1949 or 1950, from his Philadelphia, Mississippi home. He promptly decided to stay, influenced by the blues legends his sister took him to see: Muddy Waters, harp master Little Walter, and Jimmy Rogers, among others. 

“Man, after one of those first shows, I went out and bought me a little cheap guitar called a Kay,” he recalled. ”And that amplifier was so light, you’d play a note and it would almost jump off the floor and dance. I’d start practicing, and I just went from there. 

"I started tryin’ to make those sounds that they was makin.’ I was up on the third floor of 3101 Wentworth in Chicago, South Side. The neighbors wanted to call the police on me, mad at me for making that noise. I was like, ‘Man, I’m tryin’ to learn how to play this guitar like Muddy Waters!"

8. “Two Bugs and a Roach” by Earl Hooker

Earl Hooker was only 41 years old when he died of tuberculosis in 1969. But he left an enduring legacy of precision slide playing, sporting a feathery touch that produced a clean, polished sound. 

A former sideman as well – you can hear his slide handiwork on Muddy Waters’ Chess classic “You Shook Me” – Hooker’s true sound, at least according to some who jammed with him and saw him play live, was never truly captured. 

Recalled Eddy Clearwater: “Earl Hooker was a mean son of a bitch with the guitar. Mean! He’d make sounds with that slide that would make your hair stand up. For some reason, they never captured him on record the way he really sounded, and I wish they would have.... There was much more to Earl Hooker than has ever been heard on record.”

9. “Night Rock” by Jimmy Dawkins

Jimmy Dawkins was one of a dwindling number of old­-school West Side blues talents when he died April 10, 2013. Like Eddy Clearwater, he left the South for Chicago on a Greyhound bus. (In Dawkins’ case, it was a ride out of Mississippi, in 1955.) 

His 1969 Delmark debut, Fast Fingers, is considered among his finest efforts. The album came about after Magic Sam introduced Dawkins to label boss Bob Koester. A 1971 follow-up, All for Business, featured Otis Rush on second guitar.

“Night Rock” appears on Fast Fingers, which, incidentally, is probably not an ideal album title: Dawkins’ playing, tasteful and soulful, is hardly rapid-fire, and seldom over the top.

10. “55th Street Boogie” by Hound Dog Taylor

This quote from slide master Theodore Roosevelt “Hound Dog” Taylor (1915-1975) is hardly new, but it bears repeating nonetheless: “When I die, they’ll say, ‘He couldn’t play shit, but he sure made it sound good.‘“

Indeed, the six-fingered Taylor made it sound good – simple, joy-inducing, party­-starting, slide-heavy blues played in open tunings. 

“Hound Dog and [Houserockers band mate] Brewer Phillips pushed their guitars and amps into rough-edged distortion,” wrote Alligator Records founder Bruce Iglauer in the liner notes to Release the Hound, a wonderfully infectious collection of live Taylor performances. ”For them, the best volume setting was always 10.” 

“55th Street Boogie,” one of Taylor’s many magical moments, can be found on Alligator’s first-ever release, Taylor and the Houserockers.

“Blues is like a stepchild now,” Buddy Guy says. “You don’t hear it on the radio, except maybe on satellite. I’m not asking anybody to play the blues like you do hip-hop or something. You don’t have to play Muddy Waters every day, even, but play him once a week or something. That’d make me feel better.

“It’s like they say about cooking,” he continues. “You don’t know how good the gumbo is in Louisiana until you go down there and taste it. Whether you like it or not is up to you, but at least you tasted it. And the blues is being treated like that. I don’t care how good a blues record you make – if nobody hears it, it’s just there. It bothers me, because I’ve dedicated my life to the blues, and a lot of other people have, too. What did we do to be treated like that? I don’t know, man, but I’d like to see it get straightened out.

“That’s what’s kept me out there, man. I’ve kept doing it so people don’t forget Muddy and Wolf, B.B. – all the rest of ’em. If I’m not playing it, and not many other people are, we’ll lose it. That’d be just terrible.”

A lifelong blues devotee, Guy has made his way into the history books at Fender as a signature artist. His go-to guitar for decades has been a Fender Stratocaster, and the most famous one of those is black with white polka dots. (He also has black-on-white models.)

“When I was leaving Louisiana to go to Chicago [in 1957], my mother’d had a stroke,” Guy remembers. “She was crazy about her children, and I knew she was gonna worry about me leaving. I had to figure out something that would make her smile, so I said, ‘I’m gonna go to Chicago, and I found out I’m gonna make a little more money than I’ve been making. I’m gonna send you some money, and I’m gonna drive back down here in a polka-dot Cadillac.’

“She did smile, but I knew I was lying to her, ’cause I didn’t want a polka-dot Cadillac. And I didn’t get a chance to explain that to her before she passed away. So that polka-dot guitar came from me lying to my mom.”

Isabell Guy passed away in 1968, well before Guy made it big on his own. In tribute to his mother, he began talking to Fender about making a polka-dot Strat.

“At first they said, ‘That’s impossible,’” Guy recalls. “Finally, a guy there said, ‘I can make it.’ I think they thought it was a joke.

“And then, at the first NAMM show where they showed them, they called my agent up and said, ‘Tell Buddy those polka-dots are going off the rack faster than anything!’”

Currently priced $1,149.99, Fender’s Buddy Guy Standard Stratocaster appears in the iconic white polka-dot on black finish that is “as flamboyant as Guy himself.”

Featuring an alder body and soft V-profile one-piece maple neck with a 9.5-inch-radius fingerboard and 21 medium jumbo frets, this outstanding axe is loaded with a trio of standard single-coil pickups for that classic electric blues tone.

Blues legend Buddy Guy turns 87 on July 30, and he says it’s time for him to come off the road after this year’s Damn Right Farewell Tour.

“You get in the 80s, man, and the little aches that didn’t used to ache, they come on and you don’t know where they’re coming from. I can play, but getting from point A to point B, the trips that take all day on the bus or the airport and all that… Anybody would say, ‘That’s enough.’”

Watching his forebears like Muddy Waters and B.B. King gave Guy a sense of how he didn’t want to go out. “I think Muddy died at 70, and he was still okay,” he says. “But B.B. King was 89 years old. Every time I would go play for a promoter that had him six months or a year before me, they’d tell me he was forgetting his songs.

“He was doing the same song three or four times a night. ‘You Are My Sunshine’ – that was his favorite. And everybody was afraid to tell him he was singing it three or four times a night, ’cause he was the boss at all times. So I started thinking about that, and I don’t want it to be that way for me.”

Guy – whose latest album, The Blues Don’t Lie, came out last year – is quick to clarify that stopping touring does not mean the music will end. There may be more albums. “I think my record company is doing about as well as anything in the blues,” he notes. His January residency at Legends will continue for as long as he can play, too. (In 1989, he opened Buddy Guy’s Legends, where he spends each January performing a month of shows.)

And Guy predicts we’ll see him on other stages occasionally. “I’m still going to probably play some of the big festivals,” he says. “The New Orleans Jazz Festival wanted me to play there for the rest of my life. It’s once a year, which is not too bad. So some of the festivals like that, I may still just go out and play them.”

One of the most memorable live events in Guy’s long career took place in late March 1969 when he joined Led Zeppelin, Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton and others for two days of filmed performance at a former linoleum factory in Staines, England.

The music documentary was eventually released under the title Supershow: The Last Great Jam of the ’60s!

“I did that thing because the British were saying ‘Bring it on!’ America wasn’t ready for Muddy, B.B. or anybody until the British had to come and tell White America who B.B. King and Muddy Waters were.

“There was an American television show called Shindig! and they were trying to get the Rolling Stones. And Mick Jagger said, ‘I’ll do it if you let me bring on Muddy Waters.’ White America said, ‘Who the hell is that?’ and he got offended. He said, ‘We named ourselves after his most famous record!’

“After I became friends with them, they told me they’d slept in a van to watch me play. I said, ‘Man, y’all play better than me,’ and they’re like, ‘No! We got it all from you! We didn’t know it was possible to play the blues with a Strat until we saw you.’”

Don’t miss Buddy Guy’s Damn Right Farewell Tour this year. Order tickets here.

“They talk about Chicago blues,” Buddy Guy says. “But I’m from Louisiana. There were guitarists in Chicago who came from Texas, Alabama, Louisiana… Wolf was from Mississippi, John Lee Hooker and all of them were from down there, man. But Chicago recorded it, and that’s why they decided to call it Chicago blues.

“But I don’t give credit to Chicago for that. I give Mississippi and Texas, Louisiana and Alabama and all those places like that the credit, ’cause those guys knew how to play that way before they came to Chicago. But Chess Records exploded it, so they called it ‘Chicago.’”

Guy was with Chess Records from 1959 to 1968, yet he released just one album of his own with the label: 1967’s Left My Blues in San Francisco, which featured four of his own songs and covers of tunes by Willie Dixon, Sonny Boy Williamson and others.

The production and arrangements were smoother than the grit of his stage performances, or what he played on sessions for Williamson, Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Koko Taylor, Junior Wells and others.

Those contributions were noticed across the Atlantic by the likes of Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and a great many more artists who appreciated American blues more than its homeland did.

“Eric, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and all of them were listening to those licks,” Guy remembers. “I wasn’t thinking about Buddy Guy; I just wanted to do something to please the audience. Every time I did one of them shows, I’d get $20, which was a lot for me back then. But those British guys heard me and they wanted to know who I was.”

Guy told Chess Records co-founder Leonard Chess about Britain’s emerging electric blues scene, but he paid him no mind. Eventually, though, Chess learned that Jimi Hendrix was asking about Guy.

“When Leonard found that out, he sent Willie Dixon to my house,” he recalls. “And Willie Dixon said, ‘Put a suit on. Leonard wants to see you.’ When I got down there, Leonard bent over and said, ‘I want you to kick me in my butt.’ I said, ‘For what?’ And he started talking about Eric with Cream, and Jimi Hendrix.

“He said, ‘You came here and told us about them, and we were too dumb to listen. So I want you to kick me in the butt.’”

Ironically, Guy had himself spent little time listening to the very players he’d mentioned to Chess. “So right after he told me to kick him in the butt, I started listening to them myself,” he says.

He soon began meeting them, too.

Around that same time, Guy recalls, “I got invited to play in New York City. I was putting on the ‘Buddy Guy show,’ with my guitar behind my back and throwing it around. And somebody said to me, ‘Look out, man, that’s Jimi Hendrix over there!’ – ’cause those were Jimi’s moves. But I said, ‘So what? Who the hell is that?’

“Eventually, Jimi came over to me and introduced himself. He said, ‘I just canceled a gig, ’cause I wanted to see you.’ And that’s how we became friends.”

Hill Country

Although Guy learned from the blues masters of the South, his recordings were done primarily in Chicago’s contemporary studios. So he was something of a proverbial fish out of water when producer Dennis Herring decided to record Guy’s 2001 album, Sweet Tea, in Oxford, Mississippi, in the raw Hill Country style of R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough.

Guy wasn’t completely onboard at first. “I said, ‘What the hell is this?’ I liked it, but I said, ‘Why have me mess with it? That stuff there is like the national anthem, as far as I’m concerned.’

“But we started doing it, and I started smiling, patting my feet, jumping up and down. I went back to Mississippi and started digging in again. I guess it shows you’re never too old to learn.”

Sweet Tea wound up hitting number one on Billboard’s Blues Albums charts and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album.

Born in Louisiana in 1936, it was in Baton Rouge during the mid-1950s where Buddy Guy got his indoctrination into the moves that were part and parcel of many blues guitarists’ stage acts.

“I saw T-Bone [Walker], and he played his guitar, like, flat out in front of him, but I don’t remember him putting it behind his head,” Guy recalls.

“Guitar Slim, now, he was wild. The first time I saw him, he had this big repertoire of things he used to do. In Baton Rouge, when I first saw him, I heard an electric guitar, but there was no one playing. And I was saying, ‘What the hell is this?’ All of a sudden, he walks in the door on someone else’s back, with a red suit on, playing ‘I Got Something for You,’ with a 100-foot cord that had been extended outside the club!

“His band was Ray Charles’ band from before Ray got famous. I saw that and said, ‘Well, if I ever learn how to play, I wanna play like B.B. King – but I want to act like Guitar Slim.”

Meeting Muddy Waters

However, it was not a confident Guy who arrived in the Windy City on September 25, 1957. “I didn’t think I was good enough for anything, especially when I got to Chicago and saw the Muddys and the Wolfs and all those guitar players,” Guy says.

One of his early breaks in Chicago was playing with Otis Rush at the 708 Club on East 47th Street. “I went up and played Guitar Slim stuff that I used to do, and a number by Jimmy Reed. Muddy [Waters] was living about four blocks away and somebody called and told him I sounded pretty good, and he decided to come by and see for himself.

“Muddy had a red Chevrolet station wagon. I came out of the club and could hear it rolling up. He took me out and bought me a bologna sandwich. He said, ‘I heard you were telling people you’re hungry.’ And I was! I hadn’t eaten in three days, but nobody believed me because of how I played the guitar. They said, ‘You can’t be hungry and play like that!’ So I got fed by the Mud.”

Guy embraced every opportunity to be nourished by Waters, musically as well. “I didn’t work with him,” he explains. “I was in class. I just sat in a corner, and if I ever got asked to play with Muddy, I would always learn something.”

Meeting John Lee Hooker

A fan of Hooker’s since his days playing “Boogie Chillen’,” Guy didn’t meet the Crawling King Snake until the mid ’60s when he was part of a package tour in Europe, backing a variety of American folk and blues acts. “I was the youngest one out there” Guy says, “so the promoter told me, ‘I will give you 50 dollars a week to make sure everybody wakes up to be on the bus on time.’ So I did that too.”

Guy’s moment with Hooker came one morning when the tour was in Germany and everyone was gathered in the common room of a venue. “I wanted to meet John Lee Hooker,” he recalls, “and someone was at one of the tables, kind of stammering – ‘Bah-bah-bah…’ I thought, Whoever that is, I don’t want to be bothered with him. I started playing ‘Boogie Chillen’ over in the corner with an acoustic guitar.

“Next thing I know, the guy with the stammer is coming over to talk to me. I said to myself, Oh my god, I ain’t never gonna meet John Lee Hooker, ’cause here’s someone who’s gonna keep bugging me. And the man started laughing, and he laughed until he started crying – ’cause he knew I didn’t know who he was.

“He said, ‘I’m Johnny.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to meet Johnny; I want to meet John Lee!’ and he just fell down on his knees, laughing. He said, ‘I’m John Lee, boy!’ And from that day until he died, he was my best friend.”

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.”

In 1991, however, Guy began a “comeback” with Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues, the first of 13 studio albums to date. Together, those records have earned him eight Grammy Awards – and that’s just a tip of the prizes Guy has accumulated during the past three-plus decades.

You can add a Grammy Lifetime Achievement award, along with 23 W.C. Handy/Blues Music Awards and inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Musicians Hall of Fame and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.

Guy also operated the Checkerboard Lounge, with L.C. Thurman, on Chicago’s South Side from 1972 to ’85. He gave up his stake three years later and in 1989 opened Buddy Guy’s Legends, where he spends each January performing a month of shows.

“That’s a dream come true for me,” Guy says of the accolades. “Sometimes I’ve had to pinch myself and say, ‘Did I really make it in there? Like the Hall of Fame and all that stuff?’ I didn’t start out thinking anything like that would happen – could happen, to be honest with you.”

Far from grumpy this day at his Chicago home, Guy is characteristically generous and engaging, happy to tell his story and fully aware that the tale is a microcosm of the blues in general. His conversation is free-form but always passionate and engaging, not unlike his fluid and often dynamic solos. Summing up his career, he modestly asserts, “I did the best I could.”

That “best” has always been good enough, and some of the best we’ve been lucky to hear all these years.

“My parents had no radio or anything like that at first,” Guy says of his youth in Lettsworth, where his first musical influence was the church. “They finally got this old radio that you had to put an antenna on your shotgun house to use, and if it was cloudy or raining you couldn’t hear nothin’ except for static. It had to be a clear day for you to hear.

“You could hear these random records coming out of Tennessee, mostly. And then Chess was opening in Chicago, and that’s when I started hearing Little Walter and Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and people like that.

“Before that you’d maybe find one person out in the country with a phonograph that you had to wind up to make it play the 78. So I’d hear a little bit here and there.”

First Guitars

“I was in the country, where you’d have little sandlot baseball teams. And that was about it,” Guy continues. “There’d be baseball on Sundays, because it was work all the other days of the week. I said to myself, I want to do something the rest of the kids can’t do. And I thought, I want to play the guitar. I’d heard the late Lightnin’ Hopkins and T-Bone Walker – all those great blues players. I just wanted to do something that the average person ain’t gonna be able to do.”

He began modestly, to say the least. Guy’s diddley bow was homemade from a piece of wood and two wires pulled from a window screen. It was limiting, he says, ”but I’d play it all the time.”

His fervor for the instrument didn’t immediately have the full buy-in of his family, however. “My brothers and sisters used to tell my mama, ‘Get him outta here with that noise!’ he remembers, laughing. “I knew it was noise ’cause I didn’t know how to play nothin’, but I kept fooling around with it. And finally, when I learned how to play, my oldest sister – she passed away, it’ll be two years this year – she looked at me one day and said, ‘Now you can come on in with that noise.’”

Flash forward to Baton Rouge, where Guy says “a stranger saw me sitting on my sister’s porch one day with them two strings on the piece of wood, and he just said, ‘Son, you could probably learn how to play if you had a real guitar.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I guess.’ I didn’t know who he was. He said, ‘Will you be sitting here tomorrow?’ I said yeah, and he comes by the next day and says, ‘Let’s go! I’m gonna get you a guitar.’

“And he bought me a Harmony guitar with six strings on it. I was staying with my sister, and when she came home from work she said, ‘Whoa, what is this? A country boy with a guitar!’”

It wasn’t long before Guy had his eureka moment. “The first thing I learned how to play was ‘Boogie Chillen’,’ by John Lee Hooker,” he says. “When I figured that out, I walked a mile and found every distant relative I had and said, ‘Look! Listen!’ and they’d say, ‘Yeah, that kind of sounds pretty good there.’ And I was afraid to quit. I played it so long my fingers started bleeding.”

Electric Guitars

While in Baton Rouge, Guy learned about using a pickup to amplify his guitar, as John Lee Hooker, Lonnie Johnson and others had begun to do. “That’s what all of them was doing. There weren’t no Strats and all that until later,” he says.

Guy started playing electric guitar “a little bit before I left Baton Rouge. I think it was a Gibson, but there was another guy named Big Poppa. He had a band, and I was too shy to sing back then – ’til I learned how to drink a shot of wine first,” he says with a laugh.

“Big Poppa bought the guitars. He said, ‘I’ll buy you a guitar, but you’ve got to come play in my band. I wouldn’t sing, but I played and finally made a little noise in Baton Rouge.

“A friend of mine had left Baton Rouge and gone to Chicago. His wife got killed and he came back. He said to me, ‘Man, you should go to Chicago!’ I thought, As soon as I save up a little money I’m gonna come and see it, and if I don’t like it, I’ll come back.

“I got to Chicago on September the 25th, 1957. And I’m still here.”

When asked in 2018 why he thought the 1960s created so many great blues guitarists – including himself, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page – Jeff Beck had a ready response that reached high, deep and wide.

“We were down on our luck until the blues arrived,” he replied. “And it became natural music for us. We became disciples. We had to discover more. Anyone who ever had the slightest fascination with music had to find out what that sound was and where it came from. Me, Eric and Jimmy Page were stricken to the soul. We were obsessed. Thank God we were.”

For Jeff Beck, the blues was just one part of a lifelong journey that encompassed rock and roll, fusion, soul, instrumental and electronica.

Deeply curious, innately inventive, he followed his muse where it led him. The first stringed instrument to arouse his interest was the zither, as heard in the theme song for the 1949 British film noir The Third Man. Anton Karas’s haunting title composition was an international hit that year, a tune that rang in his five-year-old ears.

“The people next-door-but-one had a zither, and that was actually the first stringed instrument that I touched,” Beck revealed to Jamie Crompton in Guitarist’s 2009 cover story. “There’s a scoop for you.”

It was shortly afterward, at the age of six, that he first heard the electric guitar. Les Paul and Mary Ford’s 1951 hit “How High the Moon” was playing on the radio, and Paul’s layered guitars, slathered with slapback echo, caught his ears. “What’s that sound?” he asked his mother. “An electric guitar,” she replied. From that point on, he was all in.

Years later, “The Third Man Theme” would be the first thing Beck attempted to pick out when he played a guitar. But it took years before he actually had the instrument in his hands. “My mum wanted me to learn piano, as learning the guitar was just not done,” Beck said. “I used to spend the money for piano class on model airplanes and mark my own books to make it look like I was going to lessons.”

With the help of an uncle he tried his hand at violin, but his efforts were no better. “It sounded so murderous that he switched me to cello, which is an instrument that I love,” Beck revealed. “I started plucking it because I didn’t get on with bowing, and he just stopped me and said, ‘Get out.’ No patience at all.”

Beck’s fascination with guitar – like that of all guitarists born toward the end of World War II – follows the instrument’s arc in popular culture. He was born Geoffrey Arnold Beck on June 24, 1944, to Arnold and Ethel Beck. The family lived at 206 Demesne Road, Wallington, some 10 miles south of London. He had one sister, Annetta, born some four years before. Music was a big feature of their house. Ethel played piano, and her baby grand was displayed in the family’s living room. “My mum played beautifully,” Beck told Guitarist.

As he could best remember, his first experience with guitar took place around the age of 12 or 13, in 1956 or 1957. “I was at a friend’s house who was slightly spoiled,” he told Crompton. “He had a record player, a tape recorder, a guitar – all the toys.” The guitar was unloved, evident by the absence of several strings. “I started playing around with it and he said, ‘Do you wanna borrow it?’ I said, ‘Yes please!’

I remember carrying it home in the rain and taking my coat off to wrap around it to protect it. Right then, I felt a kind of protective thing towards the guitar.” With no access to guitar strings, Beck replaced the missing ones with the control-line wire from a motorized model airplane, “the kind that made the model fly round in circles,” he said.

While his parents tried to direct their son’s interests to Andrés Segovia and Django Reinhardt, Beck was, like most kids his age, drawn to the emerging strains of rock and roll. Between his sister’s growing record collection and the nightly pop broadcasts on Radio Luxembourg, he developed an aficionado’s appreciation for the raft of guitar players in that early rock and roll era.

But it was the 1957 comedy musical film The Girl Can’t Help It that made the strongest impression on him. The movie featured cameos by Little Richard, Eddie Cochran, Fats Domino and the Platters. But it was Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps’ mimed performance of their hit “Be-Bop-a-Lula” that most deeply affected Beck. In particular, he was taken by the playing of Vincent’s guitarist, Cliff Gallup.

Though he had left Vincent by the time the film was released, Gallup cut some 35 sides with the singer, and Beck quickly set about finding every one of them. “I knew then that I wanted to play the lead guitar breaks,” Beck said, “the fiery stuff like Cliff Gallup. I didn’t just want to be a strummer.”

While Gallup influenced his interest in the guitar as a lead instrument, Buddy Holly helped him set his eyes on owning a Fender Stratocaster. Fenders were not available in England, and Beck couldn’t have afforded one anyway. So he enlisted his neighbor, a handyman named Jack, to build him a Strat copy for five pounds. Neither Beck nor Jack knew anything about scale lengths or fret placements, which were crudely approximated.

The results were far from perfect, but the instrument intonated well enough when capoed at the fifth fret, and Beck learned he could bend any flat notes to pitch – shades of things to come.

He had yet to pay Jack when he gave his first performance at a local youth club with another boy playing a cello as a substitute for a stand-up bass. Their appearance went over well and even got a positive mention in the local paper. But Jack was in the audience and sore about the money he was owed. “[He] made a complete twat out of me by telling everyone that I hadn’t paid him for it,” Beck recalled. “Five quid! I’d just been the belle of the ball and he said, ‘Right, I’m going to tell you all about your mate Jeff – you owe me five quid, ya cheapskate bastard!’ I thought, Right, for that, you won’t get the money!”

By the middle of 1960, Beck was finally in possession of a proper guitar, a Guyatone LG-50, and playing in his first band, having joined the Bandits, an instrumental act that was supporting Elvis Presley and Gene Vincent impersonators on a U.K. summer tour. “I was speaking to Hank Marvin about this recently and he played a similar one,” Beck told Guitarist in 2009. It had purfling around the body and a maple veneer, so it wasn’t such a bad old thing. It was about 25 pounds. Proper money when you haven’t got 25 pence!”

By this point, Beck, all of 16, had begun to attend Wimbledon College, an art school similar to those that became destinations for John Lennon, Pete Townshend, David Bowie and other musicians attempting to delay their entry into working-class society. “They had good meals” was about all Beck could say about his time there.

His true desire was to land a spot performing with a working band. The Deltones were a semi-pro local covers band, with players in their 20s, slightly older than Beck. He liked their sound and, as it happened, had known their guitarist Ian Duncombe, who, like Beck, was a Cliff Gallup disciple. Beck began sitting in on rehearsals and, when Duncombe announced he was leaving, asked to take his spot. An audition was arranged at which Beck showed up with his latest acquisition: a Burns Vibra-Artiste with a translucent cherry red finish and three Trisonic pickups – although Beck recalled the guitar as having “about six pickups and a hundred knobs on it. I never knew what any of them did.”

Beck won the audition, but that wasn’t enough for him. He insisted that his longtime friend John Owen accompany him on rhythm guitar. Either due to Beck’s talents or the Deltones’ lack of options, they agreed to the arrangement. As it happened, Owen had a white Fender Telecaster, and Beck managed to convince him to swap, as the Tele would be a more appropriate lead instrument. It worked, for a time, but when Owen reclaimed the guitar, Beck was stuck again with his Burns.

But with Fender guitars now available in England, he set his sights on owning one. “Me and a friend got a train and a bus up to London from Croydon and we asked a porter where all the guitars were,” he recalled.

“He happened to know and said Charing Cross Road, so we jumped on a bus, ran upstairs and looked out the window for guitar stores. My mate suddenly said, ‘Oh my God!’ We belted down the stairs, stumbling over one another, ran in front of all the traffic and there we found a Tele and a Strat in the window of Jennings Musical Instruments,” he said, referring to the original Vox Amplifier Shop, at 100 Charing Cross Road. “We stood there motionless, salivating, for at least five minutes and my mate said, ‘Shall we go in?’ I said, ‘No, no we can’t go in!’ We were completely freaked out.

“After a while we went in, and I said, ‘I’d like to try the Fender Stratocaster please,’ and the guy said, ‘Yes gentlemen, certainly, sir, you are intending to buy it, are you?’ We didn’t have a pot to piss in but we said, ‘Yeah, yeah.’

“Another shop in Charing Cross Road we used to bug was called Lew Davis. There we discovered a slap-back echo device” – most likely a Binson Echorec – “and we were in heaven. We made friends with a sales guy who used to let us play any guitar in the shop. He was great, he’d leave us alone and say, ‘Just don’t nick anything! We never did, and they couldn’t get rid of us.’ Then some 15-year-old kid would come in and his dad would buy him a Strat outright for cash. Case and all! Strap, strings, pick… We’d sit there scowling.”

Determined to get a Strat for himself, Beck appealed to his mother for the £147 required. She agreed to pay a deposit, allowing him to take possession of the instrument on credit. Now duly in debt, Beck quit art school to become a full-time working musician.

On May 22, 1961, he left Wimbledon College just in time for the Deltones to splinter. He briefly worked with Gene Vincent imitator Gordon Paterson, who performed under the nom de plume Cal Danger, and joined Deltones singer Johnny Del in his new group, the Crescents. But musically he was rudderless.

He found a direction in 1963 courtesy of a friend, Ian Stewart. A pianist, Stewart was a founding member of the Rolling Stones, who had become stars of London’s Marquee Club, in Oxford Street. Since 1962, the venue had been the home of Blues Incorporated, the seminal blues act founded by Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies, who brought the songs and sounds of the Mississippi Delta to England.

Stewart loaned Beck a cartload of blues albums, including Folk Festival of the Blues, a compendium of Chicago’s electric blues scene that featured key figures like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson and Buddy Guy. “I just wore out the album,” Beck said. He was particularly moved by Guy’s prowess on his Fender Strat. “It was total manic abandon that broke all the boundaries. Long, developing solos, just the opposite of all the pop stuff at the time.”

As he’d done with Cliff Gallup, Beck made exhaustive work studying the electric blues guitar greats, developing new skills and techniques. He put together the Nightshift, a blues act that played some of the music’s hot spots, including Eel Pie Island – a former trad-jazz spot that had shifted its musical affiliation with the emerging blues boom – and was even contacted by John Mayall as he was putting together the Bluesbreakers. In the end, Beck ended up with the Tridents, a blues act led by brothers John and Paul Lucas and which the Nightshift had supported at Eel Pie Island.

As a document of this period, the Tridents’ 1964 live Eel Pie recording of “Nursery Rhyme,” from the 1991 Beckology compilation, reveals the guitarist’s gifts with hammer-ons and pull-offs, trills,

It was September 1964, and it’s here that Jeff Beck the guitar hero begins to emerge. By this point he was playing a white Fender Telecaster through a Vox AC30 Top Boost, supplemented by a Binson Echorec, which he used to create spontaneous freak-outs, as well as an early homemade fuzz box.

“There wasn’t an ounce of musical sense to it,” he said in the liner notes, “but they loved it because it was different.”

It was a lesson that would serve him well for years to come.

Now 86, Buddy Guy's status as one of the world's pre-eminent blues guitar figures has long been cemented. Just don't tell him to slow down.

Guy has a new album on the horizon, called The Blues Don't Lie. He announced it in style last month with "Gunsmoke Blues," a powerful lament focused on America's ever-growing gun violence epidemic that features Jason Isbell on vocals.

Now, the blues legend has premiered the album's second single, the reflective "We Go Back."

Featuring the incomparable Mavis Staples on vocals, "We Go Back" finds the two titans of American music reflecting on the past – and both the good and bad times it brought. You can hear it below.

Over Guy's ever-tasteful, never-a-foot-wrong licks, Staples invokes her still-raw memories of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Guy himself nostalgically remembers that a cup of coffee cost a nickel, and that a dollar could buy a bottle of wine, but "the crying and the dying," and "the hell it took to get us here," as he says, are never far from his mind.

Produced by longtime Guy collaborator Tom Hambridge, The Blues Don't Lie is set for release – via Sony – on September 30, marking the 65th anniversary of the very day Guy first arrived in Chicago from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

It was in Chicago that Guy's showmanship and explosive talent on the electric guitar first brought him to the world's attention.

“I used to lay the guitar down and put my feet on it, or drag it across my butt," he told Guitar Player in an interview years ago. "I don’t do that anymore. But way back when they used to have guitar battles every Sunday afternoon in Chicago, I won them all because most of the guitar players sat down until I came to town."

To preorder The Blues Don't Lie, step right this way.

Great blues tone isn't rocket science – you just need to get a happening sound in your head, and then use the right tools to replicate the magic.

All great players have specific guitars, amps, and effects that are essential to their sound.

Some, like B.B. King, used the same setup for decades – in his case, a Gibson ES-355 through a Lab Series combo or a Fender Twin Reverb – while others tweak their systems incessantly in the pursuit of groovier tone.

Stevie Ray Vaughan favored one guitar – a Stratocaster – and a few key effects throughout his career, but he experimented a great deal with amps and speakers.

No matter which player you choose to emulate, it's important to understand that merely replicating every detail of their gear is no guarantee that you're going to sound exactly like them.

Tone is, after all, 90% touch and 10% hardware.

Buddy Guy would sound like himself no matter what equipment he used, and the same holds true for most great players.

Still, some guitars and amps can inspire you to play a certain way, and using rigs similar to the ones used by players you respect may help you zone in on a killer sound that can later be morphed into something uniquely yours.

ERIC CLAPTON

"Clapton Is God" graced many a structure in the late '60s, and for good reason – he practically wrote the book on how to play blues-rock electric guitar.

Attaining a credible Clapton sound requires that you first determine which period in his long career you like best.

During his time with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Clapton famously used a late-'50s Gibson Les Paul Standard through a model 1962 Marshall 2x12 combo.

Part of the secret here is that Clapton's amp was equipped with KT66 output tubes, which have a more refined midrange and clearer top end than either EL34s or 6L6s.

With Cream, Clapton went to high-volume heaven with 100-watt Marshall heads and 4x12 cabs.

He also used a Vox wah-wah and, occasionally, a fuzz.

After his Les Paul was stolen, Clapton played a '61 SG-style Les Paul, and then a Gibson ES-335 for Cream's farewell concert.

With Blind Faith, Clapton used a Gibson Firebird through a Fender Showman.

He then switched to maple-fretboard Strats through Fender tweed Champs during his Derek & The Dominos/"Layla" period.

Both setups yielded tones that rate among Clapton's best.

ALBERT COLLINS

The "Iceman" had one of the most original tones around – just listen to his fabulous sting on such classic cuts as "Frosty," "Too Many Dirty Dishes," "Iceman," and "Put the Shoe on the Other Foot."

Collins certainly did things his own way.

He played a beat-up Fender Telecaster, with a Gibson humbucker in the neck position, that he tuned to open Fm.

He used a capo – often at the fifth or seventh position – and he snapped and popped his strings with his thumb and forefinger.

Collins also favored '70s-era Fender Quad Reverb amps (100 watts into four 12s), and he used a 100' cord.

This latter detail allowed him to get friendly with the audience, while the added cable capacitance helped defrost his icy highs.

ALBERT KING

Almost every blues guitar player "borrows" something from Albert King – even Stevie Ray Vaughan based his blistering style on King's mammoth bends and lightning-bolt stabs.

Almost no one tries to duplicate the left-handed bluesman's gear, however, which isn't too surprising, considering that King played a flipped-over Gibson Flying V with the low-E string closest to the floor.

According to repair ace Dan Erlewine (who built King's replica V, "Lucy"), Albert strung his guitar .009, .012, .024W, .028, .038, .050, and tuned it C, F, C, F, A, D (low to high.)

Steve Cropper, who produced a number of King's albums, offers a different tuning – C, B, E, F#, B, E (low to high) – which he says allowed King to create a one-finger Em chord by raising F# to G. (Another important aspect of King's tone was that he played exclusively with his fingers.)

Onstage, King often plugged into an Acoustic 370 solid-state guitar amp driving a 2x15 enclosure with a built-in high-frequency horn – a real pawnshop prize!

While a Flying V is the way to go here, just about any quality, dual-humbucker guitar can be coaxed into the Albert zone.

Consider, however, that Otis Rush gets a chillingly similar sound with a Fender Strat!

Amps? That's a good question, as almost nothing available sounds anything like an old Acoustic 370.

Our advice is choose an amp (or amp channel) with enough clean headroom to preserve your note attack. Crank the volume, but go easy on the distortion – King's tone was big and bold, not squashed and compressed.

B.B. KING

The King of the Blues' sweet, singing tone stands out as one of the great guitar sounds of all time.

King's original tone recipe was a Gibson ES-355 through a long-discontinued Gibson Lab Series 2x12 combo amp.

From the '80s, he played a Gibson Lucille model stereo guitar, which features a TP-6 fine-tune tailpiece and no f-holes.

King used both pickups simultaneously and strung his guitar with light-gauge Gibsons (.009-.042).

Though he favored vintage Lab Series amps, he often ran through a Fender Twin Reverb onstage.

Replicating B.B. King's sound requires running your amp's output stage fairly hard, while avoiding the fuzzier distortion produced by high-gain channels or stompboxes.

T-BONE WALKER

Often called the father of electric blues, T-Bone Walker helped establish the guitar as a featured lead instrument in the 1940s.

Guitarists inspired by Walker's playing (or his flashy stage moves) include Chuck Berry, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Wes Montgomery, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, Billy Gibbons, Albert King, Otis Rush, Michael Bloomfield, and Duane Allman.

Walker cut his teeth on primitive acoustic-electrics, but his signature ax was a blonde, maple-bodied Gibson ES-5 that he bought at the peak of his career in the early 1950s.

Walker held the guitar perpendicular to his body (when he wasn't playing it behind his head or between his legs), and it's likely that he plugged into a Gibson tube amp.

T-Bone Walker forged the basic vocabulary of rock and roll using double-stops, half- and quarter-step bends, and his patented, third-to-second-string unison bends.

His unorthodox playing style probably created a little extra string lift and snap, and he preferred his tone dry, clean, and relatively bright compared to jazz guitar players of the time.

A deep-bodied guitar – preferably with P-90-style, single-coil pickups – running through a reasonably clean-sounding tube amplifier are essential ingredients for T-Bone tone.

STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN

Stevie Ray Vaughan forged a sound that defines big blues tone.

Five basic ingredients are required here:

• Rosewood fretboard Fender Strat strung with heavy-gauge strings (Vaughan used GHS sets as heavy as .013-.060)
• Ibanez Tube Screamer overdrive (either a TS-9 or an older TS-808)
• Rotating speaker (he favored vintage Fender Vibratones, but you may wish to substitute a stompbox-sized simulator here)
• Vox wah wah pedal
• Fender tube amp with four 10" speakers

Vaughan often combined amps – Fender Super Reverbs with 1x15 Fender Vibroverbs, Marshall and Dumble rigs with Fender combos, and so on.

Heavy electric guitar strings are an important part of the Vaughan recipe, but remember that Stevie tuned down a half-step – you'll want to do the same if you plan on performing his gargantuan bends on girthy gauges.

Choose your Strat carefully for lightness and resonance, and set your amp's controls to produce a clear, beefy clang from the neck pickup. (Fender Super Reverbs do this naturally.)

Today, on the anniversary of his passing, we remember Irish blues-rock legend Rory Gallagher.

Born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland, the first pieces Gallagher attempted to play were cowboy songs and Irish folk tunes on acoustic guitar, beginning at age nine.

American rock ‘n’ rollers such as Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Elvis Presley, and Chuck Berry had an early impression on the budding guitarist, though he discovered blues, à la Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, by way of Lonnie Donegan’s British skiffle hits.

At 15, Gallagher joined the Fontana Show Band, which toured England and Ireland. The constant work helped refine his playing, but the commercial nature of the repertoire caused him to look elsewhere for artistic satisfaction, jamming with the group's drummer and bassist in small clubs throughout Europe.

By 1966, Gallagher had formed Taste, the now legendary blues-rock trio, comprised of Eric Kitteringham on bass, Norman Demery on drums, and Gallagher on guitar, vocals, and, occasionally, saxophone.

In 1969, the group signed with Polydor Records, but had disbanded by the following year, at which point the guitarist began to pursue a solo career in earnest.

Throughout the ‘70s, Gallagher recorded a steady stream of solos albums, picking up legions of fans along the way and establishing himself as one of the era’s most influential guitarists.

In this interview extract from the March 1978 issue of Guitar Player, Gallagher talks about his various musical styles and techniques and the gear he used to arrive at his distinctive, energetic sound.

What he has to say about blues and rock ‘n’ roll should be required reading for any guitarist...

Hypothetically, if you were teaching blues guitar at a school, how would you go about it?

I’d keep it within a reasonably rigid blues framework, just to keep it on center. A lot of it would depend on what music the student had been exposed to.

I mean, if your parents were interested in music anyway – your father, for instance, had a couple of Bill Broonzy or Lonnie Johnson albums – or you were brought up listening to jazz programs on the BBC where they'd slot in the odd blues thing, you'd obviously have a head start.

Otherwise, you'd probably get into blues through rock 'n' roll – through Chuck Berry or maybe “High Heeled Sneakers” by Tommy Tucker. Then with the Rolling Stones era, you could sneak into the blues thing that way.

In my case, I started on the proverbial Lonnie Donegan skiffle music trail, where I heard Lonnie doing Leadbelly songs, such as “Rock Island Line” and “Bring Me A Lil' Water Silvy.”

Before I even owned records by Woody Guthrie or Big Bill Broonzy, I used to get library books out in Cork – because you couldn't buy the albums in Britain – and I’d learn the lyrics to these songs.

But at the same time I was interested in rock 'n' roll – such as Buddy Holly. Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, and Fats Domino. I was listening to both of these strains, because at lots of points they'd cross.

Once you get beyond the Chuck Berry/Eddie Cochran thing, you begin to figure out that you've got Broonzy at one end of the scale – and that goes right back to the old tradition of Charley Patton – then John Lee Hooker has the Detroit electric blues style, which evolved from his acoustic style.

And you also get the Josh White sort of folkie style of blues. You just have to listen to a lot of records.

Which records do you think are essential for someone who wants to get into blues?

I suppose you'd have to go back to one of the main sources, say, either Robert Johnson, Lemon Jefferson, Willie McTell, or Leadbelly. The two Robert Johnson records [King Of The Delta Blues Singers, Vols. I & II] are obviously cornerstones; you'd have to get at least one of those.

It’s pretty hard to zone in on it, because some guys mightn't get into Robert Johnson and might prefer, say, Willie McTell. But if we try to break it down to the key blues albums, I think that a Robert Johnson record would have to be included.

Then Blind Boy Fuller is another favorite of mine, especially that album With Bull City Red and Sonny Terry, with “Pistol Slapper Blues” on it.

I think that Broonzy album where he does “Banker’s Blues” [The Young Big Bill Broonzy] is an important one, because he was broadening the scale.

It’s different from the ones he made around 1950, where it was blues plus ballads.

The Best Of Muddy Waters [reissued as Sail On] is definitely an archetypal electric blues album.

Do you think albums by people such as Elmore James and Howlin’ Wolf are important listening?

Oh yeah. You'd have to get The Real Folk Blues by Wolf, with “Spoonful” and “Shake For Me” [reissued in part on Howlin’ Wolf: the Chess Box] for Hubert Sumlin’s electric blues guitar.

He's the great undiscovered, underrated lead player. And Wolf himself harks back vocally to Charley Patton, and, besides, he plays a little bit of slide guitar here and there, too – like on “Down In The Bottom.”

And his harmonica playing is important, even though everyone seems to write it off as just, “He plays harmonica.” I think he plays good gut-bucket harmonica.

Which of Elmore James's albums would you single out?

Its hard to pin down one album for him, because there are so many oddball ones. I've got one on Ember Records – just sort of a bargain label – and it was reruns of some of his stuff, like “Sunnyland,” “Standing At The Crossroads.” and “Dust My Broom” yet again.

I find that any Elmore James album is good.

What about the older country blues players?

In terms of intensity, Son House has to be listened to. Of all the blues players, that's probably the closest connection with Africa. I've got that one album, with “John the Revelator.” [The Legendary Father Of Folk Blues] That's an ace album.

If people come to hear you in concert, and they want to learn how to play guitar themselves, do you think it's more important for them to buy your records or these old records you spoke of?

To learn guitar? Well, I write a lot of my own stuff, so it's a cross between ego and the heritage thing.

If you want to play like Rory Gallagher, I think you'd buy my records. But if you want to pick up on whatever echoes of the bluesmen that I respect and love, certainly go ahead and buy some blues records.

In my case, I’d say the obvious influences would be Hubert Sumlin, Earl Hooker, and Buddy Guy, electrically; and, acoustically, Blind Boy Fuller and Blind Blake, though I can't get anywhere near what Blake does.

But you see, I never started out to become a strict recreator of the blues or even a modern young bluesman, as it were. I mean, I wanted to be me.

I'm a huge blues fan, but I still have a bit of Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly hovering around in my head, plus certain folk people, such as Doc Watson – a pretty wide range of listening.

What type of instrument would you recommend for an acoustic blues novice to start on?

With acoustic guitar, for the first couple of years at least, I think you should leave a wound third string on and really build up strength in the fingers. In other words, don't try bending strings the first week you buy the guitar.

Kids are lucky nowadays; you can get a Yamaha or something, and the cheaper model guitars are much better quality than they were years ago when you got this stuff with terrible action.

The first guitar I got cost just over four pounds, which was about twenty dollars then, in the good old days.

After a while you get that urge to say, “To hell with this – I’m going to bend this string,” instead of sliding up. But you have to build that up.

But do you think a student should start out with, say, a wooden Yamaha or a metal-bodied National such as you sometimes play?

Well, lets put it this way: If you're a kid with ears the size of the moon and an amazing sense of direction, who heard Son House or Blind Boy Fuller or any of the National steel-body players and said, “They're the people I want to play like,” then go ahead and buy the National, because that's a great place to start.

But if you start with a National. you're talking about a guitar that weighs quite a bit.

Do you use a wound or an unwound third string on the National?

A wound third, because the numbers I happen to play need that fairly stiff action. I don't do any Broonzy-type bending with light strings on the National, whereas on a Martin acoustic I probably would.

Do you use an acoustic onstage?

I do; I play a Martin D-35. I use the National for things like “Pistol Slapper Blues,” which I play faster than Blind Boy Fuller did, and a J.B. Hutto song called “Too Much Alcohol,” which he plays electric, of course.

There's always the nature of the banjo in the National, I find, and you have to play it sort of like that. I do anyway.

Do you play acoustic with a plectrum or your fingers?

With a plectrum and the fingers. I fool around with National metal fingerpicks and the plastic ones sometimes.

How is your Martin set up?

Well, that's set up with the same strings, because at present I'm doing numbers like Leadbelly’s “Out On The Western Plain,” where the tuning is D - A - D - G - A - D [low to high]. It’s [open] D tuning, except that the G remains a G [rather than major third/F#.]

What do you use for an electric guitar?

I have two different electrics. I have a [Fender] Stratocaster with Fender light gauge Rock And Roll strings, which I use for basic playing and some slide work in straight tuning.

I also have a [Fender] Telecaster for A tuning and other open tunings, for songs like “Bullfrog Blues.”

Why the Stratocaster?

Well, that's the eternal argument among Fender fans. Buddy Holly had a Strat, and as a child you go after the appearance of a guitar; I don't care what anyone says. You look at the shape of the thing, and that's it. I've tried Gibsons, but I'm not a great fan of humbucking pickups.

Why is that?

Because as you bring down the volume from 10 to 9 to 8, after that – forget it; the guitar loses its sensitivity and drive.

Whereas with the single-coil or P-90 pickups – one of the old Gibson units with the black or white plastic covers – the volume control goes down nice and gradually, and even at 6 the guitar is still doing something.

Why do you usually switch to the Telecaster for slide?

I like a good bright tone, and I like the out-of-phase sound you can get with the switch set between the normal positions on a Strat.

Its comfortable, the scale seems right, and I like having the machine heads on one side – it just seems to make sense.

But if you want, say, a more luxurious, fatter sound, the Gibson guitar certainly would do the job, and it's got an extra fret – if anybody ever touches that fret; I'm sure they don't.

I thought it had a certain steel guitar type of tone which would work well with slide, but I was frustrated with the rhythm [neck/front] pickup – I thought it was too thin. So I put a Strat pickup there, and it remained that way for a year.

Then I said, “To hell with it – I’ll do the Telecaster à la Strat,” so now I've got two Strat pickups and a Tele lead pickup and a five-way Strat toggle switch.

It’s like the best of both worlds with the Telecaster lead pickup, which is slightly hotter than a Stratocaster’s.

What do you use for a slide?

It depends; I shift around. I sometimes use a bottleneck on my ring finger for electric stuff; otherwise I've got two stainless steel tubes, which I sometimes use on my small finger or the ring finger. They get a more stinging, Muddy Waters sound.

You get a different sound depending on what slide you use. For instance, if you're playing slide on a National with a glass slide, forget it.  You have to have something like steel or, even better, copper. Son House used copper, and I've got one of those as well.

What type of amplification do you use?

For years I used a Vox AC30, which is the best all-around European amp I've ever come across. I still have it. The Shadows used to use them, and the Beatles used them, so you know it was the popular amp.

But I found that when using the [Dallas Rangemaster] treble booster, that along with the treble boost you got a built-in gain, because the transistors were fairly primitive.

If I used the normal input – which was very bassy, as opposed to the brilliant input – I could get that nice rough edge without getting into a very fuzzy sound.

I used that for years, and I've had odds and sods in between, but then I moved on to an old Fifties tweed Fender Twin, which I still have.

Then I got into a tweed Fender Bassman, and recently I got a Fender Concert, which is an old brown one, from around 1959, with four 10” speakers.

I use a Hawk booster through that just to roughen it up a bit, or if it's a quiet number I plug straight in and keep the guitar clean sounding.

Do you think it's advantageous to learn acoustic before moving on to electric?

Well, I played acoustic for two or three years before I bought an electric. I wasn't particularly interested in electric for the first couple of years, because I was a Lonnie Donegan fan.

I think it's better to start on acoustic and then get into electric, but you could get into a fistfight over that. I mean, some people would say, “To hell with acoustic guitar; it never existed. You've got to get a solidbody right away.”

Fair enough, but I think they're missing out. Even if you're going to become the consummate 1978 electric guitarist, I think you're missing out on an awful lot, if only for the fun of playing an acoustic guitar at home as a hobby.

And it's nice to go from the acoustic, where even at the best of times the action is fairly taut, to the electric with light strings, where you float around like jelly. If you're always playing on light-gauge strings, you'll never really build up strength and subsequently real volume without turning up your amp yet again.

Are there any other techniques that you can adapt from acoustic to electric?

If you never played acoustic the odds would probably be three-to-one that you might never get into, say, playing with a plectrum and fingers or ever get interested in the various acoustic right-hand things.

I think if you're just playing with a flatpick full-time, you're only half playing the guitar.

So would you advise learning to fingerpick with bare fingers, with fingerpicks, or with a plectrum and the fingers?

Well, if you could wave a magic wand, you should tell the person to try all forms and be familiar with them all – anything instead of just using the plectrum alone.

I think at some point in every song you're going to need the fingers.

If you're interested in classical guitar, it's nice to get a couple of years training at that, and then you'd have very strong hands, and you could skip thumbpicks and metal picks or whatever.

Do you use fingerpicks mainly for volume, or do you use them for a specific sound?

I would use them for volume, you know, and to save wear and tear.

If I were a highly developed thumb-and-fingers person I’d just use the bare skin, but you do get the real sharp, biting sound with the metal claws.

Gary Davis just used the one plastic fingerpick, and he seemed to make great sense out of that.

So you think it's very important for a student to learn to use their fingers as well as a pick.

Yeah, even if they never touch folk or blues music. Of course, the sky's the limit nowadays, and I suppose for Chuck Berry rock 'n' roll it doesn't matter too much, but even Keith Richards uses his fingers on things like “Honky Tonk Woman.”

Do you think it's important for a guitarist to learn to read music?

I did it by ear, listening to records. I never had a teacher, and I regret that I can’t read music. I went into the library once and got Teach Yourself How To Read Music or something, and it said, “Sit down at your piano.” We didn't have a piano, so that went down the chute.

Then I worked out F, A, and C and gave up, because I was too impulsive, and I was already delighted that I could play “Lost John” and a couple of other songs.

Then, next thing, I was playing blues and rock 'n' roll, which is fairly instinctive and primitive stuff anyway. But later on you start getting beyond the open tunings and ragtime blues, you know, and you're listening to someone like Diango Reinhardt or modern jazz guitarists, even bossa nova stuff like Charlie Byrd, and you begin to feel a little inadequate if you're an all-around guitar fan.

So you get a couple of books on chords and try to make sense of that. That's where the reading would probably come in; it would help if you were a bit of a jazz fan.

When recording with other musicians, do you find that not knowing written music limits your ability to communicate ideas in the studio?

No, that's no problem. Because you can hum it to them or play it on the guitar. I don't think that's the drawback; the only drawback is if you were interested in playing a classical piece verbatim, or you wanted to play a Charlie Christian solo and really wanted to find out all the notes that he played and the harmony and theory thing behind it.

Sometimes you say. “To hell with it; it doesn't matter anyway,” but it kind of does matter. I’d say a year or two of just learning a little bit of theory wouldn't do any harm. Even tablature foxes me; I have no head for mathematics.

What advice could you give in terms of practicing the guitar?

Well, it's like the old cliché: You have to love the instrument and the idea of the instrument and the whole aura of the thing, and that will dictate how much you practice, really.

I don't think you have to sit down for eight hours a day or anything, but if you're really interested, you'll probably do that anyway in the early stages – and even after that, between trying to write songs and experimenting with notes and loosening your fingers.

I think you're bound to get in an hour or two a day anyway, although some guys say they only play five minutes a day outside the gig.

Could you offer any advice for guitarists wanting to become professionals?

If you wanted to get into, say, electric blues, I’d get into a band as soon as possible, no matter how bad it is.

Don’t be too proud – get into some kind of band; get playing with a drummer. That's essential for electric blues.

If you want to play acoustic music on your own, just hurry up and get a gig if you can; get out there and play in front of people.

You feel that playing in front of people is an important thing to do as soon as possible?

Yes, it brings something out. I know for a fact that if I'm off the road for a long spell, even if I'm rehearsing like mad and playing a lot at home, the real crunch comes when I get out in front of people.

The things you thought were really hot in rehearsal don't make any sense, because quite often you've forgotten the basic drive.

In rehearsals sometimes the basics get glossed over, because you're fooling around too much with the frilly stuff. If you get out there in front of an audience, drop your pick or break a string, that toughens you up, and it brings out projection in your playing.

You have to direct your playing somewhere – unless you want to sit in a room like the painter looking at the painting he's just done, and he won't show it to anybody.

You do get people like that, who think there's no one in the city who's good enough to play with. But even acoustic players should get to a folk club and listen to other people, play with other people.

There's always a thin line between studying the old records by the old masters and trying to develop yourself. I think both can be done at the same time, because if you forget the old masters, you miss out on a whole heritage and a whole world, really.

But you shouldn't get too clogged up with the old stuff to the point where you won't be moving on yourself, because you won't end up like an old master yourself anyway, you know.

Order the Rory Gallagher 1971 debut solo album 50th anniversary edition here.

Once described as, “an oasis of chaos in a desert of suburban calm,” Eel Pie Island in the River Thames at Twickenham in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames was a musical hotbed of the '60s and a mecca for the most talented blues-rock guitarists of the era.

Started by promotor Arthur Chisnall in the mid-‘50s, by the following decade the club had become one of the most important venues in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.

Known for its weekend jazz nights, the Eel Pie Island Hotel was also famous for hosting concerts by American blues guitar players including Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy and John Lee Hooker – all of which were attended by a young Jeff Beck.

Other guitar heroes of the British blues boom such as Peter Green and Eric Clapton are also known to have frequented Eel Pie Island, as did the Rolling Stones who were offered a residency there in the early ‘60s.

“There was a bit of a scene in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s in Richmond,” said British space rock veteran and Hawkwind founder Dave Brock. “That’s where I met Eric [Clapton] and a load of other people who used to hang out in the L’Auberge coffee bar. We always used to hang out there before going over to Eel Pie Island. That was where it all happened in our era.

“I loved going over there and listening to jazz. Later on, they had blues artists playing there… Arthur Chisnall, was an innovator because he’d book all these different blues artists in. Arthur Chisnall got so many people into blues and jazz – Eric Clapton, the Yardbirds and Jeff Beck.”

“The dressing room at Eel Pie was behind the stage, up one flight of stairs,” recalled the late Terry Clemson of British blues rockers Downliners Sect. “The walls were covered in graffiti, mainly written by the Rolling Stones. That wall would be worth thousands of pounds if it existed today!”

While American blues-influenced bands like the Rolling Stones and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers trod the notoriously rickety boards of Eel Pie Island early on, by the mid-‘60s, the British Isles – let alone Eel Pie Island – could not contain the blues boom it had so lovingly nurtured.

And as this wave of new music swept beyond U.K. shores towards the U.S., the British Invasion began to kick off, ultimately bringing blues back to its land of origin.

After decades of working with artists like the Mavericks, Bob Seger, Kenny Chesney, Willie Nelson, Buddy Guy and Taylor Swift, 2012 ACM Guitarist of the Year Kenny Greenberg has released a record of his own, Blues for Arash (We R They Records).

But we would still be waiting had not screenwriter Arash Amel requested music for a prospective film about a blues fanatic from West Africa.

“He was looking for a combination of African rhythms and American blues,” Greenberg says. “Slide guitar and some cinematic stuff.”

Greenberg ensconced himself in his home studio and began recording. For the West African flavors, the guitarist had invaluable help from Justin Adams of Robert Plant’s Sensational Shape Shifters, but the blues is all courtesy of the Nashville session ace.

Some of the aforementioned slide was played on a Gibson SG with mini-humbuckers, but for the bulk of the record he used the more unusual DiPinto Galaxie.

“I was buying a compressor and the guy said, ‘I’ll throw in this guitar,’” Greenberg says, with a laugh. “I put on big strings and love it for playing slide. I ran a ’90s Fender Pro Jr. into a 4x12 cabinet that I close- and distance-miked. I had an overdrive pedal on, just to get a little more gain from the amp.”

For the acoustic blues guitar parts, the guitarist used a wooden National resonator guitar and a Harmony Sovereign. With each, he combined direct pickup and miked tracks.

Electric guitar rhythms were courtesy of his Strat through a Jeff Heim custom amp. 

The music’s spirit is best embodied in the track “Nairobi, Mississippi.”

“That’s my favorite thing on the record,” Greenberg reveals. “Justin sent me files of Juldeh Camara playing the one-string Gambian fiddle. We flipped the beat around and added this acoustic hill country blues on top.”

Greenberg recorded most of the record working alone, yet his playing retains a live energy that makes the tracks pop.

“I try to turn my mind off and just play,” he explains. “I’m fortunate to have this great home facility here, where I can play as long as I want. I loop the song, get a cup of coffee, stand in front of the speakers and try to not think too much. That’s when the good stuff comes.”

Once it became clear that the movie wasn’t going to get made, the music was released to the guitarist to use as he wished.

“Rather than have it sit in obscurity, I thought I would just put it out,” Greenberg says. “I mean, why not?”

Buy Kenny Greenberg's Blues for Arash here.

Award-winning blues guitarist Larry McCray has released the second single – “Breaking News” – from his forthcoming album Blues Without You.

Produced by Joe Bonamassa and Josh Smith, Blues Without You will be released on March 25 via Keeping the Blues Alive Records (KTBA Records.)

One of the great bluesmen of the American Rust Belt, McCray holds a very special place in Bonamassa’s heart.

“Larry McCray is a legend,” he says. “In the spirit of B.B. King, Luther Allison and Little Milton, Larry is among the greats.”

Over the years, McCray has performed alongside some of the biggest names in blues guitar including B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Albert King, John Mayall, Johnny Winter, Robert Cray, Keb’ Mo’, Jimmie Vaughan and Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

Guesting on Larry McCray’s latest 12-track long-player are Joe Bonamassa, Warren Haynes, Joanna Connor, and Reese Wynans.

Speaking of Blues Without You, McCray said, “Writing this album made me feel proud, as it allows others to see me as more than a blues musician.

“The songs are reflective of my broad taste in music styles and the subject matter, although personal at times, is relatable to anyone’s life. Hopefully, the words and message of the songs will help others express their feelings in a similar synopsis."

Following up The Gibson Sessions, Blues Without You is McCray’s first album in seven years and is a result of having hooked up with a team of people whom he feels are kindred spirits.

“I feel totally reborn, with a whole new career,” says the guitarist, “and I'm optimistic about what the future holds.

“But truthfully speaking, sometimes I do wish it would have happened 30 years ago. I would have been much more qualified for the job at that age than at 62.”

It’s never too late, we say!

Pre-order Blues Without You here.

Albert Cummings is an anomaly. A late bloomer by anybody’s standards he started playing guitar at 27. Indeed, at an age when some of the world’s greatest musicians checked out, Cummings was just checking in.

Once his superlative musical talent was eventually tapped into there was no going back and his unique brand of pyrotechnic electric blues rapidly became an unstoppable force.

Before long, he was sharing stages with the likes of B.B. King, Johnny Winter and Buddy Guy. In fact, Cummings is regarded as one of the greatest blues guitar players on the circuit today. Renowned for his raw, off-the-cuff stage performances, what you see really is what you get with this maestro.

With over two decades’ worth of solo releases under his belt, his recorded body of work catalogs a guitarist that has gone from strength to strength.

And the best, he promises, is yet to come.

His tenth solo album – aptly titled Ten – is due for release this year on April 8 via Ivy Music. Recorded in Peter Frampton’s Phenix Studios in Nashville with legendary engineer/producer Chuck Ainlay (Dire Straits & Mark Knopfler, Taylor Swift, Dolly Parton) Ten also features a guest performance by Vince Gill.

We caught up with Cummings ahead of the album’s release to talk guitars, Nashville and the blues.

You’re currently endorsed by Fender. What is it you like about Fender guitars?

I’m almost exclusively Fender. That’s pretty much all I’ve ever played. Gibson have sent me stuff before. And PRS sent me three or four guitars once, but I could never find the tone I liked. They were beautiful pieces of work – all this quilted maple and stuff – but, boy, I just wish they sounded as good as they looked! I like the simplicity of Fenders. They’re pretty rugged too.

What’s your go-to guitar right now?

I call it CC. It’s a Strat from around ‘92/’93. It’s on its second neck. Fender put a new neck on it for me because I wore out the truss rod on the last one. I just wore it out again. I tend to beat on my guitar a little bit.

I’ve put at least five different pickup configurations in it. I ended up with one of the most unique configurations I’ve ever seen on a Stratocaster. I have a Tele pickup in the neck, a Texas Special in the middle, and I have a ’59 humbucker in the [bridge]. That guitar with the five positions: you can get any sound you want.

Also, I play heavy Dunlop strings – a 12 down to a 58. And with those gauge strings I can get a beautiful clean sound. With that pickup configuration there’s not a sound I can’t get.

What amps did you use to record Ten?

I’m a [Fender] Vibro-King junky. On this album, I used a Vibro-King along with a [Fender] Vibroverb – the original brownface Vibroverb model with two ten-inch speakers. I think it was Peter Frampton’s.

I love a Vibro-King because it’s got the punch, but it sometimes misses that little bit of sweetness. So, live, I usually play a [Fender] Deluxe with it at the same time.

For those who haven’t seen you perform, how would you describe your live shows?

When I start a show, I don’t usually stop until I’m finished. I don’t talk much; I just go from one song to the next. I believe if you’re thinking, you’re stinking. And I rarely use a set list. I just let the music take me where it’s going to go.

My style of music is completely off the cuff. People ask me, ‘what was that third song?’ or whatever and I’ll have literally no idea. I’ll jump off songs into others. If I feel like playing something, I’ll give it a shot.

What did you learn from gigging with B.B. King?

B.B. King taught me that I’m there as an entertainer. If the audience wants to hear something, I’m happy to oblige. I go onstage and I become a member of the audience. There’s no negativity on my stage. I want people to come to my shows and feel good when they’re there, and when they’re going home. I’m just an entertainer. That’s my goal.

How did you meet B.B. King?

I was able to meet B.B. King’s assistant manager and she came to see me play when I did the first show with Double Trouble. The next thing I knew I was on stage with B.B. I did several tours with him and ended up being really good friends with the man. It was just such an education for me to sit and watch B.B. King every night.

That man has been the biggest inspiration in my life. And not only with guitar. Anybody that picks up a guitar will be influenced by B.B. King. They might not realize it, as they might have copped something from somebody else who was directly influenced by B.B. King.

B.B. told me one night: “We don’t steal licks – we borrow them.” And that’s so true. It’s like vocabulary – the more words you know, the smarter you are. The guitar communicates, no matter what language you speak.

What’s the best way to advance as a guitarist?

I think the best way to advance on your own instrument is to get lost. Because once you get lost, you learn a new trail to get out. If you’re following the same path, you’re not lost. So, my advice is just run off into the woods and don’t think about the path. If you make a mistake, just do it again and it’ll sound intentional. [laughs]

Tell us about how your career took off.

The first time I ever played with a band I was 27 years old (I just turned 54), and it was a couple of years after that when Double Trouble had me come down to Austin. Then I met B.B. King and Buddy Guy and Johnny Winter. It happened quickly. I was doing all that and still building houses.

And to this day, you’re still working in construction…

There’s a song on the new album, Ten, called “Two Hands.” It’s one of my favorites and it tells the tale of a working man. I think a lot of people are going to relate to that song.

What was your experience of recording the new album, Ten?

I’ve never been so excited about a record before. I’m still on the honeymoon. Every day I think about it. This one is completely different. I’ve been growing as an artist over the years, but everything came together at the right time on this one.

Chuck Ainlay is like the Stevie Ray Vaughan of producers. He is so gifted. He’s incredible. The first thing he said to the band was, “Our main goal here is to give Albert something he’s never had before.” And they certainly did. They just killed it. Vince Gill told me, “You’ve got the best players in Nashville, Albert.”

What’s your philosophy to making music?

My philosophy in life is that building something – be it a house or a record – takes a team. And if I can assemble the right team, everything’s better. They were just pushing me and making me feel as comfortable as possible. They were just warm-hearted, beautiful people and they have my ultimate respect.

I really wanted them to bring their personalities and their feelings. I mean, I was in Nashville. Every city has a different sound, and I believe if I cut that record in L.A., London, or Austin it would have sounded different.

I want every record I do to be my best one. Like every house I build, I want it to be better than the last.

Pre-order Ten by Albert Cummings from February 18, 2022, here.

The traditional blues players from the 1920s through the ’60s established many popular song structures, chords and guitar techniques. It’s testament to the quality and enduring popularity of these artists that so much of the identity of their playing can still be heard in today’s blues music. 

Less well known is that blues is at the heart of much of the rock and metal that would emerge from the ’70s on – so there’s something for everyone to learn. What more reason do you need to follow our lesson on some core blues basics?

Classic Blues

Get jamming the easy way, with a simple, traditional repeating boogie riff in the style of the great John Lee Hooker (Ex. 1). Based around an A root note, this line can easily be taken through a standard 12-bar blues progression (A - D - E) by shifting the pattern up one string to a “D shape” riff and down one string set for the E chord.

Ex. 2 uses the rhythm and blues groove first popularized by Bo Diddley in his self-titled 1955 single and known today as the “Bo Diddley beat.” It’s been adapted by many artists, including the Rolling Stones in “Not Fade Away,” Bruce Springsteen in “She’s the One” and George Michael in “Faith.”

This catchy groove is all about the rhythm and timing, so strum slowly at first, then try using some other chords you know. To achieve the desired feel, keep your picking hand moving in a continuous, uninterrupted down-up-down-up manner with the underlying 16th-note pulse, even during the rests.

Stevie Ray Vaughan was famed for the shuffle rhythms and ferocious lead work he’d coax from his “Number One” Strat. In Ex. 3, a blues bass line is woven around an open A5 power chord. You get the weight of the chord while the bass line outlines a more sophisticated A7 harmony. Listen to SRV’s “Pride and Joy” and “Rude Mood” for inspiration.

Ex. 4 shows a blues turnaround inspired by Eric Clapton, who adapted Robert Johnson-style changes to electric blues guitar. Playing fingerstyle will help make all the melody notes and the descending bass notes ring out clearly.

Funk-rock blends nicely with blues rhythms, as Jimi Hendrix demonstrated in many of his classic tracks. Ex. 5 is informed by his style and employs one of his favorite chords (the 7#9, often dubbed “the Hendrix chord”) played in both E and C. In the single-note part of the riff, you can pull the 5th-fret G note slightly sharp for an even bluesier flavor.

B.B. King was famed for his soulful touch and his quivering “butterfly” vibrato technique, which is deftly employed with the A note in Ex. 6. To emulate B.B.’s signature sound, aim for a quick wobble of the string but without too much pitch change. Rest the base of your fretting finger on the side of the fretboard then “flutter” your hand around this pivot point to create the vibrato. It’s easier than using pure finger strength, and it’s pure B.B.

In blues circles, a mini sweep across the strings is referred to as a rake. This drag of the pick is more of a percussive effect, so the notes don’t need to be perfectly fretted. You can even mute the strings entirely as you pick, so that the rake notes are pitchless “chucks.” We’ve written picking directions for the rakes here (Ex. 7). Notice how the quarter-tone bend in bar 1 provides a blues edge too.

Playing two notes at once is a great way to thicken up your guitar sound. This is an effective thing to do to help avoid the dreaded “tone dropout” you might experience when soloing in a power trio. Ex. 8 is inspired by John Mayer, and in bar 2 we’re playing a line that descends the B and high E strings in diatonic 3rds strings, sweetly harmonizing the key of A minor.

From Eric Clapton to Joe Bonamassa, great blues guitarists seem to have a never-ending vocabulary of stock phrases, yet they somehow always sound authentic. The key is to use the minor or major pentatonic scale as a foundation and keep your solos simple at first. In Ex. 9, we’re playing a very triplet-y phrase based on the A minor pentatonic scale (A, C, D, E, G) and presenting ideas that can be reimagined in myriad ways.

With some minor pentatonic basics under our belts, we can expand these ideas into something more sophisticated, using fast pentatonic flurries, as demonstrated in Ex. 10. Legendary bluesman Buddy Guy often plays fast flurries of notes, straight from the minor pentatonic scale. That means the shape feels familiar but you’ll be delivering more “angular” phrased licks.

Blues isn’t only about minor keys. Listen to Freddie King’s “Hide Away” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Need Your Love So Bad.” Both of these songs feature extensive use of the major pentatonic scale (intervallically spelled 1, 2, 3, 5, 6). The simple lick shown in Ex. 11 is designed to help get you started with this warm-sounding set of notes. Watch out though. There’s a bluesy minor note in there too – the 5th-fret C, right before the last dyad (two-note chord).

The previous lick hinted at an idea we’re going exploring more fully in our next example – mixing up parallel major and minor pentatonic scales in solos. Why bother? Well, the combination of “happy” major and “serious” minor scales sounds way more sophisticated than sticking to just one or the other. Ex. 12 keeps things simple, but this idea is a key part of blues, so experiment!

21st Century Blues

Whether it’s the fuzz-fuelled lo-fi riffing of the White Stripes and the Black Keys, or the Zeppelin-like hard rock sensibilities of Rival Sons and Greta Van Fleet, it’s fair to say that blues has evolved somewhat in recent years.

Though many of the chords and scales owe a debt to earlier forebears, many bands are putting their own stamp on blues with retro-inspired drive tones and tone-bending effects like octavers and wild fuzz distortions. Here we’re looking at a few of the tricks and riffing tropes of the current generation of blues players.

Dan Auerbach

Spiky fuzz distortion tones have been a big part of the signature retro sounds of the aforementioned bands. The riff shown in Ex. 14 is designed to make good use of a dirt pedal. If you’re using a regular drive pedal, keep the treble high, roll off a little bass and experiment with your amp’s EQ and gain.

From Robert Johnson and Elmore James to Derek Trucks, Gary Clark Jr. and Auerbach, slide guitar has long been at the heart of blues. The simple electric slide lick shown in Ex. 15 will help you develop this tricky technique.

Place your slide on your 3rd or 4th finger and aim directly over the fret you’re playing (not behind it). Use your 1st finger to dampen the strings behind the slide and suppress unwanted string noise and overtones. Additionally, it helps to use your pick hand to mute the strings your not playing on at the moment.

Contemporary bands’ minor pentatonic riffs owe as much to ’70s rock as they do to early blues. The pentatonic riff shown in Ex. 16 could easily be a Black Keys tune, a Led Zeppelin line, or you could slow it down and give it a traditional “Hoochie Coochie Man” treatment. It describes an E minor tonality, so the 6th string can be used as your tonal center to “bounce” the other notes off.

The advent of multi-track recording in the ’70s saw bands double-tracking guitar riffs. In recent years, duos like Royal Blood have used switching systems to recreate the effect in live performances. The layered riff in Ex. 17 is ideal for two guitars.

We take this idea further in Ex. 18. Here, we’re playing a simple melodic line on top of our previous riff. To make sure it stays riffy, we’re following the same rhythm for both lines – no solo widdle here! It’s based on the E minor pentatonic scale (E, G, A, B, D) throughout.

If you’re playing in a guitar-drums duo, White Stripes-style, you’ll need to fill out your sound. Ex. 19 covers plenty of notes to provide a full backing sound, then punctuating them with some fat-sounding power chords. For more weight, think about using an octaver effect as Jack White and Auerbach and Royal Blood’s Mike Kerr might do.

Even simple minor pentatonic licks can kick a song’s proverbial rear end. Ex. 20 demonstrates this with a lick inspired by Auerbach’s fretwork on the Black Keys song “Eagle Birds.”

Jimmie Vaughan’s reputation as a premier electric guitar slinger stretches way back to the ’60s, when he found regional success in Texas, crossing paths with many of the big names of the time, including Jimi Hendrix.

For most listeners outside Texas, Vaughan first came to prominence in the late ’70s as the killer guitarist in what was arguably the first really cool blues band in eons, the Fabulous Thunderbirds. After seven albums of no-frills, down-and-dirty blues guitar, Vaughan left the group, made an album with his brother Stevie – 1990’s Family Style – and settled into a solo career playing blues-rock songs of his own and mixing in acclaimed collaborations with numerous blues luminaries, including a pair of albums with Omar Dykes.

In recent years, though, Vaughan has made several return visits to the music he loves best: the rare and frequently arcane recordings of R&B artists he grew up with, like Jimmy Reed, Jimmy Liggins, Bobby Charles and Nappy Brown.

He released his first R&B covers album, Plays Blues, Ballads & Favorites, in 2010, and followed it up in 2011 with Plays More Blues, Ballads & Favorites. His third album in the series, 2019’s Baby, Please Come Home is a righteous celebration of blues, while last year saw the release of The Pleasure's All Mine (The Complete Blues, Ballads & Favorites Sessions).

Earlier this year, fans were treated to The Jimmie Vaughan Story – an encyclopaedic 96-track 5-CD epic release. Showcasing Jimmie’s distinctive take on the blues these recordings comprise rare and unreleased gems from the initial part of Jimmie’s career, including his early bands Storm and The Fabulous Thunderbirds.

Back in 2019, GP caught up with the man himself shortly after the release of Baby, Please Come Home.

Baby, Please Come Home is your third album of blues covers. Is this the plan going forward?

At this point, I’m just doing stuff that I like. That’s the truth of it. I just like those songs. Basically, when I write my own stuff, it sounds like the same kind of thing, and nobody knows these songs. And I really enjoy making this music with my band. We get to play blues, we can swing, and we can rock out.

Are you no longer interested in writing original material?

Well, if you’re gonna write, you have to get up in the morning and write something every day and really work on it. I am gonna make an album with songs that I’ve written at some point, but this is where I’m happiest at the moment.

It’s interesting to hear how your vocals have developed over each album and how you’ve really found your voice.

For years, I didn’t want to sing, until finally I got into a position where I had to sing or go home. When I was a kid – maybe 15 or 16 – you couldn’t tell from my playing how old I was. I think my voice has gotten deeper, maybe partly from getting old and also from just doing it.

Does the singing change your phrasing on the guitar?

I think when you play for many years, your phrasing will always change as you try to reproduce the stuff that you hear in your head. I always think of myself as a sax player. I like the way the sax player expresses himself, and, especially if you’re singing, you kind of express your song in the voice, then you go back and do it on the guitar. I suppose that makes it sound pretty simple!

Guitarwise, are you still using your signature Strats into Grammatico amps?

Yeah. I use Fender Bassmans as well. A Grammatico is really just a hand-wired Bassman. I like the way 10-inch speakers sound. I used to really enjoy the Matchless, but they quit making them. It’s hard to beat a Fender Bassman though.

You keep your guitar volume low but run your amp high.

That “hots” the amp up, gets it on the edge. That’s the sweet spot where you get the best from the amp. I like it where it sounds like it’s going to blow up. It sounds present.

From the first Fabulous Thunderbirds, it was obvious that you put thought into the spaces between notes – that what you didn’t play was as important as what you did play.

That was a “call and response” style that I learned from my heroes, even those who didn’t play guitar. When you first start to play as a kid, you want to fill up all the holes, but then you realize that the reason why you like certain people is not only because of their tone but also their phrasing.

Just the idea that you can have phrasing that sounds like jazz or blues is pretty intriguing to me. When I hear a sax player like Gene Ammons – he’ll play a phrase and then he’ll wait. And it’s the wait that gets you. That space to breathe. That space to give you time to feel what you just heard.

You had a great way of sitting in behind the harp on Kim Wilson’s solos and not taking up too much space.

I listened to Jimmy Rogers with Little Walter and Eddie Taylor with Jimmy Reed… All those guys. I loved the way they play. I’m a real big fan of that approach.

The first four Fabulous Thunderbirds albums were in a more traditional blues vein. Starting with Tuff Enuff, the music became more mainstream and the group had its greatest success.

Tuff Enuff was more rocky, but it was still true to what we’d been doing. We didn’t feel like we changed that much. The increased level of success had its good and bad points: You never get to come home, and you have too many gigs. Life starts getting in the way of all that.

We did have a fabulous time though, ’cause we were doing what we wanted. You know, when we started out playing covers of old rhythm and blues songs, record companies would say to us, “You can’t get a record deal. That’s a bunch of old shit that no one wants to hear.” We did it anyway, and we had to fight hard each step of the way.

So when we made Tuff Enuff, we just did it the way we wanted to. And we made them take their words back.

You really introduced a lot of those old blues players from the Excello label to a wider audience. Was that deliberate?

Well, what a great thing to do if we could do that. We were just playing what we wanted to hear. I never get tired of the Excello players: T-Bone Walker, Buddy Guy, Jimmy Reed…all the guys I’ve always loved.

Given the demands of success, did you split from the T-Birds because you felt burned out?

What happened was that the record company kept asking me and Stevie, would we do an album together, and we’d been thinking about it since we were little kids. We’d play at home for the guests. My dad would say, “Go get your guitars!” and we’d play for the people, and the guests would say, “Well that’s pretty good, kid. Maybe you guys could make a record someday.”

We ended up making Family Style. Then Stevie got killed before it came out, which really screwed everything up. I didn’t know what in the world to do, and everybody was just flipped out. I still can’t believe what happened, and I’m talking about my feelings and the way it still feels. It took me a long time to really get back. He was my little brother.

When we were kids, I was supposed to get him to school and back. Protect him. So it felt like I’d failed, even though there was nothing I could do about it. It took me a while to process everything.

Stevie never got to have a family or anything like that. I’ve been blessed. I have a wonderful family, I get to play guitar, I have a great band. I have all the wonderful things in life.

Had Stevie not died, do you think you would have followed a very different path and perhaps worked more closely with each other on a regular basis?

I think we would have done a tour and probably another album. But it’s all speculation. I might have done more with the T-Birds as well. It wasn’t like I was trying to quit the group to be with Stevie or he was leaving his band. This was just something different for us. We were just trying stuff.

Afterward, you came out with your first solo album, 1994’s Strange Pleasure. Did you feel under pressure to match the T-Bird standard once you were out on your own?

Well, you always feel pressure to try to make a better record next time. You have to follow yourself. What happens is, once in a while you just screw around with ideas and you get something really good. But you don’t know how that happens, ’cause if you could figure it out, you would do it every time.

It’s that “lightning in the bottle” moment.

Yeah. The gypsies call it duende. If you can find that in yourself, that’s the fun of it. I just love to play so much. If you keep playing everyday, and you keep working on it and your sound, I think it comes to you.

Buy Family Style here.

Country artist Lindsay Ell made a big statement when her major label debut album, The Project (Stoney Creek), landed on Nashville’s Music Row in 2017. In “guitar town,” where some of the most capable guitar-playing stars have session pickers play on their records, Ell challenged the status quo by writing, singing and playing her own songs and solos. On the cover, she’s pictured holding one of her Stratocasters.

“I felt like it wouldn’t be my record if I didn’t play on it,” she says. “Playing guitar on my record is so important. It’s the other half of the song.”

A native of Calgary, Alberta, Ell started out on piano but switched to guitar after hearing mainstream country stars like Shania Twain. She quickly fell in love with her new instrument and the playing of Chet Atkins and Tommy Emmanuel. While in her teens, Ell dove into blues and put together her first band. She also received mentoring from fellow Canadian Randy Bachman of the Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

Intense woodshedding and gigging three to four nights a week led to her landing the opening spot on a Buddy Guy tour, where the 18-year-old watched the blues legend every night. On the second night of the tour, he called her out from side stage to play.

“I walk out onstage and he’s like, ‘Honey, we’re in G.’ And then we just took off,” Ell says. “It was a moment I’ll never forget. He brought me out onstage every other night of the tour after that.”

Electric guitar has been Ell’s ace ever since. After moving to Nashville, she melded her twin loves of country and blues into an infectious hybrid that has yielded songs like the number-one hit “Criminal,” and led to tours with impressed A-listers like Keith Urban and Brad Paisley. Today, no one works harder to keep guitar in the Nashville sound than Lindsay Ell.

Your music blurs the lines between mainstream country and blues rock. When did you get the idea to merge those styles?

I listened to so many amazing female country artists growing up. They were my idols when I was 10 years old, when I started writing songs. Then my love for guitar brought my mind in a completely different direction. When I moved to Nashville, it brought me back to those country roots. I was able to fuse those worlds together.

Your song “Criminal” was a huge country hit, but when you perform it live you’ve got an extended solo that you play at the beginning. It’s such a different take on it.

I love that I can extend intros and outros and just take the show to different places. I understand that every song on an album, especially for radio, can’t be eight minutes long, but in a live show that’s doable.

You’ve toured with Keith Urban and Brad Paisley, and you got to play your own set and then do guest spots with them. What’s been your favorite collaboration so far?

Brad is such an incredible guitarist. It was almost frustrating watching him play, because he would never make a mistake. We got to sing his song “Whiskey Lullaby” every night and go into this epic Pink Floyd solo at the end. It was really cool to watch Brad and Keith spend so much time every day in soundcheck perfecting their guitar solos. They were changing things all the time.

When Keith asked me to play on “Horses” [from his 2018 album Graffiti U], it felt completely surreal. And then to be able to tour with him and play it onstage every night has probably been one of the coolest collaborations I’ve ever been a part of.

You’re associated with Strats, going back to the one you’re holding on the cover of The Project.

Totally. I really love the sound of single-coils in a Strat. I typically have been playing a lot of American Standards. I have a couple of American Professionals with the humbucker in the bridge position, which have been fun to play around with.

I’ve been painting a lot of guitars, and some of the ones that I paint are completely simple, standard Mexican Strats. I have a slew of Strats that I normally bring out with me, everything from models that are kind of expensive to some that are $300.

In 2018, you released The Continuum Project, a song-for-song cover of John Mayer’s album, Continuum. How did that come about?

In my first meeting with [producer] Kristian Bush, he asked, “What’s your favorite album of all time?” And I said, “Well, it would be Continuum, by John Mayer. I love it. I listen to it all the time.” And he said, “Perfect. I want you to clear your schedule for the next two weeks and record the whole record front to back.”

It was the most eye-opening experience for me to pick apart every element of that record and realize that there aren’t 20 instruments coming in and out of sections, and big, crazy arrangements. It was a true lesson in “less is more.”

My version wasn’t going to be released – it was mainly just for me to click into my own brain. Eventually, fans were like, “We wanna hear this. We wanna hear your take on Continuum.” So we decided that we’d just release it. And it was not perfect by any extent. It was just the raw files that I’d recorded in my little home studio.

What other lessons did you learn from doing that?

It helped me see that John plays certain guitar parts with such intention. And I think I found that there’s a deeper level of learning involved when you’re studying something to record it, rather than to play it live. You learn how to approach a note – how it’s bent, or the position that it’s played in.

Click here for information on upcoming Lindsay Ell shows.

Listen to Lindsay Ell’s latest album – heart theory – here.

Recorded in 1974, this incredible episode of the live concert television series Soundstage titled "Bonnie Raitt & Friends" also stars Buddy Guy and legendary blues singer/harmonica player Junior Wells.

“It’s real nice to be here in Chicago – the home of some of the finest blues in the world,” says Bonnie Raitt, addressing the WTTW Studios audience while the city’s premier blues guitarist prepares. “I’d like to give you the pleasure of hearing some of my fine friends and some of the finest blues musicians I know of (I’ve known since I was only 19 years old – and I had ways like a baby child!) My friends, the Buddy Guy and Junior Wells Blues Band!”

From the first notes Guy pulls out of his cherry finish semi-hollowbody the question in many a guitarist’s mind is: ‘That’s not a Gibson… What guitar is that?!’ And after hearing Guy’s sublime overdriven tones and learning that it is in fact a Guild Starfire IV, many have asked “Where can I get one?”

Though Guy is perhaps more widely known for playing a Fender Stratocaster, his endorsement deal with Guild in the ‘70s saw him appearing in advertisements and on stage with this often overlooked and highly underrated electric guitar.

Founded in New York in the early ‘50s and staffed by ex-Epiphone employees (following the company's relocation to Philadelphia) Guild launched the Starfire IV in 1963. 

Sporting dual humbuckers with independent volume and tone knobs this double-cutaway thinline bears obvious similarities to the Gibson ES-335 released earlier in 1958.

While original examples can be found on the vintage market Guild currently price their Starfire IV at $1,600.

Later on in the show, Raitt takes to the stage to perform – her matchless voice complimented by a Gibson ES-175N. Costing $175 with a sunburst finish upon its release in 1949, this classic Florentine/sharp cutaway hollowbody electric archtop was a Gibson first.

Played by jazz greats such as Wes Montgomery and Pat Metheny, as well as rock guitarists like Steve Howe and Izzy Stradlin, the versatile 175 ultimately proved to be one of Gibson’s most enduring designs and was also available with dual pickups as the ES-175D (released in 1953).

The guitar Raitt is using in this film is a blond, single ‘dogear’ P-90 pickup ES-175N (‘N’ stands for Natural finish). With its cleaner, more rounded tone the sound is towards the other end of the spectrum compared to Guy’s hot, biting humbucker crunch. Yet both remain about the finest examples of blues guitar tone you could hope to hear.

Bonnie Raitt’s eponymous debut album is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Get a copy of this incredible landmark recording here.

Buddy Guy is a bona fide master of electric blues. Much like his early contemporaries Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon, Guy moved north to Chicago as a young man and became immersed in the local blues scene. 

He eventually signed to Chicago blues hub Chess Records in 1959, and although the label only managed to put out one studio album during his tenure – 1967’s I Left My Blues in San Francisco – he was recruited to perform on countless sessions for the likes of Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson.

Throughout that time, Guy built an international reputation for his incendiary live shows and inspired a new generation of blues players, including a young Eric Clapton. As one of the first blues guitarists of note to adopt the Stratocaster as an instrument of choice, Guy stretched the boundaries of what solidbody electric guitars were capable of doing early on in the late-'50s. 

In recognition, Guy was honoured with his own Fender signature model in 1995 – the Buddy Guy Stratocaster. Originally available in either a two-tone sunburst or Honey Blonde, by 2002 it also came with Guy’s trademark Polka Dot finish.

During this incredible clip from the Guitar Center Sessions, Guy performs a masterful rendition of "Damn Right, I've Got the Blues” using a Strat (occasionally one-handed!) and shows us exactly why he has remained one of the world’s most revered electric blues artists. 

The intimate location and close up camerawork in this video make for especially interesting viewing and give a unique insight into the raw, off-the-cuff musical genius of the original Chicago blues legend that is Buddy Guy.

Keep up to date with Buddy Guy here

Eric Clapton has announced a live album of performances culled from the 2019 edition of his Crossroads Guitar Festival.

Spanning 3CDs and 6LPs - and 2DVDs and a Blu-ray - the 42-song set features performances from Buddy Guy, Jeff Beck, Peter Frampton, Gary Clark Jr., The Marcus King Band, Sheryl Crow, Bonnie Raitt, Clapton himself and many, many more.

Taking place at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas on September 20 & 21, 2019, the festival was put together to raise money for the Crossroads Centre in Antigua, the chemical dependency treatment and education facility that Clapton helped found in 1998.

Highlights from the mammoth live album/film include Clapton and Frampton's version of The Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (the first time the two had ever shared a stage together), Clapton's version of "Layla" with John Mayer and Clapton's acoustic version of "Wonderful Tonight" with Andy Fairweather Low.

Other highlights include brief but incendiary sets from Jeff Beck, Gary Clark Jr., Lianne La Havas and many more, plus Clapton's moving cover of Prince's "Purple Rain." 

Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival 2019 is set for a November 20 release. To preorder the album, step right this way.

Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival 2019 tracklist:

1. "Native Stepson" – Sonny Landreth    
2. "Wonderful Tonight" – Eric Clapton & Andy Fairweather Low
3. "Lay Down Sally" – Eric Clapton & Andy Fairweather Low
4. "Million Miles" – Bonnie Raitt, Keb’ Mo’ & Alan Darby
5. "Son’s Gonna Rise" – Citizen Cope with Gary Clark Jr. 
6. "Lait / De Ushuaia A La Quiaca" - Gustavo Santaolalla
7. "I Wanna Be Your Dog" – Doyle Bramhall II with Tedeschi Trucks, Band
8. "That’s How Strong My Love Is" – Doyle Bramhall II with Tedeschi Trucks Band
9. "Lift Off"– Tom Misch
10. "Cognac" – Buddy Guy & Jonny Lang
11. "Everything Is Broken" – Sheryl Crow & Bonnie Raitt
12. "Every Day Is A Winding Road" – Sheryl Crow with James Bay
13. "Retrato" – Daniel Santiago & Pedro Martins
14. "B-Side" – Kurt Rosenwinkel with Pedro Martins 
15. "Baby, Please Come Home" – Jimmie Vaughan with Bonnie Raitt
16. "How Long" – The Marcus King Band
17. "Goodbye Carolina" – The Marcus King Band
18. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" – Peter Frampton with Eric Clapton
19. "Space For The Papa" – Jeff Beck
20. "Big Block" – Jeff Beck
21. "Caroline, No" – Jeff Beck
22. "Cut Em Loose" – Robert Randolph
23. "Hold Back The River" – James Bay
24. "When We Were On Fire" – James Bay
25. "Mas y Mas" – Los Lobos
26. "Am I Wrong?" – Keb’ Mo’
27. "Slow Dancing In A Burning Room" – John Mayer
28. "How Blue Can You Get?" – Tedeschi Trucks Band
29. "Shame" – Tedeschi Trucks Band
30. "Is Your Love Big Enough" – Lianne La Havas
31. "I Say A Little Prayer" – Lianne La Havas
32. "Feed The Babies" – Gary Clark Jr. 
33. "I Got My Eyes On You (Locked & Loaded)" – Gary Clark Jr. 
34. "Pearl Cadillac" – Gary Clark Jr. 
35. "Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down" – Vince Gill with Albert Lee & Jerry Douglas
36. "Tulsa Time" – Vince Gill with Albert Lee, Bradley Walker, Albert Lee & Jerry Douglas
37. "Drifting Too Far From The Shore" – Bradley Walker with Vince Gill, Albert Lee & Jerry Douglas
38. "Badge"– Eric Clapton
39. "Layla" – Eric Clapton with John Mayer & Doyle Bramhall II
40. "Purple Rain" – Eric Clapton & Ensemble
41. "High Time We Went" – Eric Clapton & Ensemble
42. "Going Going Gone" - Doyle Bramhall II with Tedeschi Trucks Band

In the blues - music that, according to Willie Dixon, “tells the truth” - it’s advisable to start with blue notes as opposed to blues notes. The order truly distinguishes the “real deal” of the blues from other forms of music.

As America’s most original art form, the blues results from the glorious commingling of African and Anglo influences. It’s an oversimplification to say that its basic harmony (I–IV–V) comes from Europe and its melody (the blues scale) from Africa, but that’s a start.

The blues scale - perhaps derived from Middle Eastern pentatonic scales, and shown in Figure 1 - appeared initially in the field hollers of slaves. Prominent in this scale are the “blues notes”: the b3rd (Bb), b7th (F) and b5th (Db) [Figure 1B]. These notes give the scale a distinctive dissonance, particularly when played against major chords.

When emancipated blacks switched from banjo to guitar after the Civil War, they eventually began to imitate bluesy vocal swoops by bending the strings. Pioneering blues guitar players became focused on the b3rd and b7th notes [Figure 1C], which they idiosyncratically bent the microtone of a quarter step. 

These “true blue notes” are located in between the b3rd and major 3rd, and between the b7th and major 7th, respectively, and help to produce the profound sound of the blues.

Here we have a few classic licks that feature blue notes. In Figure 2, the bent b3rd (Bb) resolves to the root (G) in measure 1, whereas the bent b7th (F) in measure 2 hangs suspended, creating vibrant musical tension and anticipation. Most blues cats pull down on the b3rd with their index finger and bend the b7th up with their ring finger or pinkie.

In the mid Sixties, master string-bender Albert King regularly squeezed out tart licks similar to the ones in Figure 3. 

Again, the bent b3rd resolves to the root, though placing the root up an octave, on beat 1 of measure 1, gives a feeling of uplift, not finality. The bending of the b3rd on the high E string, followed in measure 2 with resolution to the root on the B string, is an oft-imitated King trademark.

Chicago West Siders Magic Sam, Otis Rush and Buddy Guy favored blue note–laced descending runs, as shown in Figure 4. Dig the less-common b7th bend, with resolution to the root, in measure 2 (4th string), a Freddie King favorite.

Trains figure both lyrically and musically in the blues, and blues guitarists often emulate steam whistles. Dyads like those in Figure 5 - found in Robert Johnson’s “Sweet Home Chicago” - enable this effect. As usual, both the bent b7th and bent b3rd (last half of measure 1) resolve to the root (measure 2).

The following is an excerpt from an archival Guitar Player interview with Buddy Guy.

“I learned about showmanship from Guitar Slim,” remembers Buddy Guy. “It was the first time I ever saw a Strat in my life. I paid a dollar and a quarter to see him in Baton Rouge. When they introduced him, I was standing at the bandstand - there weren’t any chairs. 

"It was on the second floor at a rented hall called the Temple Roof. The band played for a half hour or so until a voice said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Guitar Slim,’ and all I heard was a guitar. 

"You know how you put a baby around your neck and put its little legs over your shoulder? A guy brought him in through the crowd like that, and then he bent over and dropped Slim onstage where he sang ‘Done Got Old.’ ‘I want to play like B.B. King,’ I thought, ‘but I’m going to act like Guitar Slim.’

“When I first came to Chicago, I started walking through the crowd with a long wire, and I got that part of my show from Guitar Slim. People love to see you get close. I even let the little kids strike my guitar because they don’t ever forget it. Santana tells me that every time I see him, because somebody called him up at the Fillmore West once. ‘Man, just like me - that kid will never forget it,’ he says.

“I used to lay the guitar down and put my feet on it, or drag it across my butt. I don’t do that anymore. But way back when they used to have guitar battles every Sunday afternoon in Chicago, I won them all because most of the guitar players sat down until I came to town.

“What worked last night may not work tomorrow night with the audience because people are so hard to please. You just have to take each day at a time. You can’t really practice - if I tried to put on my show at the house I’d probably tear up a guitar or something. 

"I don’t practice showmanship with the band, because I don’t do the same thing every night. And the timing is different if it’s not your show. I still get stage fright regardless of whether the stage is big or small. I have two shots of Cognac and try whatever comes into my mind when I go out there.

"Showmanship comes down to the individual. Musicians are like athletes. You’re either acrobatic with the guitar or not. That’s just God-gifted talent. Some people got it and some people don’t. Some don’t need it. Eric Clapton and B.B. King don’t need to do anything but sing and play, but Buddy Guy has got to put something else in there. 

"I can lay back and play one or two, but it’s not going to get you as happy as if you see me play with all that emotion.

“A lot of people think you have to be the show closer. I hate that. You can’t see the crowd when you are playing big shows with the spotlight on, which is why I like to play outdoors in the summertime. I want to go right in the middle of the day before the sun goes down so I can look all the way in the back to see if somebody is enjoying himself. 

"Even if he is not clapping, I can see it in his facial expression. I can tell right then - that note made him frown, or that one moved him. Or when I hit that note it went all the way through him.

“When you leave my show, I at least want you to go away saying, ‘I might not have liked anything he did, but he gave me the best he had.'”