Buddy Guy Interview

by Rick Landers and Tom Watson

A week after his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Buddy Guy is back doing what he does best. Playing the blues.

Born 1936, Guy migrated from his native Louisiana and the Baton Rouge blues scene to Chicago in 1957/1958, taking with him a flair for showmanship inherited from Louisiana's Guitar Slim. In Chicago, Buddy became a member of the Chicago-blues elite that included Muddy Waters, Otis Rush and Magic Sam.

A 21-time winner of the W.C. Handy Blues Award (a record), winner of Billboard's elusive honor, the Century Award (only guitarists to have received it in addition to Guy are George Harrison, Carlos Santana and Chet Atkins), five-time Grammy Award winner, and a Medal of Arts recipient from President Bush in 2003, Buddy Guy continues to reign as the master bluesman of Chicago. In fact, when he's not on the road (rare), you will often find him at his Chicago blues club, Buddy Guy's Legends.

Modern Guitars Magazine chatted with Buddy on March 21, 2005, before his show at the Birchmere in Arlington, Virginia.

Rick Landers: Buddy, what do you say we have a little fun?

Buddy Guy: Let's see what you've got.

Rick: You're abducted and taken to another planet. How do you explain the blues to the aliens?

Buddy: They already know! But, I'm telling you! Hey, I'm just joking. The blues is something that makes you happy if you wanna laugh and will make you cry if you wanna be sad because we're gonna tell you the facts of life.

Rick: The Polka Dot Hall of Fame honors you for your guitars. How do you explain them in your acceptance speech?

Buddy: You know, I'm actually the oldest boy of five children, three boys and two girls. I was the oldest and and I was the first child to leave the family. My mom always worried about if we were okay. I didn't want her to feel like I was going to be stranded, but I was, but I wasn't going to let her know.

And I told her, to perk her up and feel better, that I was going to Chicago and I'm going to get a job and I'm going to buy her a polka dot Cadillac and come back and make her laugh and smile -- a big old brand new polka dot Cadillac to let her know how well I'd done.

I forgot about that after she passed and gone and didn't think about a polka dot guitar 'til some years later. She died in 1968 and I think the polka dot guitar is about 10 or 12 years old now, maybe a little older.

Rick: The polka dots honor your mom.

Buddy: Yes. See, I never really wanted a polka dot Cadillac, I made that up for her. Anyway, I made that up for her and I winded up with a polka dot guitar.

Rick: You're in heaven and can spend time with five women friends. Who are they?

Buddy: You mean lover friends? Well, you know, I can explain that to you. I tell everybody I talk to that there should be different issues for L-O-V-E. I've been married twice and the love I had for those two women was different than for the woman who I made the polka dot guitar for.

See, you can go running in the house to your mother with no clothes on and she'll look at you and the first thing she would say is, "Boy, put some clothes on!" and then she'll ask you a question. See, you go running in your house with no clothes on to your wife or girlfriend and she'll ask you "Boy, where the fuck you been?"

See, there's really two types of love.

Rick: So, you'd want friends and family?

Buddy: By name? Well, the best friends I ever had are women - well, my mom for one thing and my sisters. Then I had two women friends that we could talk about sexy anything, about any other woman. They could tell me anything about any other woman.

One was in Baton Rouge. Her name was Bea. And the other was in Chicago named Debra. Both of them passed away. Now I don't have that kind of friend like that no more because they're hard to find. And they met me by just walking up to me and talking just like two men, telling me that a woman ain't no damn good. When a woman tells you another woman ain't no good you can check her out. Man, she could be a good friend because she's talking like that and she's a woman and that's what made me feel like these are people I can trust.

Rick:What musician do you think had the most blues to sing about?

Buddy: The most blues? One person you mean? Oh shit, man, that's a $64,000 question because all of my older friends had the most blues. Muddy Waters and B.B. King are my favorite people that just knock me out, but they are just two, they are only two of a great many musicians -- I could go on and on.

Rick: Imagine your next project is to put together an album of five of your favorite songs by other artists. What are the songs and who are the artists?

Buddy: Five. Let's see. I'd say B. B. King's Sweet Little Angel, Muddy Waters' Mojo Worker, Eric Clapton's Strange Brew, Little Walter's Juke, and Guitar Slim's The Things That I Used To Do.





Rick: What do you think is the greatest blues album ever made?

Buddy: The best blues album is B.B. King's Alive at the Regal.

Rick: John Mayer shows up at your door and says that he needs the blues in order to do his next CD. What do you tell him?

Buddy: John, talk to me! [Smiles] I was born with the blues and I'd rather fight than switch!

Rick: Was your induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame your greatest honor?

Buddy: I would have to say it was one of them because I never thought I'd get a Grammy and I won a Grammy for Damn Right I Got the Blues. So, I'd put that as a toss up.

Rick: Has playing the guitar helped you meet women?

Buddy: Meet women? Yeah! Because I was a very shy guy until Muddy Waters and them taught me how to drink. Matter of fact, some people used to think I was gay because I'd never say nothing to nobody. When you play the guitar you don't have to say nothing, the girls would say something to you.

I'm at an age when you had to court a young girl, if you understand what I'm talking about. I remember that you had to go to the penthouse to get permission to even talk to her. But when I learned how to play guitar I didn't have to approach young women. They see a guitar and they see you do something. In the back of your mind you know they don't want what you know, they want what you do. So I would have to answer your question, "Yes".

The guitar...well, you can ask a lot of rock cats back in the '60s. Man, it was a whole thing because they were calling it free love then and you just go up and get one guitar and throw the fuckin' guitar away and go straight to the woman. She wouldn't say no.

Rick: If you played accordion would you still end up playing the blues?

Buddy: Probably would because in the blues you have that squeeze box that people like Chenier Clifton and those guys played and that's similar, right? Yeah, I'd probably still be singing the blues, because you know, I started listening to the radio when my parents first bought a radio when I was fifteen or seventeen-years-old. All the music on the radio was AM stations and they'd play Muddy Waters. They'd play Frank Sinatra. And they'd play Mahalia Jackson, if you know her, which is, you know, spiritual, and then they'd play country and western. It wasn't like it is now, just one station playing just soft rock or whatever they decide to play.

Rick: Full of surprises.

Buddy: Yeah, it was a station you enjoyed listening to because you never know what they were going to play next. I would hear them play Arthur Crudup and then the next thing you now I'd get a chance to hear Muddy, Wolf, and Walter and B.B. and them when they started coming out. And then I'd hear Big Mama Thornton and Hound Dog or Johnny Ace. A lot of the stuff was coming out of Houston, Texas, I think, with Don Robey and the Duke Label and Upstep Junior Parker and Bobby Bland.

It just blew the top of my head off! Then Gatemouth Brown came out with a tune, an instrumental, called Okie Dokie Stomp. And then of course when B.B. sang Sweet Little Angel and started squeezing the strings!

I told them I tried to go to high school for one year, but that's when my mother had taken a stroke. I was the oldest boy and had to drop out. I went to a teacher I still know down in Baton Rouge. I took him a Muddy Waters record about the Louisiana blues and I told him I wanted to take music lessons.

Rick: He became your music teacher?

Buddy: He said, "I can teach you, but you have to get book one," and I pointed at the album and said, "No, this is book one," which was Louisiana blues on a 78, and he said, "I can't teach you," and I said, "Well, then you can't teach me!"

Him and I laugh about that now every time I see him. His name is Bob Johnson and now he says, "I'm glad you didn't listen to me!"

Rick: You ended up in Chicago.

Buddy: I went on to Chicago and met Muddy and them and finally started making records. And I still don't know how to read or write music. I don't know if I'd be a blues musician if I'd learn that - probably would have led me in a different direction.

When I went to Chicago a lot of great guitar players, jazz and blues guitar players, would tell me that I needed to learn this scale and that, to know this different stuff. It was crackin' me up.

Every time I had that conversation I'd then go watch Muddy and them play and I'd say, I don't need a scale. I just need the heart and mind and soul to do what they was doing.

Related Links

Buddy Guy's Legends
The Birchmere
2005 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony