walking upstream…
Buddy Guy
photo: tom beetz · cc by 2.0 ↗Buddy Guy
sourcesWikipedia · Guitar Player · Mississippi Blues Trail
George 'Buddy' Guy grew up on a sharecropping farm outside Lettsworth, Louisiana, rigging his first guitar from wire strung across a screen door before he ever touched a real one. He taught himself off Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker records and off the memory of a wild Guitar Slim show in Baton Rouge, absorbing the instrument and the theater of the blues together. Arriving in Chicago in 1957 hungry and unknown, he was taken in by Muddy Waters and became a first-call session guitarist at Chess Records, cutting the raw, distorted 'First Time I Met the Blues' in 1960. His feedback-drenched, unpredictable style was often judged too wild for Chess's polished house sound, but it quietly rewired rock guitar through disciples like Hendrix, Clapton, and Vaughan, long before 1991's 'Damn Right, I've Got the Blues' finally made Guy a star in his own right.
the sound in question
1991
Damn Right, I've Got the BluesBuddy Guy
walk the tributaries ↓
Muddy Waters1950s · Chicago blues / Electric blues
Guy has said he walked into a guitar lesson as a kid, rejected the teacher's scales, and insisted on learning to play like the Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker records he owned instead. After arriving in Chicago in 1957, he came under Waters's direct wing — Waters fed him a bologna sandwich the night they met and let him sit in on sessions, which Guy has described as 'class': he'd watch from a corner and pick up whatever he could. It shows up as slide-inflected phrasing and full-throated vocal delivery, translated onto amplified, heavily bent single-string lines.
listen: upstream & heresource: Guitar Player ↗
1950
Louisiana BluesMuddy Waters
1960
First Time I Met the BluesBuddy Guy
listen forCompare Waters's 'Louisiana Blues' with Guy's Chess debut 'First Time I Met the Blues' — both ride a slow, heavy shuffle where the vocal strains against a guitar tone thickened with amplifier grit, more felt than technically clean.
Guitar Slim1950s · Rhythm and blues / Electric blues / New Orleans blues
Guy has put the split plainly: 'I always said I want to play like B.B. King but I damn sure want to act like Guitar Slim, because he got your attention.' He saw Slim perform in Baton Rouge, strutting through the crowd in a red suit on a guitar cord reportedly 350 feet long, and the showmanship and the guitar tone traveled together — Guy's pioneering use of amplifier distortion and feedback, and a stage act built on sudden shock and release, both trace back to that night.
listen: upstream & here
1953
The Things That I Used to DoGuitar Slim
1968
Mary Had a Little LambBuddy Guy
listen forPlay 'The Things That I Used to Do' next to Guy's 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' — both open deceptively soft before detonating into scorching, overdriven guitar that yanks the listener's attention exactly the way Slim intended.
John Lee Hooker1950s · Delta blues / Electric blues / Boogie
Guy has recalled owning a John Lee Hooker record as a teenager in rural Louisiana and being so taken with its droning, hypnotic sound that he carried a homemade two-string guitar everywhere he went, sleeping with it while trying to learn the blues. That fascination surfaces in Guy's own one-chord vamps as an interest in rhythm and repetition over chord movement — the guitar used as a talking, stomping pulse rather than a harmony instrument.
listen: upstream & heresource: Guitar Player ↗
1948
Boogie Chillen'John Lee Hooker
1967
Buddy's GrooveBuddy Guy
listen forSet Hooker's 'Boogie Chillen'' against Guy's 'Buddy's Groove' — both lock onto a single droning riff and simply ride it, a hypnotic groove built from repetition and grit rather than chord changes.