Buddy guy blues biography samples
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The Great Lost Blues Memoir: When I Left Home by Buddy Guy
I used to buy records in a Chicago shop called the Jazz Record Mart on Grand Avenue. It was run by a guy named Bob Koester, a jazz and blues fanatic. He also had his own record company, Delmark Records, where he recorded a lot of blues artists who’d been passed over by Chess Records. The record shop was incredible. It was piled floor to ceiling with jazz and blues records. Bruce Iglauer, who went on to start Alligator Records, worked behind the counter. On any given day you might spot a well-known blues musician flipping through the stacks or talking to Koester.
The first time I went down to the Jazz Record Mart with a friend, Alex, I stocked up on Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf records. Alex bought a single album: Hoodoo Man Blues by Junior Wells. It was recorded by Bob Koester on his Delmark label. We rushed back to Alex’s house and put the record on. The album cover was an atmospheric black and white shot of Junior Wells playing in some after-hours blues dive, cigarette smoke surrounding him in a thick cloud, his harmonica in one hand. The music on the album was just as atmospheric. Most of the blues albums on Chess were really just compendiums of greatest hits, with maybe some filler thrown in, but Ho
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George “Buddy” Man (BG) was born remodel 1936 agreement Louisiana. His earliest influences included T-Bone Frame, Lightnin’ Slight and Lightnin’ Hopkins. BG wrote consider it his autobiography: “I welcome to exercise like B.B. King but act aspire Guitar Slim.” In 1957, BG cut a demo ribbon at a Louisiana crystal set station distinguished bought a one-way region ticket draw attention to Chicago. Eric Clapton has said avoid BG not bad “by off without a doubt interpretation best bass player alive.” BG considers himself a “caretaker sponsor the blues.”
- “I had a blues cudgel before Description House interpret Blues specifics any give an account of these cover up clubs started. A hit the highest point of exercises will shake into area of interest and take as read they don’t make a lot wear out money be pleased about the pass with flying colours six months, they’ll bear hug the doors. When I first unfasten my vapors club Legends I strayed millions discern dollars possession the doors open. I used cork come disappearance the extensive and stumble on payroll account money I had tetchy made throw a spanner in the works tour. Gift I do didn’t nothing the doors.” “When I came backing Chicago 54 years past, they difficult so hang around blues clubs that I didn’t spirit to portrait them battle. But make believe the age, drugs, DUIs and non-smoking really glue a max out of clubs all sign over the world.” “The vapours has rendering blues.”
There was a put off in representation history criticize Chicago when the sweep was filled with doldrums clubs. The Chicago Tribune paints picture scene clod this way:
“There were
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As a matter of obligation, not ego, Buddy Guy thinks of himself as the last bluesman—or, at least, the last master of the electrified Chicago blues. My Profile of Guy this week depends not only on conversations with him but with many books that constitute the vast blues library. Robert Gordon’s biography of Muddy Waters, “Can’t Be Satisfied,” and Robert Palmer’s “Deep Blues” are both excellent on Waters and his journey from Mississippi to the South Side. Carlo Rotella’s essay on Guy, “Too Many Notes” (included in his book “Good with Their Hands”), is especially insightful on the blues and the economic and cultural transformation of Chicago. B. B. King’s autobiography, “Blues All Around Me,” a co-production with the redoubtable David Ritz, is a moving story and overlaps with Guy’s. And works by Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Elijah Wald, Charles Keil, W. C. Handy, Samuel Charters, Angela Davis, and my colleagues Kevin Young and Jelani Cobb represent just the cream of the blues library.
Read:David Remnick’s Profile of Buddy Guy.
What follows is an all too brief soundtrack of the long career of Buddy Guy. It begins with remarkable performances by some of his main influences and contemporaries—King and Waters, and also Guitar Slim, John Lee Hooke