Not to be missed: Buddy Guy - The Sting 1992 WHCN-FM Broadcast (Bootleg)

Size: 143 MB
Birate: 320
mp3
Tape Found in a Trashcan in NY, 1996
Some Artwork 

Buddy Guy American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist Guy provided the bridge between the electric Chicago blues sound of the late 1950’s and the guitardriven rock music of the late 1960’s. 

Born: July 30, 1936; Lettsworth, Louisiana Also known as: George Guy (full name) 

The Life George “Buddy” Guy was born to a family of sharecroppers in rural Louisiana. When he was not in school, he worked on the farm, plowing with a mule or picking cotton. He began playing guitar at roadhouses with local bands in his teens, and he decided to move to Chicago, at that time the center of blues music, in 1957. 

Guy created showcases for live music in Chicago, when in 1972 he bought a blues bar called the Checkerboard, which remained open until 1985. In 1989 he opened Buddy Guy’s Legends, a premier venue for live blues music in downtown Chicago. He had six children with his first wife, Joanne, and two more with his second wife, Jennifer.

Guy has won five Grammy Awards, more than thirty W. C. Handy Awards for blues music, and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005 by Eric Clapton and B. B. King. The Music Guy’s life might stand as a model for the development of blues music in America: He began playing the blues in the rural South, he perfected his craft in Chicago, and he found belated recognition when he was “discovered” by rock musicians and introduced by them to a mainstream popular audience. Early Works. Guy had recorded a demo at a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, radio station before coming to Chicago, and he produced a handful of singles for Cobra Records (released by Artistic Records) after winning a battle of the bands. 

However, he made his early reputation with Chess Records. Although Guy recorded forty-seven songs under his own name while under contract to Chess Records from 1960 to 1967, the label showed no interest in releasing an album, perceiving him primarily as a versatile session guitarist who could play behind its more established stars, such as Muddy Waters and Howlin’Wolf. Even when Guy was allowed to record his own music, Leonard Chess, a founder of Chess Records, insisted that Guy play traditional blues rather than the sort of unrestrained “noise” on guitar that was the trademark of his explosive live shows. 

Tape Found in a Trash can in NY, 1996 :-)

An innovative guitarist, Guy was also a flamboyant showman, playing the guitar behind his back and with his teeth (techniques borrowed by Jimi Hendrix), hanging from rafters by his knees, and using long guitar cords that allowed him to walk out into the crowd as he played. When bands such as Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Led Zeppelin began selling millions of albums featuring extended feedback-drenched guitar solos, Chess reportedly went to Guy, bent over, and said, “Kick me!” Chess offered to let Guy record his own style of music, but too late–Guy had just signed a contract with Vanguard Records that offered him artistic control, though none of the albums he recorded with Vanguard were completely successful. 

While his recorded output remained frustratingly uneven, Guy made his reputation with his live performances, touring as a solo artist and with harmonica player Junior Wells (recording with Wells as Friendly Chap on the classic "Hoodoo Man Blues" [1965] to avoid contractual conflicts), as a lead-in act with the Rolling Stones, and in appearances with such famous disciples as Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Stone Crazy! The first full-length recording that accurately represented Guy’s style was Stone Crazy!, recorded in one session while he was on a tour of France and released in America in 1981 by Alligator Records. 

(Remarkably, he had recorded a full album backing up Junior Wells, Pleading the Blues [1979], on the same day.) The opening track of Stone Crazy!, Guy’s “I Smell a Rat,” exemplified the freedom he had always needed: The song ran more than nine minutes, and it opened with a guitar solo extending more than two minutes before the first lyrics were sung, an approach that would never have been allowed by traditional blues labels, which had always followed the Chess formula of three-minute songs suitable for radio play. Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues. 

Guy signed with Silvertone Records in 1990, and he finally achieved his first unalloyed successes with both critics and fans, resurrecting his career and earning him his first Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Now well into his fifties, he had finally begun the richest and most productive period of his career, and he would win the same Grammy Award in 1993, for Feels Like Rain, and in 1995, for Slippin’ In. Guy would collect additional Grammy Awards for Best Rock Instrumental Performance (1996, for the Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute “SRV Shuffle”) and for Best Traditional Blues Album (2003, for Blues Singer). 

Can’t Quit the Blues. This definitive careerspanning three-album boxed set, which surveys the first fifty years of Guy’s music, beginning with his 1957 demo for Ace Records, was released to coincide with his seventieth birthday. Guy’s sporadic and inconsistent recording history, mostly with small record companies, had made it extraordinarily difficult for fans to obtain his earlier works, and these compact discs address that need. Musical Legacy Guy unleashed the full potential of the electric guitar, establishing it as the distinctive lead instrument for most rock and blues music.

Hewas twenty years younger than bluesmen such as Muddy Waters and Howlin’Wolf, from whom he had learned his craft, and he became an elder statesman for the rock musicians who would follow him. Guy found himself in the unusual position of being both a living symbol of the classic blues tradition and a restless innovator whose interests extended that tradition. He broadened the range and appeal of the blues while remaining true to its fundamental sound and emotional resonance. Among the notable guitarists who have acknowledged Guy’s influence are Hendrix, Clapton, Vaughan, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Robert Cray, and John Mayer.

For almost 50 years, Guy has performed flamboyant live concerts of energetic blues and blues rock, predating the 1960s blues rockers. As a musician, he had a fundamental impact on the blues and on rock and roll, influencing a new generation of artists.

Buddy Guy has been called the bridge between the blues and rock and roll. He is one of the historic links between Chicago electric blues pioneers Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and popular musicians like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page as well as later revivalists like Stevie Ray Vaughan. Vaughan stated that, "Without Buddy Guy, there would be no Stevie Ray Vaughan." Guitarist magazine observed:

Without Buddy Guy, the blues, not to mention rock as we know it, might be a heckuva lot less interesting today. Take the blues out of contemporary rock music—or pop, jazz and funk for that matter—and what you have left is a wholly spineless affair. A tasteless stew. Makes you shudder to think about it ..

In addition, Guy's pathfinding guitar techniques also contributed greatly to rock and roll music. His guitar playing was loud and aggressive; used pioneering distortion and feedback techniques; employed longer solos; had shifts of volume and texture; and was driven by emotion and impulse. These lessons were eagerly learned and applied by the new wave of 1960s British artists and later became basic attributes of blues-rock music and its offspring, hard rock and heavy metal music. Jeff Beck realized in the early 1960s: "I didn't know a Strat could sound like that—until I heard Buddy's tracks on the Blues From Big Bill's Copa Cabana album" (reissue of 1963 Folk Festival Of The Blues album) and "It was the total manic abandon in Buddy's solos. They broke all boundaries. I just thought, this is more like it! Also, his solos weren't restricted to a three-minute pop format; they were long and really developed."

Clapton has stated that he got the idea for a blues-rock power trio while watching Buddy Guy's trio perform in England in 1965. Clapton later formed the rock band Cream, which was "the first rock supergroup to become superstars" and was also "the first top group to truly exploit the power-trio format, in the process laying the foundation for much blues-rock and hard rock of the 1960s and 1970s."[where?]

Eric Clapton said "Buddy Guy was to me what Elvis was for others." Clapton said in a 1985 Musician magazine article that "Buddy Guy is by far and without a doubt the best guitar player alive...if you see him in person, the way he plays is beyond anyone. Total freedom of spirit, I guess. He really changed the course of rock and roll blues."

Recalls Guy: "Eric Clapton and I are the best of friends and I like the tune "Strange Brew" and we were sitting and having a drink one day and I said 'Man, that "Strange Brew" ... you just cracked me up with that note.' And he said 'You should...cause it's your licks ...' " As soon as Clapton completed his famous Derek & the Dominos sessions in October 1970, he co-produced (with Ahmet Ertegün and Tom Dowd) the Buddy Guy & Junior Wells Play The Blues album with Guy's longtime harp and vocal compatriot, Junior Wells. The record, released in 1972, is regarded by some critics as among the finest electric blues recordings of the modern era.

In recognition of Guy's influence on Hendrix's career, the Hendrix family invited Buddy Guy to headline all-star casts at several Jimi Hendrix tribute concerts they organized in recent years, "calling on a legend to celebrate a legend." Jimi Hendrix himself once said that "Heaven is lying at Buddy Guy’s feet while listening to him play guitar."

Songs such as "Red House", "Voodoo Chile" and "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" partly came from the sonic world that Buddy Guy helped to create. According to the Fender Players' Club: "Almost ten years before Jimi Hendrix would electrify the rock world with his high-voltage voodoo blues, Buddy Guy was shocking juke joint patrons in Baton Rouge with his own brand of high-octane blues. Ironically, when Buddy’s playing technique and flamboyant showmanship were later revealed to crossover audiences in the late Sixties, it was erroneously assumed that he was imitating Hendrix." (In 1993, Guy covered "Red House" on Stone Free: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix.)

Stevie Ray Vaughan once declared that Buddy Guy "plays from a place that I've never heard anyone play." Vaughan continued:

Buddy can go from one end of the spectrum to another. He can play quieter than anybody I've ever heard, or wilder and louder than anybody I've ever heard. I play pretty loud a lot of times, but Buddy's tones are incredible. He pulls such emotion out of so little volume. Buddy just has this cool feel to everything he does. And when he sings, it's just compounded. Girls fall over and sweat and die! Every once in a while I get the chance to play with Buddy, and he gets me every time, because we could try to go to Mars on guitars but then he'll start singing, sing a couple of lines, and then stick the mike in front of me! What are you gonna do? What is a person gonna do?!
Jeff Beck affirmed:

Geez, you can't forget Buddy Guy. He transcended blues and started becoming theater. It was high art, kind of like drama theater when he played, you know. He was playing behind his head long before Hendrix. I once saw him throw the guitar up in the air and catch it in the same chord.

Jeff Beck recalled the night he and Stevie Ray Vaughan jammed with Guy at Buddy Guy's Legends club in Chicago: "That was just the most incredible stuff I ever heard in my life. The three of us all jammed and it was so thrilling. That is as close you can come to the heart of the blues."

According to Jimmy Page:

"Buddy Guy is an absolute monster" and "There were a number of albums that everybody got tuned into in the early days. There was one in particular called, I think, American Folk Festival Of The Blues, which featured Buddy Guy. He just astounded everybody."

Singer-songwriter and guitarist John Mayer, who has performed with Guy on numerous occasions (including with Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival and on PBS's Soundstage) and collaborated with him on Guy's 2005 album Bring 'Em In, cited on several occasions that Buddy Guy was one of his top influences.

Former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman:

"Guitar Legends do not come any better than Buddy Guy. He is feted by his peers and loved by his fans for his ability to make the guitar both talk and cry the blues. Such is Buddy's mastery of the guitar that there is virtually no guitarist that he cannot imitate."

Guy has opened for the Rolling Stones on numerous tours since the early 1970s. Slash: "Buddy Guy is the perfect combination of R&B and hardcore rock and roll." ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons: "He (Buddy Guy) ain't no trickster. He may appear surprised by his own instant ability but, clearly, he knows what's up."

Guy was a judge for the 6th and 8th annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists.

Guy appeared and performed in an episode of the popular children's show, Jack's Big Music Show, as the "King of Swing". Guy has influenced the styles of subsequent artists such as Reggie Sears and Jesse Marchant of JBM.

On February 21, 2012, Guy performed in concert at the White House for President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle. During the finale of the concert Guy successfully encouraged the President to sing a few bars of "Sweet Home Chicago"

Buddy Guy - The Sting
WHCN-FM broadcast January 1992  
New Britian, Connecticut, USA

01. Mary Had a Little Lamb 05:54
02. I Just Wanna Make Love To You 07:09
03. I'll Play the Blues For You 04:25
04. Everything's Gonna Be Alright 09:59
05. Voodoo Chile 01:59
06. Hoochie Coochie Man 04:18
07. Cold Shot 00:37
08. Strange Brew > Mustang Sally 10:49
09. Knock On Wood 16:44
10. DJ Outro 00:36

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