Buddy Guy "Rhythm & Blues"

I've always found myself drawn to Chicago-styled blues and Mr. Guy is the primary cause.  Multiple Grammy wins, R&R HOF inductee, disciples named Clapton, Beck & Vaughan...you get the picture.  I think it was 1992 when the NARM convention was in town and MTV's Unplugged series was in high gear.  One event was held in a Peaches record store where numerous artists (Sonia Dada, Gin Blossoms, etc.) played short, acoustic sets and then sat down with one of the Unplugged VJs for an interview (what was her name.......straight brown hair, dorky glasses, massive eclipse-causing ass....Kennedy!).  The artist lineup was supposed to be a secret but BKP and I had heard that Buddy Guy was closing the event, so fully boozed up we planted ourselves in the front of the area (no stage, just a 150 sq. ft. open floor space) where the artists had been performing and waited.  There were some concerned faces going back and forth through the curtain (sheet) behind the area and we knew something was amiss.  Then a roadie rolls out an amp from the back and announces, "Mr. Guy doesn't do unplugged," powered that puppy up and BG stepped through the curtain, attached himself to the speaker and proceeded to tear Kennedy and her MTV Unplugged brethren a bigger asshole than they already had, all just 15 feet in front of us!  Yeah, that was fun...

Now in his 48th year of recording music, BG dropped this double CD in the summer of last year.  I picked it up about six weeks later but sat on it for nearly three months because of its length.  I was embarrassed for waiting so long when I realized that a simple flush of the track with Kid Rock would allow for the rest to fit one disc.  The 77 minutes remaining are incredible for someone at the age of 76.  Sure, his voice is a little shaky at times (mostly on the Rhythm/soul disc), not as powerful as in his younger years, and there are a couple of guitar notes that are slightly off, but this is still a 9 on a 10-scale record. 

Not much in the way of videos out there in support of this record.  He's been doing a month-long residency at his Legends club on Wabash all month, so hopefully something comes from that.  Here's a VEVO (just wait out the 15-second ad...the man should be paid) for the opening track which features instrumentation not normally associated with BG...



Horns, that is, Muscle Shoals Horns, to be exact.  Also found on three other tracks.  I loved that there were 279 "thumbs up" and zero down on that video.  Since I've mentioned that I jettisoned the track featuring Kid Rock (the man hasn't had an original musical idea in years), other guest artists remaining were Beth Hart, Keith Urban (it works, too), up-and-coming Gary Clark, Jr., and the guys from Aerosmith.  BG actually sounds better than Mr. Tyler on their track. 

I made a note to check the songwriting and production credits since their were so many lyrical references to the city of Chicago and growing older ("...but I'm young at heart"), knowing that BG isn't exactly prolific with the pen.  He does have about five co-writing mentions, but the name that kept popping up was Tom Hambridge.  The name set off a soft chiseling sound deep in the recesses of my cobweb-covered musical brain chamber but nothing was shaken loose.  Later on in another notation, I suggested to myself that I may have heard some Roy Buchanan in a segment or two.  Sometimes I scare myself.  Tom Hambridge was the drummer and singer for Roy Buchanan's band in Roy's final years.  Hambridge later wrote & played some "hits" for Susan Tedeschi's Grammy-nominated 1998 debut, co-producing with the lady.  He's been involved with Mr. Guy on his recent Grammy-recognized blues recordings.

What else is there to say?  This is a great album.  How it wasn't nominated for a Grammy this year could only be due to the combined blues category.  Shame, shame, shame...probably won't watch the damn show Sunday...

I'm closing with a track that closely resembles a statement I've made for decades, "Why do they call it Blues when it makes me so happy?"