Guy, Buddy 1936–
Buddy Guy 1936–
Guitarist
George “Buddy” Guy, hailed by Eric Clapton in Musician magazine as “the greatest guitar player alive,” Guy remains as one of the last links to a blues tradition that began before Robert Johnson and continued most notably through Muddy Waters and other Chicago blues players. Though the legendary bluesman is internationally famous today, he began his life as a sharecropper’s son. Today Guy owns a mansion outside of Chicago where he presides over his own blues club in his adopted home town, but the middle child of the five children of Sam and Isabell Guy began his life picking cotton.
Guy was born in Lettsworth, Louisiana on July 30,1936. Life was difficult in rural Louisiana especially when the weather did not cooperate and the cotton harvest was poor. To help feed his family Guy fished and hunted raccoon, muskrat, and possum. His mother had a vegetable garden and grew food for the family in the summer and made it last all the way through the winter. Guy worked on his family’s farm, but on Saturdays he would pick cotton for a half day to earn money for himself.
From the beginning Guy spent his hard-earned money on the blues by sending away for old 78s of Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker. Guy made his first guitar out of old paint cans and wire from the front screen door. When his father got tired of all the mosquitoes that came into the house, he bought his son an old acoustic guitar with only two strings on it. Soon Guy was able to pick out a passable version of Hooker’s “Boogie Chillen.” The first time he heard an electric guitar occurred when a man who was passing through town playing for change plugged in his amp in front of a local store. Guy threw the man his 35 cents allowance and the rest was history.
As many kids his age were forced to do in his circumstances, Guy quit high school to work—pumping gas and washing cars in Baton Rouge. It was at the gas station that Guy got his introduction to show business. A local bandleader, John “Big Poppa” Tilley, heard of a young man who was changing tires at the local service station who could play guitar. The 300-pound Tilley brought his guitar and amp to the pumps, and Guy got an audition right there. Guy roared through a rendition of Eddie “Guitar Slim” Jones’s version of “Things I Used To Do.” Not only did the playing attract a crowd of people who wanted to buy gas, but Tilley hired Guy on the spot.
At a Glance…
Born George Guy on July 30, 1936 in Lettsworth, LA; parents: Sam (a sharecropper) and Isabell Guy.
Career: Blues guitarist Went to Chicago, 1957; signed with Cobra Records and cut two singles, 1958; signed with Chess Records where he recorded numerous singles, including “Stone Crazy” which became a number 12 R&B record; became a valued session musician for Chess artists such as Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, and Howlin’ Wolf among others, 1960-67; released one album, A Man and His Blues, 1968; began a long association with harmonica player Junior Wells, 1970s; owner of a blues club, the Checkerboard Lounge, 1972-83; released breakthrough album, Damn Right I’ve Got The Blues, 1990; owner of another blues club, Legends, 1989-.
Awards: Grammy Award for Best Blues Album of the Year for “Damn Right I’ve Got The Blues,” 1990, and for “Feels Like Rain,” 1992; Billboard’s Century Award for lifetime achievement, 1993.
Addresses: Home — Chicago, IL. Office- Legends, 754 South Wabash, Chicago, IL 60605.
After a dubious beginning in which Tilley fired the shy, nervous young player because he would not face the crowd, Guy became a regular with the band. By this time he had secured a job as a custodian at Louisiana State University. He had all but given up on the idea of being a professional musician. His mother, however, disagreed with her son’s assessment of his abilities. Isabell, who was recovering from a stroke, regained her ability to speak and told him that he was good enough to be a professional but that Baton Rouge was not the place where he could follow his dream. With the help of a local disc jockey, Guy made two demos—“The Way You’ve Been Treating Me” and “Baby, Don’t You Wanna Come Home.” Guy sent them to the preeminent blues label of the day, Chess Records in Chicago, sure that he would be a star.
On to Chicago
On September 27, 1957 with his two recordings in hand, his Gibson Les Paul guitar, and $500, Guy bought a oneway train ticket to Chicago to find Leonard Chess, owner of Chess Records. He knew a friend of his sisters in Chicago but spent most of his time wandering the streets day and night, trying to work up the courage to make an appearance at Chess Records. When he finally did show up, he found that no one had listened to the demos he had sent and that an unknown guitarist could not just walk in off the street for a meeting with Leonard or his brother Phil Chess.
After spending another few months in Chicago unsuccessfully looking for work or an opportunity to play, Guy was down to his last dime ready to call home for train fare back to Louisiana. He met a man purely by chance who guided him to the 708 Club, a local blues hot spot. When the young man with the guitar walked in, he found none other than Chicago blues legend Otis Rush presiding over a jam session. Rush brought him up on the stage and Guy, near swooning from hunger, plugged in his guitar and released all of his frustration and loneliness. After a short but spectacular set, which included “Things I Used To Do” and “Further On Up The Road,” Guy walked off the stage and out of the bar certain that he had performed his swan song in Chicago.
But word of his performance had spread. Several days later a man approached him on the street and introduced himself as “Mud.” Guy was dumbfounded, because the man turned out to be blues icon Muddy Waters. Waters had heard about the young guitarist’s epic impromptu performance; besides feeding the starving young man, Waters introduced him to some of the most important people on the Chicago blues scene.
Guy was suddenly appearing in top flight blues guitar competitions with other young guitarists such as Earl Hooker, Magic Sam, and even B. B. King in which first prize was a bottle of whiskey. With such talent, Guy knew he had to find a way to distinguish himself. He found his trademark one night at the Blue Flame club while Otis Rush and Magic Sam were on stage. Guy told Timothy White of Billboard what happened: “I got a new extra-long cord, and I told this fella who was with me to take the wire, unroll it, and bring his end all the way to the stage where Magic and Otis were. I would hide in the bathroom, and when they call my name, he’d jump up and plug me in!”
Guy was introduced, but instead of appearing on stage he came out of the back of the club ripping through his solo at maximum volume. He walked through the stunned crowd, out the front door of the Blue Flame, and then back up to the stage to join the other musicians. The stunt worked so well that Guy made his stroll through the crowd a mainstay of his show for the next forty years.
Signed with Chess
In 1958 Guy signed with Cobra Record and cut two singles. The next year Cobra went under, and this time it was Chess Records that came looking for him. He signed with Leonard Chess in 1960 and became a noted session musician while recording his own singles. Besides such singles as “Stone Crazy” which became a number 12 Billboard R&B record, Guy played with Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf, Koko Taylor and others.
In an interview conducted with John Lee Hooker with Jas Obrecht of Guitar Player, Guy talked about his attitude when playing as a session musician with some of the masters: “When I got to Chicago, there were so many great guitarists around that I went to work a regular job. When I saw these people play, I just knew that there was no way I had a chance. I just wanted to meet these great musicians, and I woke up and they was askin’ me to play with them. One thing helped me a lot was I was a good listener, and if they would ask me to play with them, I didn’t go tell John Lee or Muddy Waters or the Howlin’ Wolf or Walter what to play…. When I went into the studio with them, I got in the corner and said, ‘I‘m at school now. It’s time for me to learn my lesson, not teach.’”
Guy even appeared on an acoustic record of Muddy Waters, Folk Singer. When Leonard Chess objected to the electric guitarist being included on an acoustic album, Waters told the record label owner to “shut up and sit down.” Guy stayed with Chess until 1967, but the company released only one album, A Man & His Blues, in 1968.
Though Guy received a measure of success and notoriety in Chicago, few outside the blues capital of the world knew about him. But those that did know his style were devoted and influential. Jimi Hendrix used to tape Guy’s concerts, and in trips to England he first met Clapton and Jeff Beck in the sixties. Clapton co-produced Guy’s collaboration with harmonica legend Junior Wells in 1972, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells Play the Blues, and the artist was instrumental in Guy’s later ascent to stardom. Guy continued to tour, most of the time without a recording contract, though he did release a live album, Stone Crazy, of a performance in France in 1978. In 1972 he opened a blues club in Chicago, the Checkerboard Lounge, which he ran until 1983. His days as a club owner resumed when he opened another Chicago blues club, Legends, in 1989.
A Breakthrough Year
In 1990 Guy was invited by Clapton to be part of his historic string of London’s Royal Albert Hall concerts. The concerts were recorded on Clapton’s 24 Nights album, and suddenly everyone wanted to know who Buddy Guy was. After the appearance in England, Guy returned there in 1990 with a new recording contract with Silvertone to record “Damn Right, I’ve Got The Blues.”
After all those years of playing in anonymity Guy wanted this album to be just right. He was resolved to capture the Buddy Guy live sound that he was never able to or allowed to capture before. He told Ed Enright of Downbeat about the negotiations leading up to the groundbreaking recording: “They told me, ‘We’d like to sign you, and we would want to support you.’ And I said, ‘Well, I really want to play Buddy Guy, because I never had the chance to play Buddy Guy before. I want you to hear that, because I’m a Johnny Come Later now; everybody else says these are Buddy Guy licks, and Buddy Guy has never played them himself.’ They said, ‘We’re not going to tell you what to play, just give you a good supporting band. Won’t you come to London and make this session?’ And I said, ‘Thank you, I’ll sign.’”
Damn Right I’ve Got The Blues included guest appearances from Clapton, Beck, and Mark Knopfler and went on to receive a Grammy. The album reached gold record status in Canada, New Zealand, and in England, and made Guy a star on the international blues scene. A book with the same title quickly followed which featured interviews with Wells, Clapton, Beck, Willy Dixon, Robert Cray, and Stevie Ray Vaughn.
Guy followed up his hit record with Feels Like Rain in 1992. For his new album Guy wanted to make more of an ambitious statement. He told Jim Washburn of The Los Angeles Times that he wanted a wider audience: “We got down in the alley on it, but also we were trying to get some of the bigger radio stations that do not play Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf to hopefully feel that maybe some of it would fit on their station… I told myself if I get slick enough, they might play it on this big rock station. Then, if a kid buys the album, he’ll find (Waters’) “Nineteen Years Old” right next to that song.”
Guy repeated the success of his previous album including the Grammy Award for Best Blues Album of the Year. The following year Billboard presented Guy with its highest honor, the Century Award for lifetime achievement. The man who went almost thirteen years without a recording contract was now recording soundtracks and going on tour with the Saturday Night Live Band. His club, Legends, which he had struggled at times to keep open as so many other blues clubs closed, was finally secured as a place where new blues talent could develop just as the master did. Though he recorded another successful album, Slippin In, and continues to tour around the world, Guy never strays far from his Chicago home and Legends, often popping in to the bar to mingle with the crowd and see the local talent. Guy told Enright of Downbeat that he will always remember where he came from: “Sometimes entertainers get so big, they have to isolate themselves. Please believe me, I don’t ever want to get like that. I think that’s the time I would start thinkin’ maybe I should quit playin’. Because I would miss people.”
Sources
Books
Contemporary Musicians, Volume 4. Gale Research, 1990.
Periodicals
Billboard, December 4, 1993.
Downbeat, February 1995.
Guitar Player, June 1996.
The Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1993.
Online
Biography Resource Center, Gale, 2001, http://www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC.
—Michael J. Watkins
Guy, Buddy
Buddy Guy
Blues guitarist
“Buddy Guy,” declared legendary British guitarist Eric Clapton in Musician magazine, “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.” A musician bred in the purest traditions of American blues, Guy may be the best-kept secret in the music world. While a performer like Clapton could probably maintain a constant soldout tour before huge arena crowds and has record companies beating down his door, Guy has not recorded a new album in more than twelve years and plays mostly in nightclubs before small crowds of intensely devoted fans.
Despite the respect he enjoys among his musical peers, Clapton being just one of his many notable devotees, Guy is not a household name, much less a wealthy, major recording star. He still struggles to make ends meet financially as well, but all of this is due in most part to the nature of Buddy Guy, to his own purist’s devotion to the blues in general, and specifically to the blues as he wants to play it. He is true to himself first, and the result is a man completely focused on making music on his own terms. “I guess this is why I don’t have a record company giving me a shot at it now,” Guy told Guitar Player magazine, “because I really wants to be Buddy Guy. I wants to play the things that never came out of me that I know I have. And if I get that opportunity next time I go into the studio, I’m going to give it. If it sells, fine. If it don’t, I will please myself inside because I know what I can do, and I’m not going to be shy about it anymore. I don’t want anybody teaching me how to play when the tapes are rolling; I’ve had that happen to me a lot in the past. I’ve got to play what I already know.”
Born in Lettsworth, Louisiana, in 1936 and raised in nearby Baton Rouge, Guy began picking on an acoustic guitar as a teenager, emulating such southern blues players as Lightnin’ Slim and Guitar Slim, who have had a profound effect on Guy’s stage act to this day. Of Guitar Slim, Guy told Guitar Player’s Dan Forte: “He wouldn’t just stand there and play. He used to have a sort of heavy-set guy, and he’d play the guitar with this long 150-foot cord—which I have one now—and this guy would pick him up on his shoulders and walk him all through the crowd while he played. I was about 14 years old then—goosebumps just jumpin’ all over me!” But times were tough in Louisiana in the 1950s, so Guy decided to take his best shot at Chicago, the home of the blues and at that time the stomping grounds of such greats as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Little Walter.
But Chicago, too, was hard on the broke, 21-year-old Guy—he was about to call his mother for the bus fare back home when he was rescued by none other than Muddy Waters himself. Shy and uncertain of his talent, Guy was offered an audition at the famous 708 Club, where he was spotted by Waters: “I was going on my third day without eating in Chicago, trying to borrow a dime to call my mom to get back to Louisiana,” he told Guitar Player. “And Muddy Waters bought me a salami sandwich and put me in the back of his 1958 Chevy station wagon. He said, ‘You’re hungry, and I know it.’ And talking to Muddy Waters, I wasn’t hungry anymore; I was full just for him to say, ‘Hey.’ I was so overjoyed about it, my stomach wasn’t cramping anymore. I told him that, and Muddy said, ‘Get in the goddamn car.’”
Guy soon found out that this was the way of the Chicago blues fraternity—tough, but fair. Like a rookie ballplayer, Guy found himself having to prove what he could do in the very presence of his idols, even in competition against them in head-to-head “guitar battles,” where he unleashed his trademark, hurricanelike Buddy Guy stage show. “So I just walked out there with this 150-foot cord,” he told Forte in Guitar Player, “and it was snowing, and I just went straight on out the door. The next day the news media was there, wanting to know who I was…. When I came to Chicago, most guitar players in town did not stand up to play…. I stood up and played to make everybody know me. I started
For the Record…
Born Buddy Guy, 1936(?), in Lettsworth, Louisiana; son of a sharecropper.
Began playing guitar as a teenager in Baton Rouge, La.; moved to Chicago at age twenty-one; distinguished himself in “guitar battles” in Chicago blues clubs, which led to work in bands backing Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Little Walter, late 1950s and early 1960s; began collaborating and performing with Junior Wells (blues harmonica), 1960s; recorded first solo album, 1968. Owner of blues club, the Checkerboard Lounge, Chicago, 1972-1983; has appeared on various blues recordings and at various blues festivals worldwide; owner of blues club, Legends, Chicago, 1989—.
kicking chairs off the stage when I went up there at the battles of the guitars. They were sittin’ there going, ‘Who the hell is that?’”
By the early 1960s Guy’s reputation in Chicago had become sufficient for him to find ample studio work. He recorded behind Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Sonny Boy Williamson at the blues mecca Chess Records, and he also found time to record numerous singles of his own. His first album, however, did not appear until 1968’s A Man & the Blues, and it became apparent at this stage that the true Buddy Guy sound was either impossible to capture on vinyl or was being confined by overzealous producers. Guy claims that the closest any recording has come to capturing his best can be heard on the live album Stone Crazy, recorded in 1978 in France.
The result, however frustrating for Guy, has been a blues purist’s dream: Guy has remained almost exclusively a stage act. He has to be seen to be believed. In the 1970s Guy began a long association with the great harmonica player Junior Wells, who, before meeting Guy, was having a hard time finding a band that could adequately back him. In 1972 Guy opened the Checkerboard Lounge in the heart of Chicago’s blues country, and his life then settled into something of a pattern. He is to this day a premier draw at top blues clubs and festivals, not only in the U.S. but around the world. He was a regular attraction at the Checkerboard Lounge until it closed in 1983, and in 1989 he opened a new club, Legends, on a street in Chicago that Guy was influential in having renamed “Muddy Waters Drive.”
At Legends, Guy has tried to recreate the feel of the old blues bars where he started his career; playing before a constantly evolving band that never rehearses, Guy, on any given night, will simply jump up on stage and take to heart the advice of his old mentors, who told him “Go get it, Buddy!” To some of his younger, more wellknown peers, like Clapton, Bill Wyman, Ron Wood, Joe Walsh, and Jimmy Vaughan, Guy has become a kind of guitar guru, a wise old man on a mountaintop who has remained true to his own vision and never compromised it. Though he is often compared to Jimi Hendrix, Guy recalls that Hendrix once stopped by one of his shows and told him that he, Hendrix, had learned a great deal from Guy.
But if the essence of the blues is in the wanting of something you can’t ever have, perhaps it is good that Guy has never had that big, popular crossover record he still dreams of. It is probable that many of the inimitable sounds that he creates can only be born of the feeling of hunger he had in his gut when Muddy Waters rescued him outside the 708 Club in Chicago that cold night in the 1950s. “A blues player like myself has so many ups and downs,” Guy told Jas Obrecht in Guitar Player, “more downs than ups,” but “I love it so much man, I even forgot what down is like. Even when I’m down, I think I’m up. If anybody in the business loves it better than me, they must eat it!”
Selected discography
Solo albums
A Man &The Blues, Vanguard.
Hold That Plane, Vanguard.
This Is Buddy Guy, Vanguard.
I Was Walking Through the Woods, Chess.
Left My Blues in San Francisco, Chess.
Buddy Guy, Chess.
First Time I Met The Blues, Chess Japan.
In the Beginning, Red Lightnin’.
The Dollar Done Fell, JSP.
D.J., Play My Blues, JSP.
Live at the Checkerboard Lounge, JSP.
Ten Blue Fingers, JSP.
Stone Crazy, Alligator.
Buddy Guy and Junior Wells
Buddy Guy and Junior Wells Play the Blues, Atco.
Drinkin’ TNT, Smokin’ Dynamite, Blind Pig.
The Original Blues Brothers, Intermedia.
Going Back, Isabel.
Live in Montreaux, Black & Blue.
Atlantic Blues: Chicago, Atlantic.
With Junior Wells
Hoodoo Man Blues, Delmark.
Southside Blues Jam, Delmark.
It’s My Life, Baby, Vanguard.
Chicago/The Blues/Today, Vol. 1, Vanguard.
Coming At You, Vanguard.
With Muddy Waters
Folk Singer, Chess.
Baby Please Don’t Go, Chess France.
The Super Duper Blues Band, Chess Japan.
Muddy Waters, Chess.
Also appears on numerous other recordings by Chess artists and on several Chess anthologies.
Sources
Books
Stambler, Irwin, The Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock, & Soul, St. Martin’s, 1977.
Periodicals
Guitar Player, April, 1987; April, 1990.
—David Collins
Guy, Buddy
BUDDY GUY
Born: George Guy; Lettsworth, Louisiana, 30 July 1936
Genre: Blues
Best-selling album since 1990: Damn Right, I've Got the Blues (1991)
Effervescent guitarist/vocalist Buddy Guy is a post–World War II blues pioneer who helped move blues into the electric guitar era, ultimately opening the door for the rock/blues explosion of the 1970s. One of the few remaining players with lineage to Chicago's blues heyday, Guy is an energetic ambassador who generously passes his music's culture down to others just as older blues-men passed theirs down to him. Guy's performance style is uniquely robust and many consider him the greatest living blues guitarist.
From Cotton Fields to Chicago Blues Clubs
Guy grew up in rural Louisiana. He taught himself to play guitar from listening to recordings of old bluesmen that he purchased with money he had earned from picking cotton. As a teenager, he moved to Baton Rouge and began playing gigs with local groups. He traveled to Chicago in 1957 and finally broke into the Chicago blues scene with the help of blues icon Muddy Waters who graciously took the talented guitarist under his wing. Soon Guy was in the mix with other hot blues players such as B.B. King, Otis Rush, and Magic Sam. In an effort to gain notoriety among Chicago's logjam of talented blues guitarists, Guy purchased the longest guitar chord possible—about 150 feet—and began wandering among the audience, even meandering outside the club and into the street while playing his ferocious guitar solos. Most guitarists of that time generally sat when they performed. Considered a consummate showman, Guy still incorporates the trademark guitar-playing stroll during his live shows.
On the strength of his guitar skills, Guy managed a record contract and became a notable studio musician, playing on records for many of the blues legends. He also recorded solo albums but they failed to catch the excitement generated by his live performances. In 1972 he formed an enduring musical alliance with harmonica great Junior Wells that lasted until 1993. Although blues is an American art form, Guy and most of his contemporaries went virtually unnoticed in the American music landscape, garnering much more attention overseas, particularly in London. In the 1970s, English rock/blues guitar giants Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, in addition to the Rolling Stones, all pointed to Guy as their major influence. Clapton asserted that Guy was the best guitar player in the world. American guitar superstars Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn also hailed Guy as a primary inspiration.
Acclaim and Appreciation
However, by the 1980s, Guy was having trouble securing a record label and survived mostly on the strength of his live shows. In 1990 Clapton asked Guy to perform with him at his Royal Albert Hall concerts in London. Guy's performance and appearance on Clapton's album of the concerts, 24 Nights, received enthusiastic acclaim and Silvertone Records offered Guy a recording contract. They released, Damn Right, I've Got the Blues (1991) and finally Guy was allowed to create in the studio a sound that matched the zeal of his live performances. The Grammy Award–winning album featured special guests, Clapton, Beck, and Mark Knopfler joining Guy's pleading guitar and all-out singing. Hardcore blues fans resented the rock and R&B presence on Damn Right, I've Got the Blues but Guy appreciated the long-awaited and much-deserved trip to the limelight and he intended to stay there. He released Feels Like Rain (1993), which again mixed his blues sound with a slight commercial crossover into rock and R&B. The title song is a Hendrix-like ballad, and he adds his blues touch to the pop rock "Some Kind of Wonderful." Feels Like Rain also won a Grammy Award and it features an impressive guest list that includes Bonnie Raitt, Travis Tritt, and Paul Rodgers.
Blues fans were thrilled with Guy's following recording, Slippin' (1994), because it captures, without any guest artists, his unbridled energy. The album is a good example of Guy's brand of power blues and James Brown–styled vocals.
Guy can also deliver a mellow blues, the kind of pre-electric sound associated with the Mississippi Delta. The re-released Alone and Acoustic (1991), recorded with Junior Wells and first released as Going Back in 1981, offers a dramatic contrast to his high-powered, frenzied blues. This straightforward recording displays Guy's tasteful acoustic guitar skills accompanying his more subdued vocals.
Guy enjoys promoting his music's culture to younger players and he has toured with blues-influenced musicians such as Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Susan Tedeschi, and the young blues phenomenon, Jonny Lang. He included Lang on the rocking blues release, Heavy Love (1998). Guy owns a downtown Chicago nightclub dedicated to the blues called Buddy Guy's Legends. Sweet Tea (2001), recorded in the heart of Mississippi, recreates the early blues sound and it might well be the sound Guy remembers hearing as part of the Chicago blues fraternity in the late 1950s. The album starts out with a solo acoustic lament, "Done Got Old," and the raw power of the remaining eight songs make the listener forget that Guy is past middle age. His musician friends call him an "ageless wonder" as he carries the persona of a man in his twenties. Guy's younger brother Phil Guy is also a noted Chicago blues guitar player and he often appears at Buddy's nightclub. Guy's daughter performs in the hip-hop group Infamous Syndicate.
After giving so much to so many for so many years, it is poetic justice that Guy is reaping the rewards of music stardom. He tours the world and records, enjoying his role as one of the elder statesmen of blues.
SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:
Crazy Music (Chess, 1965); This Is Buddy Guy (Chess, 1968); Blues Today (Chess, 1968); Coming at You (Chess, 1968); Buddy & the Juniors (BGO, 1970); Hold That Plane (Vanguard, 1972); Live in Montreux (Evidence, 1977); Pleading the Blues (Evidence, 1979); Stone Crazy! (Alligator, 1981); DJ Play My Blues (JSP, 1982); Original Blues Brothers Live (Blue Moon, 1983); I Left My Blues in San Francisco (MCA, 1987); Live at the Checkerboard Lounge (JSP, 1988); Damn Right, I've Got the Blues (Jive, 1991); The Very Best of Buddy Guy (Rhino, 1992); My Time after Awhile (Vanguard, 1992); Feels Like Rain (Jive, 1993); Slippin' In (Jive, 1994); Buddy Guy Live! The Real Deal (Jive 1996); As Good As It Gets (Vanguard, 1998); Buddy's Blues: The Best of the JSP Sessions (Jive, 1998); Heavy Love (Jive, 1998); Sweet Tea (Jive, 2001). With Junior Wells: I Was Walking through the Woods (MCA, 1970); Buddy Guy and Junior Wells Play the Blues (Vanguard, 1972); Drinkin' TNT 'n' Smokin' Dynamite (Blind Pig, 1982); Alone & Acoustic (Alligator, 1991); Last Time Around: Live at Legends (Jive, 1998).
donald lowe