This Week in BluesWax:
Buddy Guy
- In the E-zine: Buddy Guy is surprised when Don Wilcock tells him Sweet Tea was voted Best Blues CD of The Decade by forty Blues journalists.
- On the News Page: All The News That’s Blues!
- On the Photo Page: Dusty Scott and Art Tipaldi capture the action at the International Blues Challenge.
- On the Blues Bytes page: Producer Dennis Herring tells Don Wilcock how he captured Buddy Guy's wilder side when they cut Sweet Tea.
- On the Blues Beat page: Don Wilcock takes an in depth look at the International Blues Challenge.
- Under BluesWax Picks: Bill Graham reviews Hamilton Loomis' LIVE In England and Bill Noonan's The Man That I Can't Be. Robert Putignano reviews the Rolling Stones' Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! Also, reviews of a DVD by B. B. King, and CDs by Al Cook and Samuel James.
- One Year Ago Today In BluesWax: BluesWax names Albert Cummings Artist of The Year.
- Don't forget to play the Blues Trivia Game: Remember, everyone who plays is in the drawing for the prize! This week's prize: a six-pack of Blues! The Blues vault has been tapped and we have a six-pack of CDs for your listening pleasure! Play Today!
Sittin' in with Buddy Guy
Who Put The Sugar in Sweet Tea?
By Don Wilcock
Buddy Guy
Photo by Joseph A. Rosen
The current issue of Blues Revue features a cover story on the twenty-five top Blues CDs of the decade as voted upon by forty Blues journalists. Buddy Guy's Sweet Tea was by far the biggest vote getter. There wasn't enough room in the magazine to run the full text of my November, 2009 interview with both Buddy and Dennis Herring, the producer of that 2001 CD. Below is pretty much the whole text of my conversation with Buddy Guy, and in today's Bytes section is more of my interview with Herring.
I got to spend a lot of time with Buddy from 1988 to '91 when I was writing his authorized biography Damn Right I've Got The Blues. At the time he hadn't recorded an album in almost a decade, was traveling in a van to club dates with Junior Wells and couldn't get airplay to save his soul. Five Grammys and numerous rock star endorsements later, he still gets a tiny fraction of the attention in the mass market as those same rock stars who idolize him but who get more airplay and sell many times the number of CDs he does.
When I told Buddy about Sweet Tea being named number one, I could almost hear the gears grinding in his head as he said to himself, "Here we go again." Sweet Tea is not one of his Grammy winners, and even though it got great reviews from the get go, it has not been one of his best sellers, even by the relatively meager standards of Blues releases.
In this interview which had to be done in fifteen minutes I wanted to get beyond Buddy's usual diatribe about the double standard of rock vs. Blues recordings. Buddy has been quoted time and again about his rightful frustration with this double standard that's kept him from million-seller status: even though he was using feedback before Hendrix; even though Clapton, Beck, the Stones and numerous others in the pantheon of rock idolize him; even though he's won more Blues Music Awards than any other artist.
Two questions I asked him below require context. When I toured with Buddy and Junior in 1989 for the book, their then manager Marty Salzman took me aside and explained to me that if either one called me a mother fucker, that was considered an honor in their realm. Kind of like when a rap singer says something is "bad," it means just the opposite. So, I intrinsically knew that Mick Jagger's calling Buddy a mother fucker on stage at the Beacon in Martin Scorsese's Shine A Light film was the ultimate kiss-Buddy's-ring endorsement, but I wanted to see how Buddy would handle my "dumb" question.
The other question is about "Skin Deep." I hoped Buddy would directly address prejudice as he does in that song from his 2009 CD of the same name. He's always been careful not to show bitterness toward whites because he understands that, in spite of the double standard that separates him from the kind of multi-million dollar sales his "students" (my term, not Buddy's) have enjoyed because of what they've earned from him, he still has benefitted from their public endorsement of his role as their mentor. He ducks that issue in his answer here. I can understand why he skirts that question because it would bite the hand that feeds him.
Isabelle Libmann (Buddy's assistant): You know probably better than anyone that Buddy can go on and on with an answer.
Don Wilcock for BluesWax: [Laugh]
IL: Which is great. It's fantastic, but because you only have ten minutes, if there's a little pause, just go on to the next question.
BW: [laugh] I guess you know him pretty well, too.
I: I just know it can be frustrating if you only have ten minutes.
BW: You should have seen me when I was writing the book.
IL: You have so many more books you could write.
BW: Yeah, I do.
I: His stories are amazing.
BW: Yeah.
I: Okay, hang on one second. Let me get him on the line.
[Pause]
IL: Don?
BW: Yes.
IL: I got Buddy on the line.
BW: Great. Good morning, Buddy.
Buddy Guy: God morning, Don, How are you?
BW: I'm doing as well as I can imagine for someone whose been doing this as long as I have, and I would guess you're doing as well as you could do for someone whose done it as long as you have. The reason I'm calling today is that Blues Revue sent out letters to forty different Blues journalists, and you were picked for your Sweet Tea album for the best Blues CD of the decade by a large margin.
BG: Is that right?
BW: That's right.
BG: (Seemingly surprised) (in a quiet voice) Oh, thanks.
BW: I wonder how you feel about that. We've talked for twenty years about how there's such a disconnect between the audience and the Blues singer. When I was doing your book, there were some people who didn't even know you were alive. Do you feel finally vindicated? Do you feel like you've finally arrived?
BG: No! Don, I don't even think Muddy Waters and B. B. have arrived yet because we are still being on the back burner just as worse as we used to be, maybe even more because when we had all the AM stations, I know you remember they played everybody's music. Blues is ignored on all your big FM stations now. I don't want to name anybody, but if you (see) Alicia Keys or Madonna or somebody else like that, we unheard of.
"Just how much tech
they got on these machines,
you don't even sound like yourself,
but that old stuff gets next to me, man."
BW: We've had this conversation a lot, and I have only ten minutes with you. So, I'd like to move to another question if that's alright.
BG: Sure.
BW: Neither Damn Right I've Got The Blues nor Sweet Tea won a Grammy. How do you rate Sweet Tea with all your other albums?
BG: I got so many great reviews on Sweet Tea, I think better than I did Damn Right I've Got The Blues. That was what struck me. All the great reviews came out and nothing happened. And I think it was because the reviews was great, but if you don't get airplay, and people go out and hear it, and buy it, don't nobody know, Don. It's just like a good restaurant. If you don't go taste that food, you don't know how good it is. And this is what happened with Blues. It's not being exposed, and it's not being played.
BW: I talked to (Sweet Tea producer) Dennis Herring yesterday, and he said it took eight days to record this album. How does that compare with the amount of time you spent ion the studio on your other albums?
BG: Well, I think on Damn Right I've Got The Blues I spent about eighteen. Course, I think they got more material. That was Chess and all them, you go in for a session, and they would wind up gettin' at least six or seven songs they know they're not gonna use. They just put that on the shelf in case something happened. I believe that's automatic. So, we worked pretty hard, Don. The only thing we wanted to get right. We spent time, and my last CD Skin Deep was the same way. We just went in and did fourteen I think, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen songs. We did twenty or twenty-one songs.
BW: Leonard Chess told you you were making "noise." Dennis, on the other hand, encouraged that noise. Do you feel people finally understand what your sound is about?
BG: Well, I did the 25th anniversary of the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame this last week with Jeff Beck, and he came out and bowed and said, "There wouldn't be no Jeff Beck or Eric Clapton or Hendrix if it wasn't for you, Buddy," and I'm like saying, "What did I do?" And he said, "We were always listening to you," but Chess wouldn't let me turn that amp up. I was doing it in the clubs, but they didn't know. When they did find out that the British guys had heard me do that, I went there, and then they said, "Okay, oh, yeah. What you been trying to give us is hot. Let's do it now." You can't go in and do what Hank Aaron did. I don't care how many home runs everybody else hit, him and Babe Ruth still got that name that stands out like a sore thumb. So, the first ones who do it gets credit for it.
BW: Dennis was absolutely shocked when you came down there and opened up two brand new guitars, and he kind of thought you were gonna bring favorite guitars. How important is equipment to your sound, or is it all in your fingers?
BG: The fingers because of everything developed now. I think the fingers is because all kind of special effects we got, I don't know about the wa-was, but the rest of the stuff, I see 'em punching buttons. Don, I don't even know what the hell they are. You watch B. B., man. That's who we all come from after. He got a vibrator on his left hand that I wish I did have. So, Dennis had some of the amplifiers in that studio that's kind of old fashioned, and it brought back that thing what Cobra Records had, that Chess and Vee Jay had before too much technology came.
Sometime, you can hear your playback now with all this technology. When I was doing Feels Like Rain I went to go to the bathroom, and I came out and they was playin' something I did. I said, "Who is that?" They said, "That's you! You just did that." I say, "You kidding me." You know, I mean, just how much tech they got on these machines, you don't even sound like yourself, but that old stuff gets next to me, man. I'd rather that, but that's long gone. The guitars, the keyboards, you know, the sound in the studio. Everything is so techno now, man, till it takes a lot away from that old fashioned stuff.
BW: Did you every meet Jr. Kimbrough, T-Model Ford or Robert Cage?
BG: No, I mentioned that. I thought you'd interviewed me about that when I went down there. I thought I'd met everybody from Mississippi till I went down to Sweet Tea (Studio), and I didn't know anything about him. When I came to Chicago, I didn't know anything about Son House, Fred McDowell and them, and Muddy and them told me about them, and I got a chance to play with them before they passed away.
BW: You once told me the West Side sound was no different than the South Side. Do you think there's a difference in the hill country vs. the Delta blues?
BG: No, What is Hill Country?
BW: That's what you were playing on Sweet Tea. They call that Hill Country Blues.
BG: No, I think the technology put all that...I feel, I might be the only guy that feels like this, but I still feel it's all the same. We all didn't come from the Delta. Lightnin Hopkins didn't come from the Delta. B. B. and Muddy and a bunch of 'em didn't come out of the Delta. I don't think Johnny Shines came out the Delta. He's from Alabama. All these southern guys just had something, and the Delta got branded with it 'cause I think they mighta had more. But we're all from down there. They shouldn't call it Delta. They should call it southern.
BW: Do you think Jr. Kimbrough compares to Willie Dixon as a songwriter?
BG: Uh-ha, I don't wanna get in trouble, Don.
BW: All right. Never mind.
BG: I found out a lot since I been in this business. Who was who, man. I didn't know Junior, but I did know Dixon, and I knew a lot of songs I wrote went into Chess that didn't come back out Buddy Guy. It came back out with Dixon and somebody else. So, I didn't want to get in trouble saying that 'cause these guys are not here to speak up for themselves. But I had a lot of stuff taken from me and wasn't given credit. For example, Eric Clapton called me, and they wanted him to do a soundtrack on a movie called Rush, and he called me and on my first live album I was doin' it with Muddy Waters 1964, and I opened up a tune, and they put it on the album. When I did it, Eric liked it, and we did it for the movie. When the credits rolled off, it was Willie Dixon. They didn't even know what the hell I was doing.
BW: Wow! I understand when you did "Tramp" (on Sweet Tea) Dennis thought that was a Kimbrough song, and you set him straight.
BG: Yeah, I had to 'cause I know all that stuff, man. All those guys was cutting that stuff down there, man. You know Otis Redding did that, too, and I think he might've made it bigger than Lowell (Fulson) did, one of those guys. Anyway, I told him. He brought it up. I said, "Hold it a minute, man. You've got the wrong thing there. This belong to whoever did it, but who knows, man. Like I say, it was a lotta - the record company was taking from Dixon, and I think Dixon and the rest, a lot of 'em took it from me, I might as well learn how to take it from somebody else because when you went into Chess as a youngster, they say, "Well, get Willie Dixon," and if you had a hit song, man, he would come in and say, "Oh, that's a pretty good song, but you need a stronger line."
BW: Were you surprised when Keith Richard handed you that guitar at the Beacon (in the Martin Scorsese live concert film Shine A Light)?
BG: Yes, I was more surprised 'cause he didn't sign it. I got signed guitars from every famous guitarist in the world. I had one from Beck, and I think Scott Cameron took that this last weekend, and he's sending me another one. I got B. B., Otis, all of the guys. I even got one signed by John Lee (Hooker). This is for my club because people are getting to call my club a museum now, and I'm just collecting this stuff for that, but I been asking the Stones for a signed guitar to go on my wall before anybody else, and every time I see them, they ask me, "You didn't get it yet? I told my manager to mail it.
BW: Do you think it was okay for Mick Jagger to call you a mother fucker?
BG: Yeah, man! That's the way it was. George Thorogood, summer 'fore last when my brother passed, man, he was on the road with me. I never was with him before, and he came in the room, and we got introduced. He looked at me, this sad looking man, and I said something, and he said, "No, that's what I'm talking about" 'cause when I first came to Chicago, Don, I didn't curse. When I went into Chess, I was in the studio, and they was saying, "Hey, cut, cut, hold it. You fucked it up, mother fucker." I'm like saying, "Well, they ain't talkin' to me 'cause my name is Buddy." And sooner or later, within six months or less, I was answering when you called me an M.F.
BW: Was it hard to write "Skin Deep?" It took you a long time to get to that issue.
BG: It was - nobody wanted to hear it, but everybody hear it now say I shoulda recorded it thirty-five years ago and had a big hit. My mother used to tell me that, Don. I used to run in the house in the county with no shoes on and put this slick grease on my hair, brush it back and say, "Boy, I'm good looking," and be sitting there chewing a little piece of tobacco and say, "Boy, beauty is only skin deep." And I just never forgot that, and I been trying to record that for years. A lot of stuff I tried to record and they wouldn't let me do it.
BW: Well, you understand the relationship with the rockers better than a lot of Blues guys do, and I think you've been able to bridge that gap and cross over better than most of the Blues people. Not to take away from your style which I think is fantastic, but I think one of the reason you have been as successful as you have is that the rapport you have, the relationship you have with people like Clapton and The Stones.
BG: Well, they did so much for us, Don. They opened the door. They came back to America and said, "This is not a British invasion. You had this all the time. And they speak of Buddy. They speak of Wolf, Muddy and all of that 'cause when they first started popping, they say, "Man, even the Beatles are no British invasion." Man, Roscoe (a Louisiana deejay) and all of 'em was playing Temptations stuff, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and everybody else. Matter of fact, they had a television show called Shindig, and they was trying to get the Rolling Stones. They was popping and say we'll do the show if you let us bring on Muddy Waters, and they say, "Who the hell is Muddy Waters?" And they got offended. He say, "You mean to tell me you don't know who Muddy Waters is, and we named ourselves after one of his famous records, Rolling Stones.
BW: I was watching that show, and it influenced me enormously in listening to your records.
IL: We have to wrap up.
BW: Buddy, it's been a pleasure talking to you today.
BG: And how's your family? And how's the boys? They all grown.
BW: Everybody's in their thirties. My son is a renowned psychic. I have six grandchildren with Shelly, my second wife.
BG: Well, at least you know how many. I can't even count mine.
BW: And Rick Siciliano (photographer on the biography) says hello.
BG: Say hi to everybody for me, Don.
BW: I will. You have a great day.
BG: You do the same.
BW: Bye bye.
BG: Bye bye.
Don Wilcock is the editor-in-chief of BluesWax. He can be reached at BluesWax@visnat.com.
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