Since the release of the box office-smashing Michael B. Jordan movie, Sinners, Buddy Guy has reached a completely new audience – and a level of recognition he's using to, in his own words, “keep the blues alive.”
“I promised Muddy, B.B. and them, and we all spoke about this day – that whoever lived longest, please try to keep the blues alive,” he extrapolates in an interview with Variety. “Even at my age, when they ask me to do something, I say, ‘If I can still walk, I’ll be there.’”
And speaking of legends, Guy also looks back on the first time he encountered another Strat-wielding icon.
“[At first], I ain’t know who he was, man,” he says, referring to Jimi Hendrix.
“After I played 1967 Newport Jazz Festival, I got invited to play in New York, and I’m on the stage putting on this show, trying to play with my teeth and throwing the guitar. Somebody put a spotlight on me, and I missed the guitar coming down after I threw it. When it hit the floor, I said, ‘Oh, my God,’ so I just jumped down on it and everyone thought I did it on purpose.
“I heard somebody with real taste was sitting in front – Jimi Hendrix. I said, who? They [introduced] us and he said, ‘I canceled a gig to come watch you play, could I steal some licks from you?’ That’s when we got to know each other, and we finally got to jam – I can’t [remember] when, but it was in New York.”
As for his initial thoughts on Hendrix's playing, well, Guy revealed in a recent Guitar World interview that he “thought he used to play too loud,” since, coming from the Muddy Waters school of blues, Guy was used to a much cleaner sound.
