Legend Buddy Guy still has the blues

As Whitianga prepares for its inaugural blues festival, Belinda McCammon talks to one of the headline acts, Buddy Guy.

American guitarist and singer George "Buddy" Guy isn't sure when it happened but sometime in the 1960s he was branded a blues player.

The five-time Grammy award-winning performer had until then considered himself a musician; he still struggles to define what the blues actually is.

"It's not how I define it, it's what people have made of it," Guy, 71, said from his home in Chicago.

"In the beginning it was all music. Ray Charles was a rhythm and blues player, same with BB King."

In the 1960s they started to be called blues and rock players, he says.

"We didn't have that when we started. If you were a good musician you had to play everything for people to dance and listen."

Guy says audiences who come to see him perform can expect more than just the blues.

"I don't just play blues until you get tired of it, I try everything.

"We used to have a lot of jukeboxes and they had the top 10 records on juke boxes.

"You had to play Fats Domino, Little Richard, Muddy Waters in order for everybody to listen to you."

When the blues branding started it became so bad, people started defining musical sounds from the south and west side of Chicago, he says.

"We didn't ever look at it that way, we just considered it playing good music."

Guy arrives in New Zealand this month to play at the BluesfestNZ concert, in Whitianga.

The one-day festival will play host to some impressive national and international names in blues, reggae, funk, roots, pop and swamp rock.

Alongside Guy, KT Tunstall, Keb Mo, Wilco, Ian Brown, Midge Marsden, Hollie Smith, Pluto, Little Bushman and The Checks are all set to perform.

While the line-up is an impressive range of talent, it cannot match Guy's musical legacy.

He has been called the bridge between the blues and rock and roll and has performed with Chicago electric blues pioneers Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, inspiring musicians such as Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.

Known for his showmanship on stage, Guy is happy his music is still finding an audience.

"Music seems to make people happy, if you are fortunate enough to draw a crowd to do that.

"The world is so mad now, when you play now it's like making people happy, that's in my head and the back of my mind whenever I play."

His career began to decline in the 1960s but took off during the late 1980s and early 1990s, sparked by Clapton's request that Guy be part of an all-star blues guitar line-up at London's Royal Albert Hall.

Guy is philosophical about why he has had to struggle for recognition while many artists inspired by him have had great success.

"It took me a long time to be successful, everybody was ignoring me.

"I was down in Australia 30 years ago and I saw it on television that only five per cent make it anyway, regardless of how good or bad you are.

"I know blues has never made it to the top of the ladder but sometimes it almost goes to the bottom but it never goes away.

"There is always something that we sing about that is always happening right now."

 Over the years the blues has evolved thanks to technology but its essence has remained, he says.

"You know the instruments aren't the same any more but if you listen to the lyrics we sing, it's similar, it's about everyday life.

"Some people don't understand it but if you listen to it you can see what we're talking about.

"A lot of the time we're not talking about our own life, we're speaking about other peoples lives and we express that through our music."

The gift the blues gave the world was bringing races together, especially in America, he believes.

"That's the first thing that happened with blacks and whites in America - playing in a band together and they realised 'hey ain't nothing wrong with this'.

 "Wherever we went it used to be blacks playing to blacks and whites with whites, now we all play together.

"The world has come together much more than it was when I first started."

Guy credits the British for "opening up a lot of eyes" in America.

When the Beatles and Rolling Stones first started producing big hit records they made people aware the source of their music was Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf.

"That was when America woke up and said 'oh we had that and we didn't even know it', you know."

After such a long career Guy says meeting BB King and Muddy Waters ranks as his career highlight.

"When I met them it was the top of the ladder because we didn't have the blues players going on to get Grammys and all these awards that you get now."

For Guy the future of the blues concerns him, especially with the competition it receives from hip hop.

"I'm concerned about the music we play now which they call the blues not being played or heard on radio or television like all the other music."

Blues can't compete with hip hop, he believes and he marvels at some of the lyrics which are produced.

"At one point in life I thought some of the lyrics we sang in blues was unfit for the younger generation of people until the hip-hop came out and now you can express yourself in any way you want to.

"Some of the things they're saying they wouldn't let us do that on a blues record."

Guy says his daughter Shawnna, who is a rapper , tells him hip hop artists are singing about the same thing blues players are.

"Some of the blues were expressing themselves but they wouldn't let us say it like the hip hop artists can now."

Guy is a content man, regardless of whether his music is called the blues or not.

"I had the opportunity to play with some of the greatest that ever played," he says.

*The BluesfestNZ, an R18 festival, is on March 22. Tickets are available now.

-NZPA