#31 Stories from the Edge of Music: BUDDY GUY
The last of the great Chicago bluesmen keeps the flickering flame alive, but he misses Muddy, Wolf, Sonny Boy and Junior more than he cares to admit
I’ve been telling stories like these every week or 10 days since last September, but this one has been, well, difficult — and it’s LATE. I apologize. Apart from the twin elements of ennui and laziness, I’ve been struck by a summer cold — nose dripping like a leaky tap — and a hacking, non-productive cough. Last night I slept for 12 hours and I’m feeling a little better. Normal service will resume next week!
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A backyard barbecue, a block party and lessons small kids can give
Thanks to a new friend in Chicago — Bob Koester, the owner of the Jazz & Blues Record Mart and Delmark Records — I got to meet Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Little Brother Montgomery, Howling Wolf, Sunnyland Slim and many other artists who, until then, had been voices on the records I played over and over again.
Visiting the Windy City with my two small children in the early ’60s, Buddy Guy invited us to a backyard barbecue at his home on the city’s South Side.
His friends cordially welcomed us, and the kids went off to a raucous block party. With the street blocked off, and the fire hydrants opened up, we watched as they cheerfully chased each other through the gushing water, screaming with laughter.
Watching this 60 long years ago, I remember thinking — naively — that our kids could teach us all about integration and racial harmony and love. And so they have.
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The one performance that changed his life
In 1967, the Buddy Guy Blues Band arrived at the Mariposa Folk Festival in a brand new powder blue Cadillac. In the back window, a fresh-from-the-factory sticker ticking off all the options: air conditioning, power windows, white leather upholstery, etc.
The band’s performance that evening was incendiary — screamingly loud, with the leader of the band hammering out skittering guitar solos, with sonic clusters of notes delivered at breakneck speed. In the years since, Buddy Guy’s audiences, all round the world, know that this fluid, frenetic, frantic way of playing is, in fact, his trademark style.
But for the 5,000 people in the audience that evening, this was a revelation, and their screamed approval inspired him to new heights. In mid-solo, Guy jumped five feet off the stage, hit the ground and leaned back to brace himself — and disappeared through the canvas.
Stage manager Bob Stevens and I leapt under the stage, sure that he must be injured. He was lying on his back, on a bed of iron pipes, 2x4 planks, sawdust and all the other crap that gets shoved under the stage once it’s been built.
And we realized that he was still playing.
We pulled him to his feet, and found a step ladder so he could climb over the barrier into the audience. With his roadie playing out yards of cable, he marched through his newfound screaming fans, high-fiving and shaking hands and playing one-handed. Eventually he wended his way back to the stage, ended the solo, and walked off. He didn’t play an encore, he didn’t take a bow; Elvis-like, he “left the building.”
It was, he said later, the one single performance that convinced him he could give up his day job, and devote the rest of his life to music.
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A bounced cheque, and eventual forgiveness
In 1981, with the Mariposa Festival on hiatus, a group of us — including my then-partner Ellen Davidson, singer Stan Rogers and Winnipeg Festival founder Mitch Podolak — decided to create the Toronto Folk Festival.
It poured rain, the audience stayed home, the event died a sorry death. We lost our savings — and for the only time in my music business “career” I stiffed an artist. Our $2,000 cheque to Buddy Guy and Junior Wells bounced.
I wrote Buddy an abject letter of apology; I didn’t hear back. He continued to play in Toronto at least twice a year; ashamed and guilty, I never went to see him.
A decade later, in 1990, I was the artistic director of a revitalized Mariposa. I called Ron Kaplan, Buddy’s agent. “What’s Buddy’s fee these days?” I asked. Usually $3,000, he replied. I offered $6,000; the surprised agent instantly accepted.
When Buddy arrived at the festival, I approached him very nervously. He hugged me, warmly, and told me he’d looked for me every time he’d played in town. “Man, you needn’t have stayed away. That crap happened years ago. It didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.”
He hugged me again. I was forgiven. He pulled away, and added: “Mind you, Junior still says you’re a motherfucker.”
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The last men standing
The last time I saw Buddy, a few weeks ago, it was backstage at Massey Hall before his fourth sold-out concert there in the last 12 months. He asked after my now grownup daughters, who he had first met when they were three and five years old. “Tell them I remember them and give them my best.”
He paused, became serious, and jabbed a finger in my direction.
“They’ve all gone now,” he said. “Muddy, Wolf, Sonny Boy, Junior, my brother Phil, Dick Waterman. We are the last men standing — me, you, Bobby Rush... Oh, and that guy in Austin that smokes a lot of weed; what’s his name? Yeah, Willie Nelson.”
That puts me in distinguished, stellar company! Buddy’s 88, Bobby Rush — the Louisiana singer and entertainer — is 91. And at 91, dear Willie Nelson, like Buddy and Bobby, is still on the road.
Me? Ninety in June, and there will be cake. And a raised glass to all of us.
HOW’S PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION IN YOUR CITY?
Stick with me here, readers outside Canada, or even outside Toronto.
Canada is a big country, as diverse as the United States (but not yet, at least, quite as divisive). The only thing all Canadian agree about — from sea to sea to sea — is that Toronto utterly, completely, totally sucks. Too busy, too big, too selfish, too expensive.
And there’s only one thing everybody in Toronto agrees about: our public transportation system — the Toronto Transit Commission, or TTC for short — is terrible. I’ve written about this before…
If you don’t live in Toronto, I have no idea how your transit system works, but perhaps these “rules” will apply in your city.
1) When you hear a subway train coming, do not rush down the stairs to catch it. You could kill yourself, and the train you hear is always going in the other direction.
2) While you are waiting for your train, two trains will go by in the opposite direction.
3) All TTC building projects will take twice as long to complete and will cost three times the original estimate. (The installation of two elevators at “my” station, High Park, is proceeding at a glacial pace; already a year behind schedule, it won’t be ready — they say — until summer next year.)
4) Every subway train will have two homeless people, sleeping and stretched over three seats.
5) Every subway train will have at least one food courier on board, with an electric bicycle blocking the doorway.
6) Whenever subway service is suspended (“track work,” “a medical issue on board a train,” “an incident at track level,” “a signalling issue”), we are told that shuttle buses will run. This is not true; they will dawdle.
7) In Toronto we have a “tap” system using a Presto card (in London, it’s an Oyster card). It’s hard to use the subway without it, but at least one-third of all bus travellers fail to tap, and ride free. As someone who uses the TTC at least twice a day, I have only seen fare inspectors on two occasions since COVID restrictions were lifted.
8) “If you see something, say something” says an announcement on the entire subway system, every ten minutes. I saw a homeless man, lying on the opposite platform next to shopping cart full of God knows what; he was shouting at everyone. So I said something to the stationmaster. The response: “Oh, he’s one of our regulars. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
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PERSONAL NOTE: THIS WEEK’S MOTHER’S DAY VIDEO LINK
I never got along particularly well with my mother. She was clinically depressed much of the time, and spent months in a nursing home. And Mother’s Day has always struck me as an artificial construct created, perhaps, by Hallmark Cards and Interflora.
That said, I will always be grateful to the mother of my two kids; their mum left a few years ago, thanks to the cruel afflictions of Alzheimer’s and dementia. The collapse of our marriage was entirely due to me, yet she never turned my daughters against me.
This video has nearly always reduced me to tears. It’s by Brandi Carlile, who I first discovered at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival three years ago — I was SO late to the party, since Terry Wickham, the festival’s artistic director, had already featured her at two previous events.
Ms. Carlile is now a major, bona fide music star — and you can see why in this touching, emotional video.
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NEXT WEEK’S STORIES: HOW I BECAME A CONCERT PROMOTER
…and the week after that, another personal story. I’ve already told you about wartime life in a British boarding school; get ready for tales of a “career” as a boy newspaper reporter…
Loved the Buddy Guy story so much.
Hey Richard. I’m in London right now and you can now tap your credit card from your Apple Wallet on your iPhone on the London transportation system. Nasty thing for non-residents with the Oyster card is that you always end your visit with some left over!