‘American Masters’ profiles Buddy Guy
If you care about music, history and American culture, don’t miss the “American Masters” (9 p.m., PBS, TV-14, check local listings) profile “Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away.” Chief among its delights is the fact that its subject, now nearly 85, is alive and well and an interviewer’s dream, a legend with a sharp memory and a poetic way of speaking.
Born to dirt-poor sharecroppers in segregated Louisiana in 1936, Guy first seemed destined to follow them into the cotton fields. It was only when the family could afford electricity and he heard the 1948 song “Boogie Chillen” by John Lee Hooker that Guy knew what he wanted to do. He quickly set about practicing, imitating and adapting guitar licks.
Considerably younger than his heroes and mentors like Muddy Waters, Hooker and the incendiary performer Guitar Slim, Guy moved to Chicago with no notion of his abilities. He hoped to get a day job and listen to his favorites in Chicago’s many blues clubs. Unable to find work and on the verge of starving, he began planning a return to Louisiana when chance had him playing in front of friends of Muddy Waters, who was quickly summoned to hear the “kid.” Waters bought him a sandwich and told him never even think about going back to the South.
Guy’s trajectory intersected with some of the great moments in modern blues and rock music. His ability to back blues masters like Howlin’ Wolf put him in the orbit of the Chess brothers, whose record label immortalized the sound of the Chicago blues. Guy also observed the shadier side of Chess’ business practices, which included stealing royalties.
While Chess had meager sales among white American record buyers, it found a faithful following among British guitarists Jeff Back, Eric Clapton and the members of the Rolling Stones, among others. Well into the 1960s, Buddy Guy drove a truck to make ends meet, but when he played backup guitar on a British tour, he was treated like visiting royalty. He was still making some $2 an hour in 1970 when he was invited on the now-legendary Festival Express, a Canadian railroad version of a Woodstock on wheels that included Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead performing in major cities north of the border.
Guy’s career and influence exploded after he left the Chess label and let loose with a wilder sound. Guitarists Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana and John Mayer are heard from here, describing their encounters with Guy’s pyrotechnics in rapturous terms. Santana specifically describes it as a religious experience.
In an interesting touch, the film fills in the visual blanks of Guy’s undocumented youth with paintings and drawings of his experiences in the rural South, executed in the proletarian style of the 1930s, associated with WPA murals found in schools and post offices.
Guy is a gentle raconteur in this film, describing his first brushes with music in bucolic terms. Working in the fields at the earliest age, he would close his eyes and listen to the trees and allow the birdsong to enter his imagination.
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