Buddy Guy - 'A Man and the Blues'

 

A few years back, I saw Buddy Guy at his club, Legends in Chicago. The show was a lot of fun, but it was heavy on showmanship, and light on blues music.  Gone was Buddy's clean but sharp and biting signature Fender Stratocaster sound, it was replaced by loud distorted sound that drowned out his backing band.  Buddy unleashed an unending barrage of explosive riffs, characterized by piercing treble and chaotic clusters of notes that appeared to lack any discernible pattern, direction, or purpose, save for sheer noise.  Individual notes were rendered inaudible.  As an aside, I've seen Jeff Beck shows with a similar situation.

At one point in the middle of a guitar solo on a slow tune that I was actually enjoying, he just stopped playing, and ordered a Rémy Martin XO from the bar.  What the actual….?  Then he made a point of telling us how smooth it goes down, and that it costs $200 a bottle.  It was a little like a hip version of the those late 1980s commercials with drunk Orson Welles shilling for Paul Masson wine.  "We will sell no wine before its time".

After several shots he started chatting with the audience.  To his credit the rapport he establishes with his audience is a marvel to behold, Buddy is a really (dare I say it?) nice guy, who knows how to work a crowd.  That said he (much to the chagrin of his band) stopped songs early, got easily sidetracked by chatting with the audience, and letting his showmanship overshadow the continuity of the music.  During one song he played his Stratocaster with drum sticks. Why?

Don't get me wrong, despite all my complaining, I had a blast, but I was left with the feeling the show would have been more suited to a Las Vegas lounge, than a Chicago blues club.

For today's freeload we're taking a trip down memory lane to 1968, before the polka-dot suits, with a matching Fender Stratocaster, and Buddy "hamming it up".

"A Man and the Blues" was recorded at Universal Studio, Chicago, in 1967, and released on the Vanguard Records label in 1968.  It was produced by Sam Charters.

This was Buddy’s second album and marked his emergence from the shadow of his mentors, Muddy Waters and B.B. King.  It was also his first release after leaving Chess Records.  Vanguard Records granted Buddy the creative freedom he had been denied on his first album, ‘Left My Blues In San Francisco,’ released in 1967 on the Chess label (Marshall Chess, thought Buddy’s modern, amplifier-heavy, and high-energy guitar style was "noise").  This freedom allowed him to express his explosive guitar and vocal work without any restrictive label interference.  Samuel Charters' production puts Buddy's vocals and stinging guitar work directly front and center without the use of over-polished pop production.

'A Man and the Blues' also features an elite Chicago rhythm section, with the legendary Otis Spann on piano, Fred Below on drums, and Jack Myers on bass.  On rhythm guitar is the criminally little known Wayne Bennett who has recorded with such blues musicians as Elmore James, Otis Rush, Jimmy Reed, The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi and a ten-year stint with Bobby "Blue" Bland.  Aaron Corthen, Bobby Fields and Donald Hankins provide rich, soulful grooves as a saxophone trio.

The is Buddy Guy at the absolute peak of his creative powers.

For the freeload what concerts have you seen (good or bad) where the artist or the group's frontman talked excessively.