Dear John, It's hard to get enough of Buddy Guy. The show Friday at the Celebrity Theater was epic with Jimmie kicking it off and the rest was just freakin' awesome. Still kind of slow for a weekend but I'm always optimistic things will pick up. I'm'a start way early and remind you guys that Showdown is in September and the time is now to get started honing your act.
PBS has it's annual Memorial Day Fundraiser on May 26 at the Rhythm Room. It's an afternoon show and will end around 7:30ish. Make plans. We've got a nice lineup shaping up and we rely on your support. If anyone knows the name of the young man who sat in with Buddy on Friday, please let me know. We need to talk. Heat's a comin' so milk this beautiful weather while you can. Support your favorite friends who play the Blues for you, and me. Make it a good week..
Sincerely, Jim Crawford - PBS
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| Superhero
by NPR Staff
"I didn't learn nothing from a book," Buddy Guy tells NPR's Neal Conan. "I learned by ... being quiet, keep your ears open and listen." Guitar legend Buddy Guy has been called the bridge between the blues and rock 'n' roll, as well as one of the most influential blues musicians in the world. Guitar icons like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan and countless others use words like "legend," "master" and "greatest of all time" to describe him. In his memoir, When I Left Home, Guy describes what he calls his second birthday: the day he left his home of Louisiana for Chicago, the blues capital of the world. Here, Guy tells NPR's Neal Conan about how he learned to play the blues, making his mark in Chicago, and why he thinks the hard things about earning a living as a musician make it all worthwhile. "That's the first record I ever bought. (John Lee's "Boom Boom.")That's the first one I could afford, matter of fact. I think that 78 cost about, what, 63 cents or something like that, from Randy's Record Shop out of Tennessee. You had to order it through the mail out in the country where I was born. "... My sisters and brothers made my mother and father run me out of the house because I sounded like a bunch of bees [practicing that song on a three-string guitar]. You know, you couldn't play nothing [on it]. And I went out to the woodpile ... and gathered the wood for to make the fires, and my mom and them, they cook on the wood stove. "And I dozed off to sleep with that guitar, and I woke up, and I heard myself hitting that note - not as good as John Lee was hitting it, but I said, 'Oh, I found it!' "But I was afraid to move my fingers, because I thought I would never find it again, and I think I played it about six hours. I went to every first cousin I could find, which was miles away, to make sure they heard that I had found it." On leaving Baton Rouge, walking into the 708 Club in Chicago and earning his first job "I went up and did a couple of Jimmy Reed and Bobby Bland songs, 'Further Up the Road,' B.B. King's 'Sweet Little Angel.' And ... it was 99.9 % black people listening to blues at that time. "And the owner of the club was a white guy, and him and his wife was on their way out the door, and all I saw was that... They picked up their receipts, and they left word, say, 'I don't know who that is, but hire him.' "Somebody called ... Muddy Waters ... lived about six blocks away and he drove in. And before I left Baton Rouge, they told me be careful because you get mugged in Chicago, not in Baton Rouge. And I didn't know they called Muddy Waters the Mud. So he slapped me upside my ear, and I was ringing, and he said, 'That's the Mud.' I said, 'Oh ... I see what they mean by getting mugged.'" On touring life, for him then and for less well-known blues musicians now "I think it's a little rougher now than it was on me, but if you hear what I had to go through, what Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and them, you would tell [touring musicians now] they're doing fine, because we used to have to take a hot dog and feed me, Junior Wells and half of the band. ... "When I first come through Salt Lake City, I was almost out of gas, and we scraped up enough to make it all the way. We was going to San Francisco, from Chicago to San Francisco - no stop in Denver, no stop in Salt Lake City. And I'm, like, I wonder why don't they stop me here. At least I could go to sleep and somebody would probably give me a hot dog. "But, you know, if you come up through [hard times] now, they'll know how to appreciate it if you make it. Now, I was in Australia about 35 years ago and watching television, and they said, you know, athletes, musicians, whatever, I don't care how good you are, only 5 percent going to make it. "I probably wouldn't have sold my guitar [for extra money in tight times] because I love it too well, but you have to look at it like that... If you love [music], stay with it ... [There] are some hard things I think you should go through, so you can appreciate it one day if you do make it." Buddy Guy is the blues, and he's our connection to a genre that's embedded in the history of America. But it's a sound the guitarist fears is fading. Born and raised in Louisiana without running water or electricity, Guy tells NPR's David Greene, "They got some mosquitoes in Louisiana that can almost lift you out of your bed," which made his parents a little upset when he started tearing the metal wire off the screen door. He was trying to build a guitar. Finally, his dad got him a real guitar and the family got electricity. Guy became obsessed with the exciting blues music coming from Chicago masters like Muddy Waters. He landed there in 1957 and quickly developed a reputation as a showman. Guy played guitar behind his back, picked strings with his teeth and made grand entrances by starting on the street and walking through the crowd to the stage. At 82, Guy still plays like a wild man. You can hear it on Born to Play Guitar, his new album, which celebrates his six decades playing the blues. But the scene has changed. When he started, his audiences were all black - except, he tells NPR, for the occasional cop. In the '60s, the blues fell out of fashion with middle-class blacks and the music found a new audience when artists like Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones started playing it. Buddy Guy gives them credit for making the blues more mainstream while also acknowledging pioneers such as B.B. King, Muddy Waters and himself. Today, however, Guy worries that far too few people are hearing the blues from anyone. Before B.B. King died, it was something both musicians spoke about at length, he says, and here with Greene, Guy describes the mission passed down from Muddy Waters. I wonder if there aren't as many young black musicians devoting themselves to the blues. Do you worry about the future of blues music? I worry about the future of blues music whether you are black or white. If they don't hear it like I did and listen to it and don't know about it - you ever been to Louisiana where they cook all this gumbo? I have. I love it. I do, too. [Laughs.] So if you never tasted it, you wouldn't love it. That's what's happening with the blues. Now, the young people don't know nothing about it unless - I know satellite [radio] do play blues, but we need more than that. I tell everybody I would love to hear Muddy Waters twice a week. I'm not telling you to play him all day, all night; just play him. Let the young people know where it all started. This album strikes me as a love letter to the blues. Is that the approach you took? A love letter, a text letter, whatever kind of letter you wanna call it, I hope you're right so someone can say, "Well, maybe this music isn't as bad as I thought it was." It's worth listening to. A lot of people look at blues and think it's a sad music. If you listen to the lyrics of the blues, if it don't hit you, it hits someone you know. And we sang about the good and bad times, so you can't say it's all bad. What made Muddy Waters so important to you? Not me - he was important to everybody. That's why The Rolling Stones called themselves The Rolling Stones. That was one of his records. Maybe some young people just coming up don't know because they don't play his records anymore, but Clapton, all of the British guys know about him. Of course, you know, I grew up on it. You had a conversation with Muddy Waters about the blues when he was pretty sick, shortly before he died. Tell me what happened, what you guys said to each other. We heard he was sick and he was hiding. He didn't let us know he had cancer. We rang him and he said, "Aw, man, I'm fine." He was profane, I can't say what he said. [Laughs.] He said, "Y'all just keep playing that em-effing blues and don't let that blues die. I'm fine." The next couple days, that's when I got the call from the media and asked me how did I feel - he had passed. And have you taken that as your mission? Well, coming from him, I had to listen to him. I was listening to him before I met him, so why quit listening to him when he was passed and gone? For the younger people who don't know much about the blues, what's the case that you would make to go buy a Muddy Waters album as soon as they can? If you don't have the blues and don't know about the blues, just keep livin'. What do you mean by that? [Laughs.] At least, you're gonna see a better time or a worser time in life. Just listen to what I'm sayin': Just keep livin'. Even if you get in the middle of the expressway and your car quit runnin', you got blues. It's something everybody can relate to. You better believe. Like I said, the blues comes in all denominations, man. It comes with your family, with your lover, with your friend. And I had some good friends until I loaned them a lot of money; then I lost them. [Laughs.] I've got a piece of paper in my club, "You loan your friend your money, you finna lose your money and your friend." And that's the blues. And that's the blues, sir.
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| OUT & ABOUT
Tuesday, April 9 Wednesday, April 10 Carvin Jones, 5:30 p.m., Sicilian butcher, Phoenix Hans Olson, 7 p.m., Time Out Lounge, Tempe Chuck Hall, 6 p.m., Corrado's, Carefree Thursday, April 11 Cadillac Angels, 8 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix Mikel Lander, 7 p.m., Culinary Dropout, Tempe Carvin Jones, 7:30 p.m., The Lounge, Phoenix Eric Ramsey Hosts OPEN MIC, 6 p.m., Fatso's Pizza, Phoenix Hans Olson (EVERY THURSDAY), 6 p.m., Handlebar, Apache Junction Arizona Blues Project, 8 p.m., Harold's, Cave Creek Friday, April 12 Cold Shott & The Hurricane Horns, 8 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix Sugar Thieves, 7:30 p.m., Janey's, Cave Creek JC & The Rockers, 7 p.m., Handlebar, Apache Junction Hoodoo Casters, 8 p.m., Lucky Strikes, Apache Junction Carvin Jones, 8 p.m., The Monastery, Mesa Paris James, 6:30 p.m., Scratch Pub, Mesa Saturday, April 13 Adrianna Marie & Her Groove Cutters, 9 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix Rocket 88s, 6 p.m., Rip's, Phoenix JC & The Rockers, 6 p.m., Mountain View Pub, Cave Creek Bkues Review Band, 7 p.m., JD's Lounge, Scottsdale Paris James, 8 p.m., El Dorado, Scottsdale AX Hired Guns, 8 p.m., Museum Club, Flagstaff Sunday, April 14 Big Daddy D & The Dynamites, 3 p.m., Steel Horse, Phoenix Hans Olson, 3 p.m., Bird Cage, Prescott Mike Eldred, 3 p.m., The Vig, Scottsdale True Flavor Blues, NOON , Copper Star, Phoenix Monday, April 15 Carvin Jones, 8 p.m., Murphy's Law, Chandler |
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| Weekly Jams
Rocket 88s JAM, 4 p.m., Chopper John's, Phoenix
Bourbon Jack's JAM w/Kody Herring, 6 p.m., Chandler
Sir Harrison, JAM every other Sunday, The Windsock, Prescott
MONDAY
Bam Bam & Badness Open JAM, 9 p.m., Char's, Phoenix
Weatherford Hotel JAM, 6:30 p.m., Flagstaff
TUESDAY
OPEN JAM Hosted by Jilly Bean & The Flipside Blues Band, 7 p.m., Steel Horse Saloon, Phoenix
JAM Sir Harrison, 9 p.m., Char's, Phoenix
Rocket 88s, JAM, 6 p.m., The Last Stop (Old Hideaway West), Phoenix
Gypsy's Bluesday Night JAM, 7 p.m. Pho Cao, Tempe
Tailgaters JAM, 7 p.m., Glendale
WEDNESDAY Tool Shed NEW JAM Party, 6 p.m. Gabby's, Mesa
THURSDAY Tool Shed JAM Party, 7 p.m., Steel Horse Saloon, Phoenix Jolie's Place JAM w/Adrenaline, 9 p.m., Chandler
JAM Hosted by The Scott O'Neal Band. Every other Thursday, Windsock, Prescott
Friday
Saturday Bumpin' Bud's JAM 2nd & 4th Saturdays JAM, 6 p.m., Marc's Sports Grill |
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Moved? Changed email addresses? Please let us know of any changes in your address, email, or phone number so we can keep you informed about the Blues community in Arizona. Email us at: info@phoenixblues.org or write to: Phoenix Blues Society P.O. Box 36874 Phoenix, Arizona 85067 |
GOT BLUES? If you are a Blues musician, a group, or a club that features Blues music, and would like to be listed, please send your info to info@phoenixblues.org and we'll be happy to list your event in our weekly Out & About section of the newsletter |
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