Very Close to, if not actually in, the CD player:
seen/heard ° listen ° buy
seen/heard ° listen ° buy
Buddy Pictures
Wake up this morning with the Fourth-Day-of-a-Three-Day Weekend Blues?
Yeah, I got something for that.
That's "Big Momma" Thornton, the original singer of "Hound Dog" - though this version (taken from, I'm guessing, this DVD) was filmed a dozen years after the fact.
Willie Mae's all well and good - better than that - but she ain't what we're here to show and scream about. ‘Cause if you look closely at one of the men behind the woman, you'll see a sharp-dressed Buddy Guy. While searching for something else on YouTube, I stumbled across (and distracted myself with) a treasure trove of BuddyVids.
Shame on me for not looking sooner. You want to watch Buddy Guy, because he can't contain himself. He's showing and he's telling and he's licking the egg-beaters. There's too much of him for any one medium. You buy up the show tickets, you dog the CDs and gawk the videos and eat the cupcakes. Jesus, someone get me a Buddy Guy cupcake, stat. He's a brilliant guitarist - and no, it's not always pretty, but he'll get you where you need to be at, even if he needs to take you through three dozen walls to do so. But he's also a brilliant shoulder-shrugger and a brilliant arm-flapper and a brilliant head-shaker. You know this, if you've seen him live, because he's turned you into a reasonably able forehead-smacker and professional-grade jaw-dropper.
The footage on YouTube will take you from his slicked-back Chess-era through gallons of Jheri curl straight on to Mr. Clean. There's plenty of professionally shot material to enjoy; I've eschewed the bad cameraphone phooey and the all-star clusterfuck jams (Have those ever worked, ever?) and pasted some niftiness below, in an order of my choosing. There are guests (Roland Kirk! Rolling Stones! John, um, Mayer!), but there's never any question who the star is. And there's plenty more where this all came from.
Whatever you do, watch this next one! It's a doozy!
"Going Down" in Sao Paolo, Brazil, 1985(?)
Easily the best thing you'll see on YouTube this whole lifetime, and it doesn't even involve a personal injury of any sort. Unless you count an entire roomful of folks having their faces melted off. And Buddy's right there, on the floor, scooping the facemelt up and reapplying it just so everyone can sing, "Down down down..." That clip should win Oscars and Emmys and Pulitzers and the Nobel Fucking Peace Spectacular-o-Rama. That clip will cure cancer, turn cats into dogs.
The guitar solo as improvised explosive device. Guy all-out destroys the place, winds up playing in the men's room. Look fast for a startled Larry Craig!
It's a good thing the picture's muddy and the sound isn't stellar and that it fades out before the song ends. Because if it was HD-clear and even one second longer, all of existence might just point to this thing, decide nothing could top it, give up.
I mean, no offense, but fuck Daft Punk.
(That's the third clip from the Sao Paulo concert on YouTube. See parts: 1, 2 and 4.)
"Money" (1970, from Festival Express). Buddy takes the old Barrett Strong number out for a forklift ride:
Seriously, a forklift? Let's stay on stage and bring it down a bit.
"Stormy Monday" (1969, with the mooing Archduke of Awesome/Wizard of Wild Rahsaan Roland Kirk (who quotes "Money"), from Supershow):
(Also from Supershow: My Time After a While. There's another amazing version of "Monday" here. It's got THREE BILLION NOTES.)
"Done Got Old" (2004?, Montreux, acoustic):
Forklift-free.
When Guy covered this Junior Kimbrough tune on Sweet Tea, it was stark and shocking. It opened that record with what seemed like an admission, a concession. "I can't do the things that I used to do. Because I'm an old man." It opened a record that proved his most vital since the world re-embraced him in the early ‘90s.
Guy doesn't get dark, live, and the first smile in that video seems to betray the material. But this is a captivating, contemplative performance. Watch that face! The recollection, the frustration, the finding of new ways. Things were good, things have changed, they're not the same. Okay. Things will be good again, in different ways.
"I'm a pretty good old man," he adds.
"Louise McGhee" from the same performance. Submitted for the facial expressions and Guy's typical ultra-dynamic range:
“Hoodoo Man Blues” (1974, Montreux)
"Somebody done hoodoo'd the Hoodoo Man" is one of the most aesthetically pleasing sentences in all the English language.
This is Junior Wells' song, his best one. Wells (vox/harp) was Guy's long-time partner and we'll hear from him again at the end, their end. But for now, enjoy a good go at a great song; this performance - which also has Pinetop Perkins on piano, Bill Wyman on bass - was released on CD as Drinkin' TNT ‘n' Smokin' Dynamite.
"Let Me Love You Baby" 196?
“Out of Sight” (1965, probably from the same DVD as “Hound Dog”). With a detour into “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.” And yes, someone just videotaped their television, but it’s worth it for the footwork.
“Next Time You See Me” (11/1981, with Keith Richards and Ron Wood, Checkerboard Lounge, Chicago):
Add Muddy and Mick and Lefty Dizz and you get Champagne and Reefer
"I Can't Quit You Baby" with B.B. King at B.B. King's, NYC. 199?:
Jam (2004, with Carlos Santana, who’s chewing gum, Montreux). Searing. And, unfortunately, abbreviated:
“First Time I Met the Blues” (1970, from Chicago Blues(?)):
“Damn Right I Got the Blues” (1991, Germany (Ohne Filter broadcast)):
(The entire broadcast has been uploaded to YouTube.)
“Hoochie Coochie Man” (2006 Jammys, with John Mayer, Madison Square Garden):
I hate to end with a clip that includes John Mayer, but I love how Buddy enters yelling, "I didn't know I had to do this!"
"But I'm here!"
*
I hate to end with that, so let's don't. Here's something for those of you who've made it this far:
Now, normally, were I to hear someone talk about a song and say, "...but things really get good around the fifteen minute mark..." I'd punch them in the face. Got something to say? Say it.
The following two mp3s (off an old bootleg called It's Still Called the Blues) feature Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan; one is over twenty-five minutes, the other is just shy of nineteen. They had a lot of talking to do. It's an emphatic, entertaining conversation between two friends fluent in guitar and you should be damned happy to listen in.
Recorded on Buddy's birthday in 1989, it's clear he's been doing a little celebrating. Okay, already, I smell the funk. Too many times he implores: Thank Stevie Ray for showing up! Seriously, be grateful. This performance took place a few months after Vaughan released his sobered-up comeback record, In Step. The following summer he'd die in a helicopter crash. Airplanes and rock and roll.
(I got to see Vaughan that last summer, Mann Music Center. He was on tour with Joe Cocker, the two trading the headlining spot. The thing I remember most is how pissed my friends and I were that Cocker closed our show.)
Anyway, enjoy the hell out of these. The first track isn't a medley, really; Guy just keeps throwing in verses from songs that fit. It starts smoking pretty early, but things really get good around the fifteen minute mark.
- Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan - Birthday Jam 1 (Long Distance Call/I Smell a Rat/Mojo Hand/Champagne and Reefer/She's Nineteen Years Old, Live at Legends 7-30-89)(mp3)
- Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan - Leave My Little Girl Alone/Worry Worry (Live at Legends 7-30-89) (mp3)
- Buddy Guy and Junior Wells - What I'd Say (It's Alright)(Live at Legends 03-93)(mp3) (buy)
That old Ray Charles number, also recorded at Buddy's club in Chicago, is from one of Guy's and Wells' last two performances together. (Junior would make his own, Guy-less live CD on the same stage three years later.) Last Time Around, taped in 1993, was released after Junior's death (complications from lymphoma(*)) in ‘98. It's not a stunning record - Alone & Acoustic is a similar, better offering - but an intimate, casual, friendly one. They finish each other's sentences, indulge each other's eccentricities.
(*)I know, I know. It's been Obituary on a Stick around here, lately. But Buddy Guy's still alive! Knock on Eddie Floyd.