30/07/2025
Happy 89th birthday to the blues legend Buddy Guy!
“Yeah, I thought about retiring twice, but, y’know, I thought about all those great blues players who are no longer with us — B.B. King. Lightnin’ Hopkins, all those guys — and they used to tell me, ‘You need to keep playing and keep representing the blues,’ ’cause they don’t play it on radio or anything anymore.
“So I said to myself, ‘Well, Buddy, you better hang on a little longer. My health ain’t doing too bad, so I’m still doing what I’ve always done...every time I get on stage, just try to play the best I can.”
“He’s inspirational,” says Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, who counts Guy as a valued mentor.
“When you hear him play, you just know that’s the way it’s supposed to be done.”
Tom Hambridge, the Nashville-based producer who’s helmed Guy’s last seven albums — from 2008’s Skin Deep through Ain’t Done With the Blues — is not at all surprised that farewell did not really mean goodbye.
“This is what he knows,” Hambridge explains. “He seems very content living on a stage — ‘Put a guitar in my hand and lead me to the stage and I want to play with people.’ That’s what he’s been doing his whole life.
“And I think he really means it when he always says he wants to keep the blues alive and keep the word he gave to Muddy [Waters] and all of them. He thinks if he’s out there doing it, making new music, he’ll be keeping the blues alive.”