Buddy Guy

George "Buddy" Guy (born July 30, 1936) is an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter. He is an exponent of Chicago blues who has influenced generations of guitarists including Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Beck, Gary Clark Jr., and John Mayer. In the 1960s, Guy played with Muddy Waters as a session guitarist at Chess Records and began a musical partnership with blues harp virtuoso Junior Wells.

Guy has won nine Grammy Awards and a Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Medal of Arts, and the Kennedy Center Honors. Guy was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2005 and ranked 27th in Rolling Stone magazine's 2023 list of greatest guitarists of all time. His song "Stone Crazy" was ranked 78th in the Rolling Stone list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time". Clapton once described him as "the best guitar player alive". In 1999, Guy wrote the book Damn Right I've Got the Blues, with Donald Wilcock. His autobiography, When I Left Home: My Story, was published in 2012.

George "Buddy" Guy was born and raised in Lettsworth, Louisiana. He was the first of five children born to parents Sam and Isabel, who were sharecroppers, and as a child, Guy would pick cotton for $2.50 per 100 pounds. His brother Phil Guy was also a blues musician. He began learning to play the guitar using a two-string diddley bow he made. Later he was given a Harmony acoustic guitar which, decades later in Guy's lengthy career, was donated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In the mid-1950s, Guy began performing with bands in Baton Rouge, including with Big Papa Tilley and Raful Neal. While living there, he worked as a custodian at Louisiana State University. In 1957, he recorded two demos for a local DJ in Baton Rouge for Ace Records, but they were not issued at the time.

Soon after moving to Chicago on September 25, 1957, Guy fell under the influence of Muddy Waters. In 1958, a competition with West Side guitarists Magic Sam and Otis Rush gave Guy a record contract. Soon afterwards he recorded for Cobra Records. During his Cobra sessions, he teamed up with Ike Turner who helped him make his second record, "You Sure Can't Do" / "This Is The End", by backing him on guitar and composing the latter. After two releases from Cobra's subsidiary, Artistic, Guy signed with Chess Records.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.