GARY CLARK,JR.

When I Left Home: My Story
By Buddy Guy with David Ritz – Da Capo Press
This isn’t the first time Buddy Guy
has hunkered down to commit
his spectacular career to the
printed page. In 1993, he collaborated
with Donald E. Wilcock on
a 1993 memoir, Damn Right, I’ve
Got The Blues, which took an oral
history approach that surrounded
Guy’s own quotes with pertinent
substantiation from various musical
collaborators and personal
friends. While not the ultimate
Guy bio, Damn Right did a reasonable
job of presenting the
highlights of his career at the
flashpoint of what turned out to
be a truly mammoth comeback.
Since then, Guy has been anointed as the contemporary king of
electric Chicago blues. As such a regal status requires, he collaborated
with one of the top biographers in the music field, David Ritz, on When I
Left Home: My Story. Ritz co-authored the autobiographies of Ray
Charles, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Jerry Wexler,
the Neville Brothers, the compositional duo of Jerry Leiber and Mike
Stoller, and quite a few more, so he brings major cachet to the project.
Guy and Ritz follow a traditional biographical narrative this time,
tracing Buddy’s life from his rural Louisiana upbringing, where he was
exposed up close and personal to the lowdown blues of Lightnin’ Slim,
through his early musical exploits in Baton Rouge with harpist Raful
Neal and then his September 25, 1957 migration to Chicago. Shy by
nature, the young axeman scuffled at first. Once the mighty Muddy
Waters graciously took Guy under his wing, feeding the starving musician
a salami sandwich outside the 708 Club and offering more nourishment
in the form of much-needed encouragement, Guy’s fortunes
improved in a hurry.
Locating his confidence and bringing an electrifying high-energy
attack to his playing in the manner of his back-home hero Guitar Slim,
Guy made his 1958 recording debut for Cobra Records’ Artistic
imprint. In 1960, he graduated to the Chess label, where Waters,
Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, and Chuck Berry ruled the roost. Over the
next seven years, Guy earned a vaunted reputation as one of the
most explosive electric fretsmen in his field with a series of blistering
Chess singles (his harrowing vocals were just as exciting). Eric Clapton
and a gaggle of blues-rock icons on both sides of the Atlantic
adopted him as a primary influence.
As he always seems to do in interviews, Guy decries those
seminal Chess waxings here, claiming Leonard Chess prevented him
from recording the way he really wanted to: like an ear-shattering blues
version of Jimi Hendrix. Since Jimi didn’t really emerge on a national
scale until 1967—near the end of Guy’s zChess tenure—that criticism
has limited validity at best. Buddy’s magnificent Chess recordings still
stand as a primary part of his recorded legacy, along with his exquisite
’68 Vanguard LP A Man And The Blues.
There are some convenient omissions in the text. Guy fails
to cite his longtime partner at the Checkerboard Lounge, L.C.
Thurman, or the two managers that guided his comeback campaign,
Marty Salzman and his successor Scott Cameron. Precious
few sidemen rate a mention either. There’s little insight into many of
Guy’s commercially potent recent CDs, which his legion of fans
have purchased in sizable quantities and would seemingly enjoy
reading about.
A disconcerting number of names are misspelled, notably that of
guitarist Pat Hare, whose surname somehow becomes “Hair” (an
account of Hare’s violent deeds is fraught with inaccuracy). A total
lack of vintage photos from Guy’s early performing days is another
disappointment; apart from a striking early picture of his dad, the
entire photo section consists of comparatively recent shots of Buddy-
-either alone, standing next to one celebrity or another (did we really
need a shot of him and Jonny Lang?), or solo shots of Muddy and
John Lee Hooker that seem like padding. Damn Right boasted plenty
of great ‘50s and ‘60s promo pictures of Guy; one wonders why
they’re nowhere to be found this time.
When I Left Home is a snappy read, as one would expect from
anything with Ritz’s name on the cover. It certainly offers a more intimate
and enlightening portrait of Guy’s life and times than its predecessor.
Still, the expectation was for more in-depth testimony from
Chicago’s highest-profile contemporary bluesman. Since it seems
unlikely a third Guy memoir will be forthcoming, we’ll have to content
ourselves with what’s here and let his music say the rest.
– Bill Dahl
Big Road Blues: 12 Bars on I-80
By Mark Hummel
Hop in the van. ‘Cause Mark
Hummel’s going out on tour and
you are invited. But it might not
be quite what you expect. The
perspective of a musician new to
the business changes after a few
tours. That’s according Hummel,
a bandleader who has been on
the road since the late 1970s.
“It’s like breaking the fantasy
of what people think life is
like on the road,” he said. “A
year later, they have a different
take on it.” The unpredictable,
tumultuous, and sometimes
hilarious travails of a professional
musician is detailed in
Hummel’s e-book, Big Road Blues: 12 Bars On I-80,” released in
August. In order to not embarrass some artists, Hummel said he
changed some names in the book. But the stories are true.
Hummel didn’t reveal the identity of a musician who asked to sit
in with the band a few years ago during a show in Oregon. The guitarist,
Hummel surmised in the chapter “Sitting In and Falling Down,”
expected to be turned down. After the bandleader acquiesced, the
nervous guitarist proceeded to get smashed. When he finally got his
chance to play, he was so drunk he fell off the stage. By the time
Hummel’s regular guitar player retrieved his instrument, which was
BLUES REVUE 65