B.B. King and Buddy Guy are on a historic tour this month — historic because when it comes to blues these two guitar burners aren’t just the style’s foremost senior citizens. They’re its absolute top dogs, and they’ve each spent more than a half-century as leaders of the pack.
We caught up with Guy by phone and asked him what keeps him, at age 72, and King, who’s 83, so dedicated to touring.
“Blues cats don’t retire, they just drop,” Guy replied. Then he laughed. “What the hell else am I gonna do? I can’t go back to pickin’ cotton.”
Certainly not with those fingers, which are still rippling across the frets of his Strat-style guitars with manic glee. As for King, when the pair played a show at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium on Thursday, Feb. 12, he waxed about going fishing with a cane pole, like in the old days. But he admitted that there’s really nowhere he’d rather be than in the eyes of his public, who showered the courtly bandleader with multiple standing ovations.
Their tour together ends Feb. 24 in Red Bank, N.J., but both will stay on the road after that. Guy’s dates will take him on to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on May 3 with plenty of stops on the way, and King’s route includes the United Kingdom.
For King’s and Guy’s fans, their current concert sets are trips through history, and not just their own. On-stage at the Ryman, Guy tipped his hat to his mentor Muddy Waters with “She’s 19 Years Old” and he dipped into the catalog of John Lee Hooker. He name checked Son House and a host of other pioneers in his own “Who’s Gonna Fill Those Shoes.”
Mostly Guy played at low volume, concentrating on sensitive dynamics and his soul-searing vocals. His spiraling falsetto is untempered by his age, which made his gospel-fueled delivery of O.V. Wright’s “Drowning on Dry Land” a highlight. Of course, wandering through the audience as he blasted out a series of roaring solos helped up the excitement.
Although King plays seated these days his presence is undiminished. Brandishing a customized version of his gleaming Gibson Lucille model guitar he revisted his inspirations Louis Jordan and Blind Lemon Jefferson with “Let the Good Times Roll” and “See That My Grave is Kept Clean,” respectively. And he reminisced about his days on the plantation, working his comic ode to jealousy, “Don’t Answer the Door,” into the story.
King’s voice remains leonine and distinctive, and so is his playing — an indelible signature not only on his own recordings and performances but on the history of blues and rock. His single-note lines are fluid as ever, but sizzled best on-stage at the Ryman when he let a single note hang in the air until it sailed on the brink of feedback, whinnying under the control of his perfect, wrist-shaking vibrato technique.
What prompts the current tour — besides decades of friendship and mutual admiration — is the release of new albums by both men. At the recent Grammy Awards King’s One Kind Favor, a return to his roots shepherded by über producer T-Bone Burnett, trumped Guy’s Skin Deep, which Guy calls his most personal album, in the Best Traditional Blues category.
Guy’s disc was made in Nashville with Music City-based producer Tom Hambridge, who also recently recorded King for the upcoming The Soul of Disney, a compilation of numbers from the studio’s films.
We asked Hambridge to compare both grand old guitarslingers’ modus operandi in the studio. “They’re the world’s leading blues figures and yet they have no ego and do astonishing things all the time,” he says.
“Buddy is very spontaneous. We did only one take of ‘Everytime I Have the Blues’ for Skin Deep. It was supposed to be three minutes, but Buddy closed his eyes and started to solo. By the time he was done he’d encompassed everything from Robert Johnson to Sun Ra. When Buddy and the band faded out, he opened his eyes and asked, ‘Whaddya think?’ Nobody said a word.
“B.B. will sing a line six different ways and each one is melodic and perfect.
“They both come from a time when you just stood up and played from your heart,” Hambridge continues. “As artists and people, they’re very deep. I’m constantly impressed by their graciousness, humility and work ethic. When they play or sing, the music comes from a unique place, like Charlie Parker’s did. Everybody tries to copy them, but nobody really can.
“There are five living Presidents,” Hambridge observes, “but only one B.B. King and one Buddy Guy.”