 Buddy Guy
"When I was 21,” says Buddy Guy, "some of my older friends, who are no longer with us, they’d say, 'You’re still a baby.' And then they said the same thing when I was 31, then 41, and I thought, ‘Man, when do I get old?’ I've been hearing that ever since I first went to Chicago—'You’re still wet behind the ears.' So when do I get dry?"
With his new album, Living Proof, Guy takes a hard look back at a remarkable life. At age 74, he’s a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a major influence on rock titans like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, a pioneer of Chicago’s fabled West Side sound, and a living link to that city’s halcyon days of electric blues. He has received 5 Grammy Awards, 23 W.C. Handy Blues Awards (the most any artist has received), the Billboard magazine Century Award for distinguished artistic achievement, and the Presidential National Medal of Arts. Rolling Stone ranked him in the top 30 of its "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time."
Yet as the album's opening track declares, today Buddy Guy is "74 Years Young," still searching for new sounds and fresh ideas. The start of each new decade always seems to inspire him (see 1981’s Stone Crazy, 1991’s Damn Right, I Got the Blues, and 2001’s Sweet Tea), and on Living Proof, such songs as "Thank Me Someday" and "Everybody's Got to Go" are strikingly personal meditations on his past, his legacy, and his mortality. Read more.... |
Jimmie Vaughan  Jimmie Vaughan was born on 20 March 1951 in Dallas County, Texas, to parents, Jimmie Lee Vaughan and Martha Jean Cook. Raised in Dallas, Texas, Vaughan moved to Austin in the late 1960s and began playing with such musicians as Paul Ray and WC Clark. Jimmie Vaughan developed his own easily recognized personal style. He formed the band The Fabulous Thunderbirds with singer and harpist Kim Wilson, bassist Keith Ferguson, and drummer Mike Buck. (The original Fabulous Thunderbirds were all protégés of Austin, Texas, blues club owner Clifford Antone). The band's first four albums, released between 1979 and 1983, are ranked among the most important 'white blues' recordings. These early albums did not sell well, so the band was left without a recording contract for a couple of years (during the time when Vaughan's younger brother achieved commercial success). Read More... |
