Authors: Buddy Guy
When I Left Home (15 page)
I don’t like being violent with women. Fact is that I don’t like being violent period. But in the world of Chicago, where farm boys like Muddy had come to the big city and electrified their blues, violence was everywhere. If Muddy came in the club and said, “Man, I’m dead tired. I think my old lady’s sneaking on me and I had to take a strap to her,” none of us said nothing. Because Muddy had lots of old ladies and because he believed in keeping them in line, we heard this kind of talk all the time. That was his way.
It was also his way to be extra sweet to young women who he wasn’t hitting on—and protect them when they needed protection. Even today you’ll meet females who will tell you that Muddy was the best friend they ever had. They’ll say how he took the time to teach them to stay out of trouble. They loved to call him Daddy. When it came to the ladies, there were a lot of sides to Muddy.
By December of 1959 I’d been in Chicago two years and two months. I was twenty-three, and I’d done okay. I was making enough money with my guitar to have my own place. I bought a little used car that let me drive to Gary for the gig at F&J. I built up a name as a wild man in the clubs and a quiet man in the studio. I made two records with Cobra, and even though Cobra had sunk into Lake Michigan along with Eli Toscano, Willie Dixon and Leonard Chess was using me as a sideman. When I went to record, I was ready to put a pint in my pocket like the other cats. Women were noticing me like they notice most musicians. Women were calling on me, letting me know they was willing. That was nice, but it really wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted something stable. I grew up in a stable house with a loving family. Family meant a lot to me, and if I could find the right woman and start a family of my own, maybe I could enjoy the same kind of happiness I’d seen Daddy enjoy with Mama.
I wanted kids. I wanted a wife. I wanted to stay in Chicago and see if could get more people to come out to hear my music. I wanted to make more records, and I figured that if I played my cards right, maybe Leonard Chess would put something out on me.
First, though, I wanted to take care of this loneliness. I wanted to get married.
“She’s Nineteen”
I told you about Muddy’s song where he sings about the nineteen-year-old honey. When I heard Muddy playing that, he was forty-seven. When I married Joan, I was twenty-three and she was nineteen. I’d actually met her a couple of years earlier when I first started living with Shorty. She was living in the same building with her mom, dad, and sisters. She was a pretty girl with a sweet personality who gave me the love I was looking for.
I remember coming home from an out-of-town gig with Jimmy Rogers, the great guitarist with Little Walter in Muddy’s original band that played Jewtown before the band made records. We pulled up to Jimmy’s house where his wife was waiting. When he got out the car, my drummer, Fred Below, said to his wife, “Don’t worry, he didn’t do nothing bad. He was a good boy.”
“I ain’t worried,” said Mrs. Rogers. “Don’t nobody want him but me.”
I liked the way that sounded. I wanted to be a man married to a woman who wouldn’t worry when I was gone and could say, “Don’t nobody want him but me.” That felt comfortable to me.
I thought I had that woman in Joan. We was happy, but her daddy wasn’t. He didn’t like me. He didn’t see me being very successful.
“You working?” he asked when I told him I wanted to marry his daughter.
“Work all the time, sir.”
“Where?”
I told him.
“Those are barrooms. You tending bar?”
“No, sir,” I said. “I think you know I’m a musician.”
“I been in those barrooms, son, and I see that the bartenders get better tips than the musicians.”
“That might be true.”
“So why ain’t you tending bar?”
“’Cause I like playing my guitar.”
“You might like it, but from what I hear, the people don’t like you near as well as Muddy Waters. Muddy Waters got him his own house. You got a house of your own?”
“No, sir, but one day I hope to.”
“When’s that day coming, son?”
“Can’t say for sure.”
“Can’t say for sure. Well, what can you say? Can you say when you gonna be making real money?”
“I’m doing okay. Playing in Gary.”
“You playing everywhere, boy, but I don’t see no new car and I don’t see no down payment for a house. If you going to Gary, get a job at the steel mill. Steel mill pays. At the steel mill you don’t gotta worry ’bout no tips. Steady salary is something you can count on. That there guitar of yours is like a child’s toy. You gotta get you a man’s job.”
I wasn’t about to argue with my future father-in-law. Out of respect to Joan I wanted to show respect. But I didn’t like the man any more than he liked me. He complained about all the barrooms where I worked, but he was a big drinker himself. I could try to defend myself. I could tell him that Muddy Waters himself said I was good. So did Magic Sam and Otis Rush. The Wolf wanted to take me on the road—and the Wolf didn’t ask just anybody. I could tell him that I was respected. Club owners liked me because I showed up on time and entertained the people real good. They called me dependable. When Chess was making a record, whether for Sonny Boy, Wolf, Walter, or the Mud, I was getting calls ’cause I could cut it. Problem, of course, was that none of this paid big money. And far as my future father-in-law was concerned, nothing mattered except money.
“Look,” I told the man. “I hear you. I understand a man’s gotta take care of his woman. And that’s what I intend to do.”
“I’m holding you to it,” he said, before walking out of the room and heading to the corner bar.
Money was on my mind—it had to be. Marrying Joan at the end of 1959, I had to feed two. When our first child, Charlotte Renee, was born in 1961, I had to feed three.
“In this business,” the Mud liked to say, “someone is always gonna come along and make more than you. When I started up in here, I was the big money-maker. Didn’t see all that much for myself, but I got enough of a taste to where I was living good. Then here comes Chuck Berry up from St. Louis. When Leonard first heard Chuck, he threw him out. He didn’t even understand. Chuck had to sell some blood to keep eating. But Chuck came back and Leonard changed his mind. Next thing you know, that ‘Rock and Roll Music’ was sweeping the country. Same thing with Bo Diddley. He had him this thing that got the kids to dancing. Leonard made big money off Bo. Now he got this big girl named Etta James. He got her going good with a song they’re playing on the radio. Something about crying. Leonard’s promoting the hell out of this girl. Now I’m not saying Leonard don’t like the blues—he does—but Leonard likes money more. If he could make money selling polkas, we’d be recording polkas.”
“But we doing the same thing, Mud,” I said. “When I work a club, I got to look at the jukebox and make sure I can play those songs. I got to learn ‘What I Say’ and sing it like Ray Charles.”
“That ain’t gonna happen,” said Muddy.
“Sure ain’t, but I gotta try. Talkin’ ’bout money, they’ve been playing a song called ‘Money, That’s What I Want.’”
“That song sounds like ‘What’d I Say,’” said Muddy. “All them songs sound the same.”
“That’s what they say about the blues.”
“The blues sound the same, but the singers are different one from the other.”
“I like that ‘Money.’ I learned it. Been doing it almost every night. Gets everyone to dancing. I don’t see nothing wrong with that.”
“Look, son, you can’t get me talking against no hit records. Everyone wants a hit. When I put out ‘Mannish Boy’ and ‘Still a Fool’ and ‘Just Make Love to Me,’ I wasn’t complaining. Ain’t complaining now. Just saying that these blues that you and I took from the plantation . . . man, I just don’t want them blues to die.”
“Me neither, Muddy.”
“It’s just something we gotta remember. The world might wanna forget about ’em, but we can’t. We owe ’em our lives. Wasn’t for them, we still be smelling mule shit.”
First Time I Met the Blues
Gotta say that the first time Willie Dixon told me he was cutting a record on me, it took me by surprise.
“Wasn’t easy,” he said. “Leonard ain’t that impressed by you as a solo man. He sees you strictly as backup. He thinks you good as backup, but that’s as far as it goes. I told him differently. I said, ‘I seen Buddy Guy tear the roof off Theresa’s. That ain’t no goddamn backup.’”
“I know I can the tear the roof off a record,” I said.
“That’s just the point—you can’t. Leonard likes his records a certain way. You can’t get all wild like you do on stage. Can’t play too crazy. Can’t fuck up the sound none like I seen you do in the clubs. Leonard likes his blues clean.”
“You got the songs you want me to do?”
“I got all the songs you need.”
“I got some songs I wrote myself.”
“Well, we’ll do mine first. Then we’ll worry about yours.”
The first one I cut wasn’t written by either of us. It was a thing by Little Brother Montgomery called “First Time I Met the Blues.” When it came out, some people said I sounded like B. B. King, and I took that as a compliment. Who didn’t wanna sound like B. B.? I liked the opening line that Little Brother wrote: “The first time I met the blues, I was walking down through the woods.” I liked closing my eyes and pretending I was back home in them woods. Also liked that I had Otis Spann, the Mud’s man, on piano, and Fred Below on drums. That same day I sang a song Willie put his name on—“Broken-Hearted Blues”—but everyone seemed to like “First Time” better.
Day after the session Willie told me that Leonard was putting out “First Time,” but on one condition.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“He wants you to change your name.”
“Why don’t he like my name?”
“Ain’t that he don’t like it,” said Willie. “It’s just he thinks you should be a King.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know, you call yourself Buddy King or King Guy—something like that.”
“Don’t see the point. People might get me confused with B. B. or Freddie King.”
“That’s just the confusion Leonard wants. Only he calls it association. ‘King’ is associated with strong-selling blues.”
“Muddy don’t got no king in his name.”
“He came through before the kings.”
“Well, I’m coming through after.”
“Buddy King sounds real good.”
“Maybe, but it ain’t me. Besides, when they play the record in Baton Rouge and the deejay calls out, ‘Buddy King,’ my people won’t know it’s me.”
“You can tell your people ahead of time.”
“That’s ain’t good enough. I want my mama and daddy to hear the name they gave me over the radio.”
“Leonard won’t be happy.”
“I won’t be happy if I don’t go by my right name.”
“You’re gonna hold stubborn?”
“If you mean, am I gonna hold on to my name, yes, sir, I am.”
I did, and I guess Leonard Chess thought “First Time I Met the Blues” was good enough to put out under Buddy Guy. When I went home to Louisiana for Christmas, I learned that they did play it on WXOK, causing my family and friends happiness and pride.
In the first few years of the sixties every now and then Chess recorded me. Sometimes Willie let me keep my name on songs I had written, but I was never told nothing about the publishing rights of the composer. I didn’t know those rights belonged to me, and I didn’t know that if they were transferred to someone else—like the Chess Brothers’s publishing company—I should have been paid. Payment wasn’t on my mind—I just wanted to make it.
Chess thought that if I was going to make it, I’d have to make it in the mold of a B. B. or a Freddie. They tried some instrumentals out on me, and they even tried some ballads, but nothing caught on. If I started in on what had become my live style—twisting the notes real hard, playing riffs that sounded like they came from outer space, letting the tape buzz and bleed with different combinations that caught your ear—Leonard would say, “Buddy, you’re doing too much. Play less. Calm your ass down.”
I’d be a fool to argue, so I didn’t. Leonard was holding all the cards, and I was at the bottom of the Chess totem pole. At the same time, I was still a young man in my mid-twenties. Having my own records out there impressed everyone . . . except my father-in-law. When me and my wife showed him that 45 of “First Time I Met the Blues,” he said, “They give you this record instead of money?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean, did they hand you cash for playing this here record?”
“No, but I signed a contract that says if it sells a certain amount, I get paid royalties.”
He laughed in my face. “Son,” he said, “when those royalties come in, dogs gonna be fucking pigs.”
The man was right. He was saying the same thing Lightnin’ Hopkins had said. Deep down, I agreed, but was too proud to admit it.
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