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Authors: Buddy Guy

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BOOK: When I Left Home
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I shook Ertegun’s hand, and right away he started saying how much he knew about the blues. He knew a lot. He’d recorded everyone from Ruth Brown to Ray Charles to Solomon Burke to Wilson Pickett. They was all on Atlantic. Atlantic was red hot.
“Ahmet had been chasing after me in America,” said Eric, “but I told him he was chasing the wrong man. He should be chasing you.”
“Heard you tonight, Buddy, and you were sensational,” said Ahmet. “I want to do a real blues album on Atlantic with you and Junior. Good as
Hoodoo Man Blues
was, we want you to surpass it.”
“Ahmet’s really committed,” said Eric. “He’s actually going to coproduce it with me. What do you say?”
“I say great. I’m ready. So is Junior. Just say when and where.”
“Next month in Florida,” said Eric. “I’ve been working at Atlantic’s Criterion Studio in Miami with my Derek and the Dominoes stuff.”
Turned out that Eric’s Derek band would have a big hit—“Layla”—but that wouldn’t come out for a couple more years. Neither would our Atlantic record. It almost didn’t come out at all.
Eric is a beautiful man and loyal friend, and recently he told me that while we were cutting the record that came to be known as
Buddy Guy and Junior Wells Play the Blues,
he was wasted bad on drugs and drink. Far as Ahmet went, he spent the days at the beach. We hardly saw him at the studio at all. No one was in charge of nothing. Dr. John came in to play keyboards—and Dr. John’s always great—but when he saw what was happening, he said, “Y’all are moving in five different directions at the same time. Plus, the best shit you’re playing is happening between the takes, and no one’s recording it.”
When I complained to Ahmet, he said, “Buddy, don’t worry, baby. You cut this record in Miami, and we’ll do the next one in Muscle Shoals. I can get you hits in Muscle Shoals.”
Hearing that, naturally I got excited. When I thought of Muscle Shoals, I thought of Wilson Pickett hits, Aretha Franklin hits, and Percy Sledge hits. I wanted to record in Muscle Shoals in the worst way, so I stopped complaining about the crazy chaos in the studio and muddled my way through.
There was nothing outstanding about what Junior and me did in Miami. The tunes were predictable, the charts were lame, and the whole operation was a wasted chance to make a mark on a big-time label.
Wouldn’t you know that coming out of Florida I’d run into B. B. again. “Oh man,” I said, “they playing your song every five minutes.” I was talking about “The Thrill Is Gone.”
“I never had a hit like this, Buddy.”
“‘Three O’clock Blues’ was big, B,” I said.
“Big with blacks. But they playing this ‘Thrill’ thing on the white stations. They playing it on the same stations where you hear Glen Campbell and the Carpenters.”
“I’m happy for you.”
“You got a record coming out, Buddy? Seems like the times are right for you.”
“Recorded one down in Miami, but it’s more a mess than a record. They holding it back. They say they gotta put some sweetening on it.”
“Who was the producer?”
“That was the problem, B. No one knew.”
“Well, I’m sure something good will come out of it.”
I’m not sure something ever did.
It was 1972 before the record came out. On the cover they put the saddest picture of me and Junior they could find. Sad picture, sad record. It sold poorly, Ahmet Ertegun never made good on his promise to send me to Muscle Shoals, and it’d be ten more years before I’d get another shot with a major label.
Rough roads ahead. But hell, wasn’t no rougher than what I seen in Toronto one night.
I was up there for a gig, fixing to go on stage before a college crowd when the promoter took me aside and said, “There’s a man who wants to sit in with you tonight. You don’t have to if you don’t wanna, but I thought I’d just ask. His friends are eager to give him some exposure, but he’s too shy to ask himself.”
“What’s his name?”
“You probably haven’t heard of him, but he was popular a long time ago.”
“What’s he called?”
“Lonnie Johnson.”
Shock waves went through me. “The Lonnie Johnson who sang ‘Tomorrow Night?’”
“Can’t tell you. I don’t know his songs.”
About then I glanced over and saw this distinguished white-haired gentleman holding a guitar. I recognized him from his picture. I went right over and said, “Mr. Lonnie Johnson, it’s an honor.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Man, there wasn’t a time when I wasn’t in love with your guitar and your voice.”
“I didn’t know whether you knew me.”
“Everyone knows Lonnie Johnson. B. B. King talks about you all the time. It’s a privilege to perform with you. You sing what you want and I’ll follow along.”
I did just that. Lonnie had to be seventy at the time, but he sang and played like a young man. Listening to the sweetness of his sound and the gentleness of his soul, I had tears running down my face.
Afterward I asked him if he was still living in his hometown, New Orleans.
“Oh, no, Buddy,” he said without bitterness. “No one in Louisiana remembers me. Been living up here in Canada, where some fine folks have been caring for me. I’ve been lucky that way.”
I didn’t see it that way. Other great entertainers at the end of their careers got to enjoy comfort and fame. Bing Crosby didn’t need no charity. Gene Autry got rich enough to buy a baseball team. No one had to run a benefit for Perry Como. Yet here was someone—a bluesman who wasn’t just good but was goddamn great, an artist whose spirit inspired dozens of other great artists, a musician who deserved the respect of presidents and kings. Yet when Lonnie Johnson died a few months after I got to play with him, you had to look in the back of the paper to see any little mention of him. Most papers didn’t mention him at all.
One thing to live with the blues. Other thing to die with them.
Jailhouse Blues
 
I been in jail a bunch of times—but never for nothing I did. Went to get Junior out.
It got so bad that one time the cop—a man I knew well—came into where I was playing and put the handcuffs on me.
“What I do?” I asked.
“It ain’t for what you did. It’s for who you know.”
“You can’t arrest me for who I know.”
“I ain’t arresting you—just making sure you don’t get away.”
We went outside, where he put me in the squad car.
“Who’s this about?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“Your brother.”
“I was playing with my brother Phil up in the club when you came to get me.”
“Not your blood brother,” said the cop, “your soul brother.”
“If you talkin’ ’bout that crazy motherfucker Junior Wells, I ain’t responsible for what he did.”
“He says you responsible for everything he did. Besides, ain’t no one gonna bail him out except you. And we don’t want him. We tired of him.”
“What do I gotta do to get him out?”
“Give me two hundred and fifty dollars and I give you the pink release papers.”
Oh Lord
, I thought to myself,
here we go again.
I forked over the cash. By the time we arrived at the station, I had the papers that would let me take Junior home. I went down to the cell where they was holding him. Man, it smelled like a whiskey sill. Junior was inside, cuddled up in a corner, snoring like he didn’t have a problem in the world.
Man guarding him was a brother who must have weighed 350 pounds. He was playing with a chain that held a key.
“Brother,” I said. “I came to get Junior.”
“You got papers?”
“I do.”
“They pink?”
“Pink as pussy.”
“Now I need to see something green,” he said.
“I already gave the man two hundred fifty dollars.”
“So it won’t mean nothing for you to give me fifteen.”
I reached in my pocket and found only five.
“My last five,” I said. “Five’s got to be good enough.”
“I’ll take your five, but you go in that cell and get me another ten. I know your man’s gotta be holding ten.”
“What if he ain’t holding shit?”
“Then you sleep next to him in the cell.”
“You gonna lock me in there?”
“One way or the other, I’m gonna get me my fifteen dollars.”
“Hold on, good brother,” I said. “You best come in here with me. I don’t want you out there and me inside. I ain’t gonna be locked up with this man.”
Guard chuckled, but I still wouldn’t step foot in that cell until he was by my side.
We went in together—I was still nervous about the cell door locking behind me—and I right away started poking and shouting at Junior.
“Junior!” I screamed. “Wake up, man, you gotta give me ten dollars so I can pay this man.”
Coming out of some dream or nightmare, Junior mumbled, “I ain’t giving you nothing.”
“I paid two hundred fifty dollars to get you out of here,” I said.
“Well, go get your money so we can buy us some drinks.”
Even the big bad guard had to laugh at that. At the same time, that didn’t stop him from making me search Junior, who, it turned out, had about two dollars in change. The guard took it all and I took Junior home.
 
The thing that made the bumpy ride with Junior Wells worthwhile was the music. Even though we never made big money as a team and even though no one could never convince Junior that he wasn’t gonna replace James Brown, our chemistry was nothing they could make in a science lab. I believe it was magical.
We argued like a married couple. He wasn’t a guitarist and I was no harmonica player, but we could both sing. I loved his singing more than I did my own, and I let him sing all he wanted. After all, he’d been in Muddy’s band and I hadn’t. He had seniority. But in my mind that didn’t mean I should shoulder more of the costs.
For example, I bought our first band van. When I’d run it into the ground, I figured it was time for him to buy the next one. He refused. So I refused to play. So he changed his mind and bought the van, but then he started drinking more. When he passed out cold from too much whiskey or wine, I’d snap his picture and put it up in the club where he could see it. He didn’t care. When the doctor told him he couldn’t smoke due to his punctured lung, I hid his cigarettes. “Don’t matter,” he said. “Next break I’ll run out and buy another pack.” And that’s just what he did.
After
Hoodoo Man Blues,
I’d say the next best record I did with Junior was
Buddy and the Juniors
. That came through Michael Cuscuna, a music producer.
We were talking one day in Philadelphia when I happened to say, “You know, Michael, when I go on stage with those rock cats and their Marshall amps piled up high as a mountain, they got a volume you can hear from here to Alabama.”
“Do you like that, Buddy?” he asked.
“I like it. I’ve always liked loud, but sometimes it gets to where you can’t feel nothing but the loud. You ain’t feeling your soul.”
“Would you be willing to make a record that went the other way?”
“What you mean?”
“I mean,” said Michael, “an acoustic record. No bass player, no drummer—say, just you and Junior and maybe a piano player.”
“Who you got in mind?”
“How about a jazz piano player like Junior Mance? That way we could call it
Buddy and the Juniors
.”
I had to laugh. And I had to say that I thought it was a good idea.
“If you can pull it off,” I told Michael, “I’m there.”
Michael pulled it off. Me and the Juniors met in New York City.
We started off playing some of the more famous blues like “Hoochie Coochie Man” and “Five Long Years.” Junior Wells was in fine form, and Junior Mance was right on time. With no electricity anywhere, it felt great to hear all those empty spaces around me. I could breathe real good and easy.
Things got so good and easy that when Junior Mance was sitting up in the control booth, me and Junior Wells began making up shit on the spot. Those songs—“Talkin’ ’bout Women Obviously,” “A Motif Is Just a Riff,” and “Buddy’s Blues”—were caught on tape and became part of the final album put out by Blue Thumb Records.
 
By 1971, at age thirty-five, in addition to my girls with Phyllis, I was the father of three other girls—Charlotte, Carlise, Colleen—and three boys—George, Gregory, and Geoffrey—all with Joan. We was living in the two-flat on the South Side. Because I was on the road so much, the marriage was hurting bad. I provided but not nearly in the style that Joan wanted. She wanted more—and I could understand it. The kids wanted more time with me—and I could understand that too. When I got off the road, I was tired. When I played in the city, I didn’t get home till the wee hours of the morning. Joan and the kids was living in one world and I was in another.
BOOK: When I Left Home
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