When I left home: my story (2015)

After I Left Home

Daddy’s Eyes

When my father came to Chicago, it was the middle of the sixties. I got him to come not because of music but because of baseball. He wanted to see his hero, Don Drysdale, pitch in person. There was a series coming up in Wrigley Field between the Cubs and Dodgers.

“Dodgers gonna pitch Drysdale?” my father asked when I called him down in Baton Rouge.

“Daddy, you know the rotation good as me. It’s a three-game series, so there’s a good chance he will.”

“And if he don’t?”

“You’ll see Sandy Koufax.”

“Koufax ain’t as good as Drysdale. Don’t have the power.”

“Koufax is better,” I argued. “He’s got the finesse. He’s the best since Robin Roberts.”

“You can’t prove that by me.”

“I don’t need to prove nothing, Daddy. I just want you to see Chicago.”

Seeing Chicago through my father’s eyes was great. He saw a good side of the city because I put him in my house, let him play with his grandchildren, and drove him around to all the sights.

Naturally, he wanted to hear me play; he was proud to see people who knew my name and applauded my music. I took him by Chess, introduced him to Muddy and the Wolf, and gave him all the love and attention he deserved. But nothing I did for him could compare to when we walked into Wrigley Field. I could see his eyes soaking it all in.

“It’s a small park,” he said, looking around. “Yes sir, a small park but a mighty pretty park. I’ve been seeing it in black and white on the television. Now here it is in color. And there’s Ernie Banks. My, my, my.”

He surprised me that trip by how he learned the Bible. Knew every part of that book, Old and New. You’d ask him about any character, and Daddy could tell you what part he played in the story. With little education, the man had educated himself deeply when it came to religion.

“Why?” I asked him.

“Think about it, son,” he said. “This book’s been around and read by millions of people in every language you can think of. Can’t say the same about any other book. That means something. Means that the book’s got something to teach us.”

“And what’s that?”

“That there’s more to this life than the flesh on our bones. That flesh is gonna fail, son. But something else is gonna live. Talkin’’bout the spirit. My spirit can’t never die. It keeps coming back on me and on you and on everyone I love. You remember that when I’m gone.”

In 1967, as he turned fifty-seven, Daddy’s heart gave out. A year later, at age sixty-three, my mother, who had lived with her stroke for so many years, followed him to that place where you don’t grow old. If the technology in medicine had been offered them like it’s been offered me, maybe they could have lived longer. I believe they were satisfied to live long enough to see their kids raised right. They taught us decency, they showered us with love, and they had us believing that God is real as rain.

After my folks were gone I brought my brother Phil up to Chicago. Phil lived there, where he had a good career as a guitarist, respected by everyone. Beyond his talent as a player, Phil could sing nearly good as Otis Redding, his idol.

Junior Wells went around saying that James Brown idolized him, and maybe that was true. Junior could put on a show. After Hoodoo Man Blues showed the world what we could do together, Dick Waterman kept after me to form a permanent band with Junior.

“Permanent is a strong word,” I told Dick.

“Well, how’s temporarily permanent?” he asked.

“Better. But only with one condition.”

“What’s that, Buddy?”

“We use my band, not his.”

“I don’t think he’ll object.”

“Don’t matter if he does,” I said, “because that’s the only way I’m doing it. If it’s my band, he can’t fire nobody—not even me. All he can do is quit.”

Dick laughed and said, “I see your point.”

“Let’s hope Junior does too.”

He did—and the Buddy Guy/ Junior Wells show, with too many stops and starts to count, went on for some twenty years.

There were really two Juniors: one when he was sober and the other when he was drunk. Sober Junior would give you the shirt off his back and the last dollar in his wallet. Sober Junior was a sweetheart. Drunk Junior was a different deal. He could get ornery, mean, and downright evil.

Strange part is that these two Juniors split up into another two people—the Junior before he got stabbed and the Junior after the stabbing.

The stabbing happened toward the end of the sixties. Before that the State Department sent him to Vietnam to entertain the troops. Junior did great over there. Pictures of him and Hubert Humphrey came out in Ebony magazine. He was feeling all good about himself. He was feeling respected.

Then came the stabbing. Terrible as it was, the incident made me love him more because it made me feel for him more. It broke my heart to see him so changed.

It happened at Pepper’s Lounge at three in the morning. I wasn’t there, but they called me right away.

Junior was at Pepper’s when his then-girlfriend, a married woman, came up from behind him and put a knife in his back. She lunged it in so deep that it punctured his lungs. The reason for the attack was crazy. The woman, who was two-timing her husband, was told by friends that Junior was two-timing her. These so-called friends said that Junior was with his “other woman” down at Pepper’s. Junior had had some kids with this “other woman,” but the truth was that Junior didn’t even know that the “other woman” was in the club. Besides, he’d broken up with the “other woman” a long time ago. But the stabbing woman didn’t bother to ask no questions—she went for blood and she got it.

When I got to the hospital, Junior was conscious and wanted to leave. He wanted to go home and go to sleep. The doctors said that, although the puncture wasn’t deep, he could start bleeding internally. If that happened, he might never wake up. They needed him to stay. Somehow—don’t ask me how—I convinced the stubborn man to listen to the doctors. He stayed and survived and, at first, seemed to bounce back to normal. But Junior would never know normal again. That stabbing aggravated his soul. He became an angry man, and when his anger got mixed with liquor, there was hell to pay.

I’m not saying that Junior didn’t continue to play great—he did. Me and him was ham and eggs. But it didn’t take much for his eggs to get scrambled, burning up my ham and scorching the frying pan.

Before I signed with Vanguard, I was up in Toronto playing a gig when Dick Waterman called.

“The Beatles want to sign you,” he said.

“Sign me to what?” I asked.

“Apple Records. That’s their label.”

I was flattered that the Beatles knew my music well enough to offer me a contract, but I had to know the terms.

“The upfront money is decent,” said Waterman.

“Tell them what I really want is a house. My two-flat is getting small for my family.”

“I’ll tell them.”

Next day Waterman called again.

“They’ll buy the house,” he said.

“Great. I’ll sign.”

“You can live in the house, but they’ll own it.”

“That ain’t no good.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause they can kick me out whenever they wanna. I wanna own the house.”

“I’ll tell them.”

He did, but they wouldn’t go for it. My deal with the Beatles was over before it began.

That song I like so well called “Money” says that your loving gives me such a thrill, but your love don’t pay no bills. Well, even if it didn’t pay no bills, I got me a big thrill when John Lee Hooker called me in 1967 and said, “B-b-b-b-b-b-b-buddy G-g-g-g-g-g-g-guy, how you feel ’bout p-p-p-p-p-playing on my record?”

“Johnny,” I said, “I feel great.”

Song was called “The Motor City Is Burning”—all about the terrible riots that messed up Detroit.

Many people say it’s hard to play with John Lee because he changes up the tempo and adds verses without telling you. I had no trouble, and I’ll you why. I put my chair right in front of him so we could play face to face. I let him know with my eyes and my fingers that he didn’t have to worry about nothing. I was there to follow him. Didn’t matter to me if he changed the beat twelve times and added six new verses. I was with him. Man, I was thrilled for him to lead the way. As he sang about how the Big D was on fire, how his hometown was burning down to the ground, how it was worse than Vietnam, I could see the scenes. I could see that this man was a real poet. He painted pictures of real life. He was letting us see the soldiers on the streets of Detroit, flames everywhere, the feeling of panic, the confusion in his brain. He wasn’t worried about whether the words rhymed or how long the song lasted. He was free—freer than any bluesman who ever done played.

A friend once explained to me how modern painters like Picasso were free to paint whatever they felt. If the lines was crooked or a woman had three eyes, didn’t matter. Well, that was John Lee. He was a modern painter of the burning blues.

When we got through recording “The Motor City Is Burning,” I was exhausted but happy, like I had just got through running up stairs or having heavy sex.

John Lee was all smiles. He looked at me and said, “B-b-b-bb-buddy G-g-g-g-g-guy, you can p-p-p-p-p-play with me a-a-a-aa-a-anytime.”

“Anytime you call, Johnny, I’ll come a-running.”

Turned out to be the only record we ever made together—but that’s okay. It’s a jewel.

My first record came out on Vanguard in 1968, A Man and Blues. I was blessed to have Otis Spann on piano and Wayne Bennett on rhythm guitar along with my favorites, Jack Myers on bass and heartbeat-steady Fred Below on drums. I couldn’t be happier getting an advance—my first for any record—but I wasn’t all that happy with Samuel Charters, the producer. Charters, like the cats who found Muddy in the Delta, was a blues purist. He was a blues scholar, which is a beautiful thing—beautiful to have cats writing down the history and preserving it in museums. But at age thirty-two, I didn’t feel like a museum piece. I was still a young man looking to kick plenty of ass. Charter wasn’t all that different than Leonard Chess. He had his notion of what the blues should be. He wanted that clean sound that so many producers think make for a good blues record. I still wanted to explode like I did when I played live—but that ain’t what Charters wanted.

I liked the money and I liked that I was cutting LPs under my name, so I caved in. Nothing wrong with these Vanguard records—a lot of people like them—but I still felt like I held back.

That year, 1968, was marked by death, none more painful to me than my mom’s.

In April Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. Wasn’t a black person in America—and millions of whites—who didn’t take that personally. It was like your father or uncle or big brother had been killed—and for no right reason. I can’t say that I could have marched with Dr. King because I’m one of those fools without the wisdom to turn the other cheek. I would have struck back and ruined everything. But I admired his plan. I knew it was Godly. And I saw it working.

Come June Bobby Kennedy was gunned down in Los Angeles. This wave of shootings—starting in 1963 when Medgar Evers and President Kennedy were killed and continuing into 1965 when Malcolm X was murdered—had us believing we was living in a land of violence.

On the blues front you’d have to call Little Walter a violent man. He didn’t hold back on his temper. Fact is that he never held back on anything—his playing, drinking, gambling, or women. He had scars from to head to foot, and he was ready to cut anyone he didn’t like. That was just his way. He kept his feelings right in front of his face. Maybe that’s why he was the baddest harp man who ever done slipped one of those things in his mouth.

Ran into Little Walter in the streets one day. It was morning time and I had just got through playing one of those early sets at Theresa’s.

“Hey, motherfucker,” he said, “you seen my lady?”

“Yes,” I said. “She’s in the club with her mama.”

“She was supposed to have food on the table for me. I got home and there wasn’t shit. I’m going in there to kick her ass.”

“Wouldn’t do that, Walter. Her mama’s big as the side of a barn and strong as a mule. Her mama ain’t gonna let you whip no one.”

“I got a plan,” he said. “But first I need a drink.”

“Well, go ahead and get one.”

“I need you to buy me a pint.”

I thought to myself, This is coming from a guy who had the biggest record—“Juke”—you’d ever want to hear. Of course that was many years ago. He’d been through hard times. He’d gotten shot and he walked with a limp.

I bought him the pint.

“Now, Buddy, I want you to go in there and help me whip their asses.”

“No, sir,” I said.

“You scared?”

“Hell, yes, I’m scared. Both those ladies are beasts.”

“They ain’t that mean,” he said.

“Mean enough.”

“Lookee here, Buddy, we bluesmen gotta stick together.”

“Yes,” I said, “when it comes to music. But not when it comes to getting beat up by two angry bitches.”

“So I gotta do it myself?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t do it at all.”

“You don’t think I can whup ’em?”

“That woman as much as sits on you, Walter, and you might not get up again.”

“Watch me.”

I stayed by the door as Walter marched in and went right up to the booth where his lady and her mama were sitting. He started cussing them ’bout how he was hungry and expected food on the table. They cussed him back ’bout how he can get his own damn food.

“Fuck you both!” he screamed.

That’s when he took the package of salt and pepper he’d been holding in his hand and threw it in their eyes. Before they knew what was happening, he was punching them both in the face. By the time they were able to dilute their eyes with water, he had done limped out and was long gone.

The last days of Little Walter were sad. In the winter of 1968 I heard the story from Junior.

“I seen Walter down there around Theresa’s,” said Junior, “shooting dice on the street, not far from that apartment where he was living. Cat threw the dice, but he threw’em at Walter’s butt. The dice came up with the winning combination, but Walter said it wasn’t fair—you couldn’t roll the dice against no one’s ass and call it a winner. When the cat reached for the money, Junior grabbed it first. Then the cat took a hammer and hit Walter upside the head. Walter seemed to take the blow okay. Didn’t even fall. But he was shocked enough to where the cat took the money. Walter went home and told his old lady he had a headache. He needed to get in the bed and sleep. Well, his old lady didn’t think nothing of it. Just gave him aspirin with a glass of water. He fell right asleep. In the morning he was dead. Come to find out it was a concussion. He was bleeding from the inside. Hemorrhaged to death.”

There were other stories about how he died, but Junior swore he saw it with his own eyes. You could say a lot of things about the short life of Little Walter. He died at age thirty-seven. Like me, he was born in Louisiana and found himself trying to cope with the crazy blues life of Chicago. Unlike me, though, he started something new. He invented something new. They say that King Oliver and Louis Armstrong invented the jazz trumpet. They say Jelly Roll Morton invented the jazz piano. They say Charlie Christian invented the jazz guitar. They say Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Charlie Parker invented the jazz saxophone. In that same breath you gotta say Little Walter invented the blues harmonica. No one had that sound before him. No one could make the thing cry like a baby and moan like a woman. No one could put pain in the harp and have it come out so pretty. No one understood that the harmonica—just as much as a trumpet, a trombone, or a saxophone—could have a voice that would stop you in your tracks, where all you could say was, “Lord, have mercy.”

Far as his career went, he went up early and then kept going down. You can look at B. B., Muddy, and John Lee and wonder why Walter, who had as much talent, never found the money success they did. Those guys had promoters, of course, who helped build their popularity. Walter never found a promoter who could do that for him. Was it because Walter was too tough to work with, or was it because promoters didn’t understand how great he was? Or was it just luck? B. B. and Muddy and John Lee had good fortune. Walter didn’t.

In music some of the most talented people die penniless while some of the least talented get rich as Rockefeller. Bad habits have a lot to do with it. But so does bad luck. And when you got both, the odds are against you. With my own eyes I seen that happen to two people I met along the way—Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.