When I left home: my story (2015)

After I Left Home

“Who the Hell Are These Guys?”

In 1967, the year before Little Walter died, me and Junior Wells were invited to the Newport Folk Festival. This goes back to Muddy going in years earlier, knocking out the crowd and knocking down the doors so other blues acts could walk on in.

When we arrived, someone said that, aside from performing, we were expected to conduct an afternoon “workshop.” When I asked what that that meant, the man said, “It’s where you play and talk about how you make your music. People can ask you questions. It’s very informal and gives the fans a chance to understand why you do what you do.”

Sounded good to me.

“How many people turn up for these things?” I asked.

“A few dozen. We put you in a tent and set up folding chairs.”

Me and Junior got there early to set up. Turned out that the tent was already filled with people, so they had to move us to a giant-sized tent. That got filled up in a hurry. People were standing everywhere. In the end, where some of the other workshops had as many as a hundred fans, ours had thousands.

George Wein, the fellow who ran the festival, ran around saying, “Who the hell are these guys?”

He had never heard of Buddy Guy and Junior Wells—but the fans had.

That same year I was booked into the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. This was my first real taste of the hippie scene. I didn’t go looking for any these hippie bands, but they found me. Jefferson Airplane, for example, called me to open their shows.

I was a little nervous before playing the Avalon. The white hippie musicians liked me, but would their fans follow? Did they want me to play Tex Ritter songs? Did they want rock and roll? Couldn’t be sure. I wasn’t about to take no chances, so I lit up the Avalon. I gave ’em my best balls-out Guitar Slim show. I was hanging from the rafters, blasting my shit until all them hippies looked like they were climaxing from good sex.

Sex was on my mind because of all the free-love talk. I found me a couple of hippie chicks during that trip and had a nice taste of what they’d been talking about. Yes, sir, I didn’t see nothing wrong with no free love.

My hit with the hippies got me booked into New York. I was excited because it was my first time playing the big city. The joint was called the Scene, and the Chamber Brothers were on the bill with me. God knows what I did that night—played the guitar between my legs, over my back, on top of my head.

During a break Waterman said, “Hendrix is here. He wants to tape you. He wants to jam with you.”

I remember hearing Hendrix’s name from that time in Toronto, but I still wasn’t all that sure who he was. Hadn’t heard no records by him and didn’t know what the fuss was about.

“Sure,” I said. “Let him record. Let him jam.”

He came in with a reel-to-reel recorder that he set up in front of the bandstand. Can’t remember the song we did, but he joined in with no problems. Said he was used to being in the background. He had a wild look but a shy manner. When it was time for him to solo, I heard him as a good bluesman who, like me, went looking for new sounds and didn’t mind if he got a little lost along the way. He had a wah-wah pedal and used it to make certain points. Earl Hooker had that pedal earlier, but Hendrix leaned on it much heavier than Earl did. I could hear that Hendrix was something else.

After the set he thanked me.

“You’re one of my teachers,” he said.

I was flattered, but I couldn’t remember getting paid for any lessons. I wished him luck and never saw him again.

Our first white fans were musicians who came to the black side of Chicago and sat in. Michael Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, Steve Miller, and Elvin Bishop were some of those cats leading the early charge. When they got famous with bands of their own, they never forgot us. They told the press, “Listen to Muddy and Walter. Check out the Wolf and John Lee. Don’t forget Buddy. These are the originals.” I wasn’t an original, but I was glad to be named in that company.

When the British guys like John Mayall, Eric, Beck, Mick, and Keith hit it big over here, they also put their money where their mouth was. When they toured, they had us open for them and told their fans, “These are real cats. Buy their records. Give ’em their dues.”

In 1969 the State Department had me go all over East and West Africa. I took my brother Phil along so he might heal quicker from the death of our parents. We had to get eighteen shots before we took off, and I was a little nervous about what I’d find. I knew Africa was nothing like the Tarzan movies I’d seen as a kid, but what would it be like?

Every country was different. Many were primitive, with topless women washing their clothes in a ditch. Other places were more modern. The Peace Corps people were there to escort us. We ate in the homes of diplomats. When our driver wasn’t invited in to eat with us, though, I got mad. Inside the diplomat had air conditioning, while outside it was 120 degrees. I told the diplomat I couldn’t sit down at his table knowing that the driver was about to have a heat stroke. The diplomat was black, but I could see that he looked down on the driver because the driver’s skin wasn’t black enough. His skin was lighter. Interesting to see that certain black-on-black prejudices in Africa were opposite ours. For way too long African Americans saw light as better. In Africa I heard some say dark is better. None of it makes sense. It ain’t better or worse; it’s just different. All prejudice is fucked up.

I met Idi Amin, who requested that I play. Naturally, I did. I didn’t know it, but around this same time he was cutting off people’s heads. I played best as I could, but later I thought, Man, what if I had hit the wrong notes?

Someone asked me when I got back to Chicago if going to Africa felt like going home.

“No,” I said. It opened my eyes to a lot of things. I thought I knew poor before, but African poor was on a deeper level. Of course I related to people with skin the color of mine. And I heard music and saw dancing that was new to me but also very old. I felt Africa deep in my soul. But it wasn’t my home. Sure, it was the original home, but my real home was Louisiana. Nothing would ever change that.

A few weeks after I was back in the States I ran into B. B. at O’Hare Airport. Both our planes were late, so we had time for coffee.

“We ships passing in the night, ain’t we, B?”

“Helluva thing, Buddy,” he said. “I’m just lucky to keep working.”

“Man, you always gonna be working. You B. B. King.”

“The real truth is that I was just about to lose my audience—what with black folks making money, going middle class, and not wanting to hear no blues.”

“That audience is just about gone, B.”

“Sure is. But here we are playing to a bigger audience that’s white and don’t have none of their parents’ prejudices.”

“It’s a beautiful thing,” I agreed.

“Wasn’t for these English acts, I’d be playing a bar in Three Mule, Mississippi. Here I am on my way to Fillmore East in New York City. I think Bill Graham got me booked with the Byrds. Where you off to, Buddy?”

“A traveling hippie festival in Canada. We going by train to four or five different cities. They say it’s gonna be bigger than Woodstock.”

“Hendrix on it?”

“Don’t think so,” I said. “But Janis Joplin is.”

“You ain’t fixing to mess with any of those hippie girls, are you, Buddy?”

“Only every chance I get.”

I flew into Toronto, where they had the Festival Express, a custom train just for the musicians on the tour. First gig was Toronto. Then we was riding the rails to Winnipeg and Calgary. These were big outdoor venues for tens of thousands of people. They were calling it Woodstock on Wheels.

I had my brother Phil in my band then, and we had a blast. The other artists were the Band, the Grateful Dead, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Tom Rush, and Ian and Sylvia and the Great Speckled Bird. Janis was the headliner.

I got good respect from the other artists. Janis couldn’t have been sweeter. In the high cotton of Hippieland, she was the queen, but she never had no airs about her. But you couldn’t separate her from her bottle of Southern Comfort. She clung to it like a baby clinging to a bottle of milk. Janis was flying high. We was all flying high. There were so many drugs on that train that it’s a wonder the thing didn’t go off the track and float up into the sky. Man, the drugs had exploded. Funny thing about the hippies, though, is that when they smoked up all their dope, they’d come to us for our whiskey and wine. But that was okay with me. Love was in the air, and who don’t love love?

This was just a month after the Kent State shootings, so political fever was running high. The concerts had so many kids wanting to get in that they started crashin’ down the gates. There were riots. The promoters were going crazy. The fans were saying that the $10 ticket price—a lot for those days—was too high and music should be free. I didn’t get paid too much, but I didn’t care because this whole new audience was digging what I was doing. The musicians, meanwhile, were complaining that the Canadian Scotch wasn’t no stronger than 56 proof. And all the time cameras were rolling. They made a documentary movie of the tour, Festival Express.

I loved the tour because of the good vibes with the artists and fans. I wasn’t blowing grass, but I got a contact high just being on the train and standing on stage under a heavy cloud of marijuana smoke.

Jerry Garcia came up to me before a show and said, “Buddy you take a hit off this and you’ll play some shit you never heard.”

I took the hit.

After the show Jerry asked, “Well?”

“You were right,” I said. “I didn’t hear shit.”

Pot ain’t my thing.

Couple months later—this is still 1970—the Stones had me and Junior open up their tour in Europe. We went to Finland and France, where the venues were even bigger than Festival Express. I’m talking about soccer stadiums. Mick and Keith were cool—they was always saying nice things about me and Junior. But not all the fans felt like Mick and Keith.

Opening some of them shows, we were booed. Fans wanted the Stones, not two blues cats from Chicago. They’d paid good money to hear their Stones, and I couldn’t blame them for being pissed. If I was a hippie living in Helsinki who saved up my hard-earned cash to hear the Rolling Stones, I might be pissed too. I actually felt bad for those people booing. Wish I could have given them what they wanted.

In some cases Junior and I were able to do that. There were some blues lovers out there. When I met them afterward, they told me straight-up that they discovered the blues through the Stones. During those magazine and TV interviews when Keith had mentioned Muddy, the fans went back to listen to Muddy for themselves. It was like B. B. said: the British boys were bringing us along on their ride.

Far as the Stones themselves go, this was the summer after their winter concert at Altamont Speedway in California where there had been a killing. I know that the Stones like to party, but far as I could tell, they were low key on this tour.

It was during this same September that the news came in from London about Jimi Hendrix. He was dead at twenty-seven. Month later the news came in from L.A. that Janis Joplin was also dead and also at twenty-seven.

These deaths broke my heart. Wasn’t that I was close to either of them. But our paths had crossed, and I could see their talent and the promise of beautiful careers. Jimi busted through boundaries that needed to come down. Others had come before—I’m thinking of spacey players like Ike Turner, Earl Hooker, and, especially, Johnny Guitar Watson—but Jimi had the balls to carry it into new territory. He wasn’t afraid of taking his guitar to the top of a mountain of Marshall amps. He’d turn up the volume loud enough to wake up your grandmother in the grave. That’s what he wanted to hear. And he knew that’s what the kids wanted to hear.

Janis had her own idols—Tina Turner and Etta James, for sure. She’d be the first to tell you that her mamas were all black. She sang black. She proved that the color of your skin don’t have shit to do with the depths of your soul. Janis had soul, but like Jimi, she was a shooting star, quick to shine and quick to flame out.

Sad.

During that same tour with the Stones I got a beautiful surprise. I was backstage at the Paris concert when Eric Clapton came up to me with a funny-looking cat with the face of a foreign diplomat.

“This is Ahmet Ertegun,” Eric said, “president of Atlantic Records.”

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.