If you look at my pictures (at the top and to the right) on this page, you'll notice that I have long hair. That picture up top is a couple of years old, and my hair has grown longer since. In fact, I don't believe I've cut my hair in four years. If you met me now, you wouldn't think anything odd about that, but if you knew me back in high school or college, you'd be a bit surprised, as many are, when they encounter me (or my pictures on Facebook) for the first time in ten or twenty years. These acquaintances and long-lost friends are shocked by my do because until--you guessed it--four years ago, I always wore my hair short, my locks never coming close to approaching my shoulders.
The most common question I'm asked about my hair is why I decided to grow it so long, and my most common response is that I had a mid-life crisis several years ago, and I got over it, but my hair didn't. Of course, my answer is a joke; I've never been one (and my wife'll vouch for this) to care too much about my image. As long as my looks didn't utterly repulse both (wo)man and beast, then I was fine with whatever was comfortable and socially acceptable.
After so many instances of giving the same pat answer, I started to wonder if the mid-life crisis answer was actually true. Hmm. I had to think. Okay, what was going on in my life four years ago. Well, I was teaching ninth grade English. I'd taught that before, so I could nix that right? Just to be sure, I tried to remember who was in that group of kiddies, and...oh-ho-ho! One of my students happened to be the daughter of a woman who graduated high school the same year I did. Can you say red flag? Yeah, but I started teaching her class in August of '04, and--in the school yearbook photograph--my hair was short then. In the next year's yearbook, though, my hair is much longer, so what happened between August '04 and August '05? What happened in the spring and/or summer?
What happened is what's happening right now, and that's American Idol. Is '05 the year that...yeah, it is: that's the year Bo Bice was on the show. Ding! Another red flag! Despite what I may say here about pop music (and don't get me wrong--I love pop music), I'm a rocker at heart, and so was Bo. I loved his country-blues-rock singing style and vocal ability, and I loved his song choices. My wife Foot Foot loved these things about him, too...but not as much as she loved his looks. Hmm...Bo is a rocker with a beart and long hair, and I'm a rocker with a beart and....It was time to grow the hair. It wouldn't be too long before I'd hit forty, yet my face still looked (comparatively) young, and I did play drums in a rock and roll band, so hippie hair might not seem that ridiculous. Plus, seeing that girl in my class every was a daily reminder of my advancing age, so maybe growing my hair long might be a way to stave off arthritis and senility and gout and Depends, a way to keep my age perennially at thirty-three.*
Four years later, and my hair is finally of the requisite Bo Bice length (even though my body is as of yet of the requisite Bo Bice width), and my band's playing more gigs, and do I feel younger? At school, my students make "old man" comments at least three times a week, and I've found myself constantly telling my students--tongue-in-cheek, but still--that I'm ten years younger than I truly am. Graduation will arrive in two-and-a-half months, and that freshmen daughter of a woman my age will then be a high-school graduate daughter of a woman my age. Mercy...I'm not Bo Bice; I'm Mick Hucknell, and I'm holding back the years. Thank goodness, though, I'm not yet Ian Anderson, as I'm not too old to rock and roll...yet.I'm not Buddy Guy, either. Guy's recording history spans fifty years, and he's played with the likes of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf back in the early-to-mid sixties when the blues boomed again, when those artists were toured Europe. British blues bands--the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds (and all its subsequent incarnations and spin-off groups), Fleetwood Mac (in its original lineup), the Animals, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, and Led Zeppelin were among the most prominent--sprung up left and right, all seemingly inspired by the Chicago Blues sound (and Delta Blues, too, but the primary influence came from the Windy City), all taking the old blues riffs and floating verses and adding screaming electric guitar solos, loud crashing cymbals, and a more-straight-ahead 4/4 beat to create the British Blues movement.
This movement has proven to be hugely influential on the rock and roll music scene, as all across the country--but especially in the South and Southwest--thousands of electric blues & rock bands (and many country bands as well) still play in the aforementioned British Blues form. This form takes the standard twelve-bar blues structure and adds a more straight-ahead 4/4 beat, loud crashing cymbals, and long electric-guitar solos. The latter element comes first from B.B. King, who took what Waters and Wolf (and Dixon) were doing, cleaned it up, and added the numerous and lengthy string-bending solos. Then, someone came along, took B.B. King's style of Chicago blues, and dirtied it back up again while keeping the long solos. And this new form was the primary influence on everyone of those British blues bands, and the man who (primarily*) developed and popularized this new form was Buddy Guy.
Back in the day, Guy never found solo success, but his guitar playing--along with his wild showman's antics (from where Hendrix learned multiple tricks)--on these blues tunes was just what these white mods were looking for: something down deep and dirty, yet fun and frenetic and exciting as well. These British** guitarists--Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, etc...--didn't have to worry about trying to adapt the blues style to their rock-and-roll guitar playing because Buddy Guy had already done it for 'em. If you're ever looking for a link between the blues and modern rock and roll, then look no further than the records Guy cut (solo and as a session/touring guitarist with much more well-known Chess-label acts) in the early and mid-sixties, 'cause it's all right there. Guy's style isn't rock (at least it wasn't yet), but all the seeds of blues-rock phenomenon are clearly evident.
In the late '80s, all of Buddy Guy's work finally paid off, as he released back-to-back Grammy-winning albums (1991's Damn Right, I've Got the Blues and 1993's Feels Like Rain), and they were the best-selling albums of his career (and they--especially the former--are among the best of his career, too), and their success rejuvinated his career, allowing Guy much more publicity, bringing in more concert goers at higher-class venues, and calling forth long-deserved critical and popular respect and attention. However, after these two albums, Guy's music dipped in quality, and he seemed to coast a bit...until 2001.
Guy switched labels (from Silvertone to Jive), changed producers (to Dennis Herring), and recorded an album of stripped-down Chicago/Delta Blues. This album--Sweet Tea--was easily Guy's best in a decade, and its sound harkens back to the some of the early sides he recorded some forty years back (and to his live shows, as well), where Guy sounded fresh and alive and electric and youthful. On the jump-blues cuts, Guy shows that he's in prime form, his fills alternating between raw & serrated and clean & supple. But on his slow numbers, he drops the sleek, soul-blues sound of the previous ten years for something less like B.B. King and more like R.L. Burnside.
In "Done Got Old,"--the best slow blues record Buddy Guy has recorded since the sixties--Guy's admissions and confessions of aesthetic, locomotive, and sexual inadequacies are stark and startling. It's stark because Guy speak-sings half of the song, and he does it in his lower register, accompanying himself with only his electric guitar. It's an intimate performance, and Guy's showmanship is replaced with an invisible veneer that allows the listener a rare, honest glimpse into his soul. It's startling because I don't believe I've ever heard a man--much less a black blues man, one who's built his vocal recording career on either professing his prowess or lamenting a lover's loyalty--come clean the way Guy does here.
Jagger, Dylan, even Lennon never 'fessed up like this. When you have to admit that you're to old to function sexually, too old to satisfy your woman, then...damn, you've got the blues, and you've got them something awful. Guy doesn't try to undercut the lyric*** with humor, either, and his trenchant admission is truly humbling, the work of an artist unafraid to speak the truth, knowing that he has to do so to unleash the frustration of his age, that no matter how much he'd like to run and party with the younger set, how much he'd like to look pretty and handsome and attractive, or how much he'd like to satisfy his woman the way he would truly like to satisfy her, that he's just too old to do so. And he's man enough to admit it.
Hell, even growing his hair out wouldn't help. How do I know this, when this is never even alluded to in the song? Buddy Guy shaved his head...four years ago. I guess he finally realized that he'd never be Bo Bice.
He doesn't have to be; he's Buddy Guy.
NOTES
*I say primarily because native Philadelphia, Mississippian (hooray for my hometown) Otis Rush was as instrumental in this development as Guy was. Thing is, though, Rush wasn't near the dexterous and innovative and lively showman Guy was, and therefore Guy became much more (relatively) popular, and thus his influence spread much further.
**Buddy Guy's influence was felt here in America as well. Acts such as the Allman Brothers and Stevie Ray Vaughn pledged their musical allegiance to Buddy Guy early in their careers, and the sounds they developed wouldn't have been possible without Guy paving the way.
***The lyric--and song--were written (and originally recorded) by none other than Junior Kimbrough. I must admit that I feel a tiny smidgen of satisfaction at being able not only to include Kimbrough on this best of the 2000s list when he died in '98, but also to be able to list him right next to his greatest peer, R.L. Burnside.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment