Buddy Guy
USA, 1957–now
American blues guitarist and singer, based in Chicago from 1957. He worked as a Chess Records session guitarist behind Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf before recording under his own name, and is associated with the amplified, dynamically extreme lead style of the Chicago West Side sound.
MusicRoots documents 3 artists who influenced Buddy Guy and 3 artists Buddy Guy influenced in turn. Every connection cites a published source.
Who influenced Buddy Guy?
- B.B. King — B.B. King's singing electric-blues lead was a primary model for Buddy Guy's own expressive guitar.
- Muddy Waters — Guy played as a Chess session guitarist alongside Muddy Waters, who became a mentor and defining influence.
- John Lee Hooker — John Lee Hooker's raw blues was among the Mississippi-rooted influences on Guy's playing.
Which artists did Buddy Guy influence?
- Eric Clapton — Guy showed Clapton what an electric blues guitarist could get away with — volume, feedback and sudden dynamics — and Clapton has put him above every other living player. He inducted Guy into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005.
- Jimi Hendrix — Hendrix sought Guy out rather than the other way round: he turned up at a 1968 show carrying a reel-to-reel machine to tape the set, telling Guy he had come because he had picked things up from him. Film of the two playing together that year survives.
- Stevie Ray Vaughan — Guy was one of the guitarists Vaughan learned from at home, on the records his older brother Jimmie brought back — the Chicago end of the blues vocabulary he later played through a Texas amplifier.