Buddy Guy: Blues Magus

Shaking a finger at the audience, turning his head to the side to stretch a quivering note, rolling his cheek muscles over vowels -- Buddy Guy seemed at times to be possessed by the spirit of his late mentor Muddy Waters as he sang to the Harborlights crowd last Friday. But he performed as if there were a hell-fired kid of 16 in his 60-year-old frame, sweeping from hard shouts to angelic falsettos, and playing guitar like the magus prince of the blues.

Which he is. Guy and his other big influence, B.B. King, are our leading elder statesmen of the music. But you'd never know it hearing Guy pile layers of distorted, dizzy, violent licks in the middle of Eddie Boyd's grand "Five Long Years," or skid to a stop on his guitar strings and step to the microphone to wail in his sweetest church voice. Indeed, it felt as if Guy were delivering a sermon aimed to embrace everyone. He tore up blues and R&B classics to slake the diehards, ripped through rock with teasing passages of Chuck Berry, Cream, and Hendrix, and stepped into the aisles to scratch his guitar like a young gun wired on Jimmy Page solos.

Oddly, Guy played none of his own vigorous songs. But maybe he was making a point. By rearranging the classics with extended solos, breakdowns, and changes in feel and tempo, he made them feel reborn rather than rehashed. The tradition came alive. It's a lesson every play-by-the-numbers bar band -- and there's an overabundance -- needs to learn.

Too often since his '91 comeback CD Damn Right, I've Got the Blues (Silvertone) Guy himself has jived through concerts -- chattering excessively, not completing songs. For fans who've seen him exercise his genius, those shows are tedious disappointments. But on this sultry summer night, if the blues has a God, Guy was surely doing His bidding.

-- Ted Drozdowski