‘225’ talks to blues legend Buddy Guy

In the blaze of summer, with hands calloused from pulling cotton from the boll, the Guy children would crawl beneath the floor planks of the shack where the dirt was cool, lie flat on their backs in the dark and dream. To describe Sam and Isabell Guy’s home in Lettsworth, Louisiana—a village about an hour from Baton Rouge, just northwest of St. Francisville—it is easier to list what it lacked than what it had: plumbing, running water, electricity and meat—other than a little pork shared with the neighbors every Christmas. Like his brothers and sisters, George “Buddy” Guy didn’t have much as a child in the 1940s, but what he craved more than a water faucet or an electric lamp or a belly filled with pork was a guitar, a mystical machine to tap the music he felt running in his veins and spill it out like syrup. One day, young Buddy stripped a few wires from his mother’s new wooden window screens and strung them tightly across tin cans. That homemade instrument was the start of an incredible journey that would take Guy from the tiny night clubs of Baton Rouge to the blazing-hot spotlights of Muddy Waters’ blues-booming Chicago, and further on to stadiums and arenas around the globe and the heights of adoration from the stars of rock ‘n’ roll. At 75, Guy thinks of this month’s return to Baton Rouge as a natural part of his life cycle. Check out the complete cover story from this month’s issue of 225 by Jeff Roedel here.