Buddy Guy: Alone and Acoustic : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Along with Otis Rush and Magic Sam, Buddy Guy was one of Chicago's top blues-guitar stylists in the Sixties. Yet despite his vast contributions to Chicago blues – not to mention his influence on British rockers like Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck – Guy's post-Sixties catalog is embarrassingly thin. Happily, that's beginning to change. With the release of Damn Right, I've Got the Blues, Guy's first studio album in a decade, and the re-release of Alone and Acoustic (original title: Going Back), a rare recording done in France in 1981 with harp player Junior Wells, Guy's presence is once again being felt in the blues.

Recorded in London last January with help from Clapton, Beck, Mark Knopfler and the Memphis Horns, Damn Right is as good as Guy gets. The feast begins with the title track, a combination of angry guitar attacks and gospel-soaked – at times gospel-crazed – vocal wails. The album concludes triumphantly with "Rememberin' Stevie," an instrumental tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan. Between those two high points appear "Five Long Years," a slow-burning blues about betrayal; "Too Broke to Spend the Night," with its wicked guitar work; and pay-back cameos from Beck on "Mustang Sally," Beck and Clapton on "Early in the Morning" and Knopfler on "Where Is the Next One Coming From."

While the blues on Damn Right often borders on frenzied, the music on Alone and Acoustic is reflective and subdued. A warm spontaneity runs through the album – all fifteen songs contain only acoustic guitar, harp and vocals and were cut in one session. Guy and Wells also took the opportunity to reclaim their roots. Sure, the originals on the album are compelling – Guy's "Give Me My Coat and Shoes" and Wells's "Wrong Doing Woman" are real gems. But the best performances are renditions of John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillen," Muddy Waters's "My Home's in the Delta" and the traditional "Catfish Blues," all of which are standards done in the raw Delta style that Guy and Wells grew up with.

These albums are not without their small flaws – an unimaginative song selection here, too much slickness there. But in the end only one thing matters: Buddy Guy is back – and with Alone and Acoustic, his old partner Junior Wells is back too. And that's damn good news for the blues.