Buddy Guy, among the last of the great Chicago bluesmen, was standing in the ballroom at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in Manhattan last year, where, in a few hours, he would be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Though Buddy is stone-cold blues, his music stands as a headwater of rock & roll. Even today, you can hear echoes of the records he made in the 1950s and 1960s in Chicago up and down the radio dial: in the 1970s epic that features an eight-minute guitar solo; in the 1980s power ballad that makes you reach for a Schlitz; in the 2005 chord-bending tune by the White Stripes. "Buddy was for me what Elvis was for other people," Eric Clapton said at the ceremony. "My course was set, and he was my pilot."

As Buddy watched the roadies work onstage -- he was here to rehearse his performance at the induction ceremony -- he shivered and said, "Is there somewhere else we can wait? I'm freezing!"

A security guard led Buddy and his entourage (a manager, a publicist, a guitar tech, a photographer and me) to a back room, where Buddy sat on a folding chair. He's sixty-nine, slim, handsome and, surprisingly, bald. In Chicago, Buddy was long known for his head of straightened, product-filled hair, a look he clung to years after it went out of style, until it became a landmark in the city, as recognizable (to blues fans) as the Sears Tower. He used to wear overalls onstage -- as a suggestion of backwoods authenticity -- but he is, in fact, urbane. Even when dressed down, like now, in a Nike pullover, black shoes, white socks and jeans, he looks less like a Ford pickup than like a souped-up race car with a sheet tossed over it. He learned his look from Guitar Slim, a New Orleans bluesman Buddy admired as a boy. After each show, Slim would walk down the street in a red suit. "People would laugh, but Slim didn't care," Buddy told me. "He knew he looked great."

When talking about the Hall of Fame, Buddy used words like "honor" and "thrill," but you could tell that for Buddy, who came of age in a more picturesque time, it was another gig in a lifetime of gigs. He wanted to accept the honor and smile so he could get to the part where he plays his guitar, because that's where the truth is. As soon as he started talking about the ceremony, his thoughts turned to the old days in Chicago when juke joints ran up and down the broad avenues. He has the aura of a last man, the last Aztec, who carries with him the memory of a vanished people -- the Chivas-drinking, reefer-smoking South Side bluesmen: Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon. "I got to Chicago September 25th, 1957," Buddy said, folding his arms. "I had nowhere to stay, no job, and went all over town with my guitar. Twenty-one years old. Winter coming. I went three days without food!"

Turning to his manager, he said, "Three days without food, and now my biggest problem is 'Do I drive the T-Bird or the Ferrari!'

"I wanted to call my mama and get her to send the train fare to come back to Louisiana," he continued. "But I didn't even have the dime to get the operator to make the collect call. After you get the operator, the dime comes back, but no one would even lend me a dime! Finally, I asked a man on the street. And he looked at me and sees my guitar and says, 'Can you play the blues?'"

"'Hell, yes, I can play the blues!'"

"He said, 'Play a song.'"

"I said, 'I'll play for a hamburger.'"

"He said, 'If I give you a hamburger, you'll lose incentive.'"

"So he gave me a swig of wine. I hadn't eaten for three days. That wine almost knocked me down! I played for him, and he said, 'Motherfucker, you can play!' He took me in his car to the 708 Club, where Otis Rush was playing. And he called out, 'Hey, Otis, I got a kid here will blow you away.' Otis said, 'Bring him up.' I get up, and I went crazy! I played like a man hadn't eaten for three days! Someone called Muddy Waters and held up the phone for him to hear, and he got outta bed and headed over. As I played, people were throwing money at me -- nickels and dimes. Someone shouted, 'What you gonna do with the money?' I said, 'I'm gonna get a hamburger.' They laughed, but I didn't know what's so funny. Then this big guy came up and slapped me on the head -- and said, 'My name is Muddy Waters, and now you'll never forget me.' He asked where I wanted to go. I said, 'Take me to a hamburger.' He took me to his house and made me a salami sandwich."