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“You play it because you got it,” Buddy Guy teaches the blues. “But by playing it, you lose it again.” It is immediately the motto of Buddy Guy: Blues Chases Blues (86 min.), a documentary by Devin Chanda, Charles Todd And Matt Mitchell where the life story of the American blues singer and guitarist is linked to music, the meaning of life, to which he devoted his heart all his life.
George ‘Buddy’ Guy can speak infectiously of how he grew up in poverty and had to pick cotton in Lettsworth, Louisiana, then moved to the blues town of Chicago in 1957, to learn the trade from cracks like Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters. It wasn’t until their music crossed Europe and was adopted by British bands such as The Rolling Stones, Cream and Led Zeppelin that the African-American pioneers finally received the appreciation they had been entitled to for so many years. a long time. Among them and promoted by the heroes of white rock, the perseverant develops his own wild guitar style. “He turned on the turbo for the blues,” says his colleague Carlos Santana.
This solidly crafted film – embellished with atmospheric solo performances, concert footage and beautiful paintings that depict African-American existence in the (southern) United States – takes the blues firmly by the throat. In interludes titled The Blues According to… (via Archive), pioneers Lightnin’ Hopkins, Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon and (in the flesh) their followers Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, John Mayer, Kingfish and Gary Clark Jr. the opportunity to express what they mean by that damn blues – and how their Buddy Guy has kept it alive for the past seventy years. If he ever dies, his guitar will continue to howl.
To the man himself, who was once allowed to perform at the White House and when the first black President Barack Obama wowed to sing a piece of the evergreen sweet home chicago, to paraphrase the blues: you can hear it when Buddy plays. Even if you don’t have it or have never had it before. And you don’t want to lose it afterwards.
