His Time After a While

At 72, Buddy Guy is the reigning king of the postwar Chicago blues scene—a mantle he inherited from his mentor, Muddy Waters, in a blaze of edgy, nervous guitar frenzy. But although he's been gigging steadily since 1957, the year he decamped from his native Louisiana, he gives the impression that now, finally—to paraphrase one of his best-loved songs—it's his time after a while. NEWSWEEK's Brian Braiker recently caught up with Guy to talk about his new album of originals, "Skin Deep." Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What's the secret to maintaining this vitality?
Buddy Guy: To be honest with you, this is the first album that I had a lot to do with. Throughout my whole career, I'd put one or two new songs on the album. They was handing me the Willie Dixon stuff and whoever made a name for themselves writing songs. This is 100 percent new songs that I got on this CD that I've been trying to do ever since I was 21 years old.

You've said Chess records sat on you in the '60s. They wouldn't let you do your thing.
Well, they didn't hear it. Leonard [Chess] told me this before he passed away: when he found out the British had turned them amps up like I was trying to do all the time, he came and told me, "You had something we was too damn slow to realize. Now you can come into the studio and do whatever you want." He didn't live long enough to see me do that.

This sounds like a pretty personal record.
I would say so. I'm more excited over this CD than I ever have been in all of my life.

Tell me about the title song, "Skin Deep."
My mom used to tell me when I was 8, 9 years old, "Boy, I don't care how old you get and how far you go, beauty is only skin deep." I was just a country boy running my mouth and it just stuck with me. I look through life and I say, "You know, this is true. We're all the same."

And on "Who's Gonna Fill Those Shoes," you sing about all the legends who've passed. What it suggests is that you're one of the last men standing.
Well we've still got B. B. [King] and one or two of  'em. But what worries me most is that in the last 15, 20 years is that they quit playin' blues on your big radio stations. Along came the satellite stations, but how many young Buddy Guys can afford a satellite radio? When I was growing up as a kid my dad couldn't even get an AM radio that was playin' music for free.