His Time After a While

How did you first hear the music, then?
To be honest, my dad finally got a radio when I was about 12, 14 years old, an old battery radio. If there was a cloud in Louisiana, all the static would come on the air. You had a big long antenna from one end of the shotgun house to the other. You had to have a big battery for it. And I'd start to hear Lightin' Hopkins and John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillun."

Radio's different now.
You can turn on the average radio now and you would never hear a Muddy Waters album or Howlin' Wolf now. All those big stations, I hate to call names, but all you hear is Britney, Madonna and Mariah Carey. That's all they're going to play all day. When you had AM radio stations, you had Frank Sinatra and Muddy Waters and Mahalia Jackson. They just played everybody's music. Now you don't hear that no more.

Over time you mastered blues, jazz, as well, rock, soul. What is it about the blues specifically that's so special?
Right now I'm branded as a blues player, but, sir, to be honest with you, all I know is M-U-S-I-C. Ray Charles was an R&B player and B. B. King was an R&B player, Muddy Waters was an R&B player. They wasn't branded as blues players. They used to have a juke box in all the small blues clubs in Chicago when I went there. I would go in and say, "I can play, give me a gig in this club." They would go back, "If you can play these top 10 records in this juke box, you can make 50 cents a night." They would point to Fats Domino, they would point to Chuck Berry, Lightnin' Hopkins. Then they would point to Miles Davis, Gene Allen! Somebody told me, "If you learn that, you'll be around for a while." I didn't even go to bed sometimes when I was 21 or 22 years old, I was afraid I would miss something.

Do you still practice?
No, I got a bad habit, and I'm glad you ask because I don't ever rehearse. My band is on me now about the new stuff. I did a television show with Hank Williams Jr. back there early last year and he came up to me. I had never met him before. He said, "Don't play nothing with me like I played last night." I said, "Hank, I don't ever do the same show, the same song." I don't have no set list on my stage or nothing. I don't go out there for Buddy Guy. I go out there and say can I touch you with whatever I do? If that's the mood you in, that's what I'm going to play.

What do you play?
I 'm going to go out there and give you a lick on Muddy Waters, a lick on Buddy Guy, a lick on Junior Wells, a lick on Stevie [Ray Vaughan], a lick on Eric [Clapton] if I have to, a lick on Hendrix. You gonna look at me and say, "Well, Buddy Guy is almost like that crap come from Louisiana called gumbo," because that's what gumbo is: any kinda meat you find gonna be thrown in the pot.

Is there any Louisiana in your music?
I think it's still there. That's another thing they came up with—the idea of the blues and the Delta. Some of the greatest blues players that ever played are really from the Delta. But you also got some that's not from the Delta. Lightin' Hopkins wasn't from the Delta. Gatemouth Brown wasn't from the Delta. All of us from down there in Louisiana. Louis Jordan! All those guys, Johnny Shines. You got people from Alabama, everywhere. Just call it Southern stuff. I still got that Louisiana in me. I'm going there Monday, and the first thing I'm going to do is get my kids and my red beans and rice. I wrote a song once: "You can get me out the country, but you'll never get the country out of me."