Wednesday 29 February 2012

Buddy Guy [Feels Like Rain]

And now time for some Blues!, yes i am into this genre as well, but i've never developed deeply into the Blues, it's still uncharted territory for me, Buddy Guy happens to be my favourite Blues Artist, and scanning over his Wikipedia page, there's a lot of great Artists who feel he's the guitarist of note [Eric Clapton for instance], but unlike pure guitarists, who were 'merely' lead guitarists in a band, Buddy Guy can sing his socks off too, a powerful strong Chicago Blues voice [or what i call 'shouting' Blues], his voice commands an enormous spectrum, and he has this uncanny ability to know just the right turn of phrase to use to excite audiences, he can sing soft too, an all rounder.

Buddy Guy is now 75, born in America, he still seems to be going strong, though with a lack of hair!, he recorded this album in 1993, the sticker on the back cover is of another Buddy Guy album 'Buddy's Baddest, The Best Of Buddy Guy', and i've amalgamated them into a two disc set, of the 11 tracks, only the first and last are Buddy Guy originals, the rest are covers of interesting material, the front cover photograph [by Gary Spector] is excellent, showing guy wearing overalls, lovely sharp picture, a shot taken from a low angle, looking up into the sky, nice lighting on the face, while the back of the right side of his face is in shadow, the purple theme / lettering is great too.

Of all of these tracks, i really got into them all, except maybe tracks 2 & 6, which are the weak ones, the track which really hit me was track 7 'Change In The Weather',  a John Fogerty song, but here Buddy Guy sings it as a duet with Travis Tritt, and Tritt is in excellent form, taking a cue from the delivery of the original voice, the way Guy and Tritt swap vocal duties is exciting, more than a duet it sounds like a dialogue [much like the following track with John Mayall], as if they're a tag team, or a couple of Newscaster Anchors explaining the coming storms, Tritt can growl and shout, but so can Guy, the song develops a real intensity, at the end both Guy and Tritt ad-lib as an outro [3:27-4:02], and it's Tritt that seems to be more inventive, Buddy Guy gets a nice guitar solo in before the end, tremendous enthusiasm from the performers. 

Here's Buddy Guy & Travis Tritt singing 'Change In The Weather' on YouTube.