George "Buddy" Guy was born on July 30, 1936, in Lettsworth, Louisiana, to sharecropper parents. He moved to Chicago in 1957 and came to be considered a master of Chicago-style electric blues. In a 2023 interview, he described learning through work with musicians including Muddy Waters and Junior Wells. His early recording career included Cobra Records and session work at Chess. While building his career he recalled combining daytime work driving a tow truck with nighttime performances.
Guy developed an expressive electric-guitar style while drawing on musicians such as B.B. King and T-Bone Walker. Over a career of more than four decades he won multiple Grammy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award, and nineteen W.C. Handy Awards, received a Billboard Century Award and sold more than two million albums worldwide. His playing became an influence on later guitarists, including Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton; the Kennedy Center, honoring him in 2012, described him as a tremendous influence on virtually everyone who had picked up an electric guitar in the previous half century.
His 1991 recording Damn Right, I've Got the Blues brought renewed attention to his music, and the compilation The Complete Chess Studio Sessions documented his early work. In June 1989, he established Buddy Guy's Legends in downtown Chicago, a blues nightclub that keeps a stage open for the music he grew up playing, and he still owns the club, appearing there for a month of shows each January. Guy received the National Medal of Arts in 2003.
Looking back in 2023, he described an approach to solos that left room for the moment rather than reproducing every note of an earlier performance. He was still touring behind The Blues Don't Lie when he said it.
