"Blues cats don't retire, they just drop," says Buddy Guy.
That explains why the 72-year-old guitar legend and the genre's elder statesman, 83-year-old B.B. King, have banded together for yet another tour. What they've dropped recently is a pair of albums that push these sometimes laissez-faire performers out of their comfort zones. King's One Kind Favor is a return to his roots, shepherded by über producer T-Bone Burnett. And Guy's Skin Deep, an album he calls his most personal, has several songs that deal with race—an issue rarely covered in modern blues despite its role in the style's origin.
Burnett applied some of the same formula he used for Alison Krauss and Robert Plant's 2007 sensation Raising Sand to King's disc: double drum kits, low-end rumble and plenty of open air. The other essential ingredient was King, who Burnett asked to play in the tightly phrased, ringing, eloquent style that marked his ascent in the '50s. And a songbook plucked from some of King's deepest influences and closest friends—Blind Lemon Jefferson, the Mississippi Sheiks, T-Bone Walker, Lonnie Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker—prompted inspired vocal performances.
Guy's Skin Deep is his best recording since his duo of North Mississippi hill country fueled discs, 2001's Sweet Tea and 2003's Blues Singer. It's a brawny, big-toned affair with guest guitarists Eric Clapton and Derek Trucks, plus pedal steeler Robert Randolph, playing counterpoint to Guy's torrential solos. The disc hits its highest notes with the incendiary slow blues "Out in the Woods" and the title track, which is plucked from Guy's childhood.
"When I was a boy, it was OK for the little white kids to play with us," Guy says, explaining Skin Deep. "As soon as they got 12 or 13, their parents would stop it. They'd say, 'You got white blood, and you got black blood,' when my white friends and I would ask why. So one night me and another kid got a flashlight and put our hands over it. We could see that under our skin we both had red blood. We knew we were being lied to."
Although Guy's been recording more than 50 years, Skin Deep is his first disc of all-new songs. For that Guy thanks Tom Hambridge, the other Nashville connection—besides the Ryman date—between himself and King. The locally based producer and songwriter, who's crafted albums for Susan Tedeschi, George Thorogood and Johnny Winter, rode Guy's tour bus in the months before the Skin Deep sessions at Berry Hill's Blackbird Studios, listening to the Chicago blues kingpin's stories and turning them into tunes.
Hambridge relates that while recording in November 2007, Guy confided, "My whole life I show up at the studio and don't know half the songs. I don't know who brought them in. I'm reading lyrics that make me just go through the motions. But I've lived these songs."
Guy is so smitten with Hambridge's approach—which included plugging Guy's guitar into a half-dozen different amps, all blasting wide-open simultaneously—that they're beginning work on another album. But they'll return to the studio before that to record a cut for The Soul of Disney, a compilation of numbers from the studio's films.
Recently Hambridge traveled to Las Vegas, where he recorded "You've Got a Friend in Me" (from Toy Story) with B.B. King for the same album.
"I can't believe I'm working with both Buddy Guy and B.B. King," Hambridge says. "They're the world's leading blues figures and yet they have no ego and do astonishing things in the studio all the time. Buddy is very spontaneous. We did only one take of 'Everytime I Have the Blues.' It was supposed to be three minutes, but Buddy closed his eyes and started to solo. By the time he was done he'd encompassed everything from Robert Johnson to Sun Ra. When Buddy and the band faded out, he opened his eyes and asked, 'Whaddya think?' Nobody said a word."
"B.B. will sing a line six different ways and each one is melodic and perfect," Hambridge continues.
Although King's swinging soulful style was developed in the juke joints around Memphis and Guy's blustery approach honed on Chicago's west and south sides, Hambridge sees their common ground.
"They both come from a time when you just stood up and played from your heart," he says. "As artists and people, they're very deep. I'm constantly impressed by their graciousness, humility and work ethic. When they play or sing, the music comes from a unique place, like Charlie Parker's did. Everybody tries to copy them, but nobody really can.
"There are five living presidents," Hambridge observes, "but only one B.B. King and one Buddy Guy." n
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