If Friday’s concert in Morristown really was Buddy Guy’s “Damn Right Farewell,” as advertised, The Legend went out on a high note.
Stratospheric high notes, actually, as only he can play them.
“I’m here to take the frowns off your faces,” Guy said near the start of his 75-minute set. For the rest of the evening at the Mayo Performing Arts Center, he let his Stratocaster do most of the talking.
He has influenced guitar luminaries from Clapton and Hendrix to John Mayer. A self-taught axe-man, Guy confessed on Friday that every once in a while, he makes mistakes on the fretboard. (He put it more directly than that.) It’s doubtful anyone in the sold-out house was keeping score.
At 87, Guy still has fire in his fingers, a deft ear for musical phrasing, and a wicked memory, as evidenced by his sly delivery of raunchy blues staples like Willie Dixon’s Hoochie Coochie Man and Love Her with a Feeling, first recorded by Tampa Red in 1938:
One leg in the east
One leg in the west ah
I’m right down the middle ahTryin’ to do my best
The tone was set by opener Bobby Rush. Strike that. It’s inaccurate to label Rush, the tour’s elder statesman at 90, an opener. Fans really got two shows for the price of one, and they lavished quite a few standing o’s on Rush. You don’t see that for too many opening acts.
While these old pals may not have found the Fountain of Youth, their collective 177 years of life experience suggests a Fountain of Truth — a bawdy, bluesy truth that might get your grandpa banished from the Thanksgiving table.
Armed with a guitar, foot-stomping hooks, and naughty grins, these seniors can pull it off. When Rush sings G-String (“All you need to bring is a G-string and a toothbrush, uh-huh”), he’s not talking about a guitar string. Chicken Heads. Bowlegged Woman. You Just Like a Dresser. Uh-huh.
The life force is strong.
Bobby Rush: Slideshow photos by Kevin Coughlin. Click/hover for captions:
Forget about Fitbits. Guy and Rush showed off their own exercise routines. (AARP, are you listening?) Guy took his Strat for a loud, leisurely stroll through the theater aisles. Rush ambled and rambled there too, walking his harmonica. The man has the lungs of a locomotive.
Both acts displayed dashes of flash. Borrowing a trick from Jimmy Page (or was it vice versa?), Guy used a stick to play his guitar, teasing the audience with a few notes of Sunshine of Your Love from Eric Clapton’s Cream years. Then, using what looked like a sock, Guy flapped out a riff from Talking Heads’ Take Me to the River.
In the middle of a muscular solo, sideman Ric Hall twirled his electric guitar, attached via a swivel, in pinwheel circles.
Hall’s bandmates were rock-solid: Orlando Wright on bass, Dan Souvigny on keys, and Tom Hambridge anchoring everyone on drums.
Rush duetted on harmonica with vocalist Shemekia Copeland, and later, bantered and sang with Guy.
‘BETTER TAKE A GOOD LOOK’
Rush said he honed his act with the late comic Red Foxx, in a Chicago joint owned by Al Capone’s brother, circa the Truman administration. It paid off in the new millennium: Rush garnered his first Grammy as an octogenarian.
Dubbed the King of the Chitlin Circuit by Rolling Stone “because of his relentless touring and colorful live shows,” Rush has played venues ranging from roadhouses to the Great Wall of China.
In their early Chicago days, Rush and Guy rubbed elbows with Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Etta James, Jimmy Reid, Pinetop Perkins and other fabled blues figures.
Both men share Southern roots. The son of a black father and white mother, Rush spoke movingly Friday of the racial difficulties this presented as he grew up in Louisiana and Arkansas.
Guy’s parents were Louisiana sharecroppers. The trademark polka-dot shirt he sported on Friday, so the story goes, is a reminder of a fib: To win permission for his move to Chicago, he promised his mother he would return in a polka-dot Cadillac. (Guy’s son Greg played a polka-dot Stratocaster alongside his dad for a couple of numbers at MPAC.)
Guy and Rush have bushels of awards, and are enshrined in numerous halls of fame. But they observed how the big bucks line other pockets. White artists covering Black blues standards, Rush said. Rappers, Guy said.
“Better take a good look,” Rush advised, his voice warm grit and gravel, before he and Guy exited the stage together to cheers from a thoroughly entertained crowd. “This may be the last time you see me.”
If that’s true, these fellows gave a fine farewell. Damn right.
