{"id":13145,"date":"2014-04-06T05:53:49","date_gmt":"2014-04-06T05:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eoisabi.org\/?p=13145"},"modified":"2020-04-13T19:09:05","modified_gmt":"2020-04-13T19:09:05","slug":"from-buddy-guys-legends-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/englishroam.com\/?p=13145","title":{"rendered":"Buddy Guy’s Legends [Chicago] Alive"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Blues lovers know: there is only one place in the world to experience the finest Blues seven nights a week, enjoy southern Cajun soul food, and behold a major archive of Blues memorabilia. That joint is in Chicago, of course: Buddy Guy’s Legends<\/strong> <\/a>at 700 S. Wabash!  A mecca for the Blues.<\/p>\n

\u00a4 An excerpt from Guy’s autobiographical book: \u00abWhen I Left Home: My Story<\/a>\u00ab<\/strong><\/p>\n

My life is pretty simple. If I’m off the road and not getting ready to go off to New York or New Delhi, I’ll spend my day shopping and cooking. Maybe the kids will come over. Maybe I’ll eat alone. At 2 p.m. I’ll take me a good long nap. After dinner I’ll get in my SUV and see that I’ve put some 200,000 miles on the thing. If it’s low on gas, I’ll take the time to drive over to Indiana where gas is a couple of cents cheaper. I’ll remember that one of my first jobs off the farm was in Baton Rouge pumping gas. Back then the average sale was $1. Today it’ll cost me $120 to fill the tank. Ain’t complaining \u2014 just saying I’ve seen some changes in these many years I’ve been running this race.<\/p>\n

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Around 7:30 I’ll head into Chicago. My club, Legends, sits on the corner of Wabash and Balbo, right across from the huge Hilton Hotel on the south end of the Loop. It’s a big club that can hold up to five hundred people, and I’m pleased to say that I own the building that houses it. I go in and take a seat on a stool in the back. I say hello to the men and women who work there. Two of my daughters run the place, and they’re usually upstairs going over the books. Occasionally a customer will recognize me, but to most everyone I’m just a guy at the bar. That’s how I like it. I don’t need no attention tonight \u2014 I’m not playing, I’m just kicking back. I’m feeling good that I got a place to go at night and that Chicago still has a club where you can hear the blues. Live blues every night. Can’t tell you how that warms this old man’s heart.<\/p>\n

Funny thing about the blues: you play ‘em cause you got ‘em. But when you play ‘em, you lose ‘em. If you hear ‘em \u2014 if you let the music get into your soul \u2014 you also lose ‘em. The blues chase the blues away. The true blues feeling is so strong that you forget everything else \u2014 even your own blues.<\/p>\n

So tonight I’m thinking about how the blues change you and how they changed me. Thinking about how I followed the blues ever since I was a young child. Followed the blues from a plantation way out in the middle of nowhere to the knife-and-gun concrete jungle of Chicago. The blues took my life and turned it upside down. Had me going places and doing things that, when I look back, seem crazy. The blues turned me wild. They brought out something in me I didn’t even know was there.<\/p>\n

So here I am \u2014 a seventy-five-year-old man sitting on a bar stool in a blues club, trying to figure out exactly how I got here. Any way you look at it, it’s a helluva story.<\/p>\n

\u2666  Volume  # 1  \u2193<\/span><\/h2>\n