Buddy Guy Lives for the Blues—“If I Can Make You Smile, I Can Sleep Better”

Legendary 86-year-old musician Buddy Guy wants to keep the blues alive. It’s been his mission his entire life to honor and participate in the significant musical style. Even before he could put words to the cause, he was constructing makeshift instruments out of wires.

“There are very few old blues cats hanging around,” he tells American Songwriter. “Every little bit helps.” As a kid, he was born so deep in the Louisiana countryside that his modest home didn’t have running water or electricity. In the summers, it would get excruciatingly hot. But there was no air conditioning. His mother put up screens in the windows to keep air flowing in and the mosquitos out. At one point, though, she noticed the bugs getting inside the house. She checked the windows and saw the screens had been fiddled with, stripped of their wires. Why? Because the young burgeoning musician had taken the wires out to make his own makeshift guitar. That’s the tradition from which Guy comes and the type of foundation that makes his newest album, The Blues Don’t Lie, which he dropped last year.