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Buddy Guy is the epitome of Chicago electric blues. Even more than the men he idolized and worked with, Guy influenced the cream of the crop of modern blues players: Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, to name just a few.
When I Left Home is Guy's story, from growing up the son of Louisiana sharecroppers and the early gift of his first guitar to the bus ride to Chicago where he could get a "real job" as a janitor at the university while playing nights at the clubs, sharpening his act. The stories in this memoir read as a veritable who's who of modern electric blues: Guy started out as a hardworking musician alongside well-known artists like Howling Wolf and B.B. King, then started his own band with Junior Wells in the late 1950s and, ultimately, became a blues legend in the '60s, when "white guys from Britain" popularized the genre and the players.
Guy describes how he created his signature wild style by copying guitarists who would have ladies in the clubs screaming for more. He talks about the racial discrimination of the era and the way many of his contemporaries ended up dead or wasting their lives with drugs and alcohol. He also discusses his own failings and mistakes along the way with the candor and humility of a genuinely nice human being who sees his extraordinary success as a gift not to be squandered. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor