August 1, 2001
Buddy Guy: Sweet Tea
(Jive CS 41751. Dennis Herring, prod.; Chris Shepherd, eng.
DDD. TT:53:29.)
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 Buddy Guy hasn't
been well-served on record -- not over the last twenty years or so, at any rate. His minor
flurry of activity following 1991's Stone Crazy has mostly been live recordings
that feature him jamming wildly with pick up bands that simply don't challenge him. To
hear him at his finest -- and most tasteful -- you need to look to the sixties and
seventies and to his collaborations with Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf and Junior Wells.
Even then, I'm not sure that the real Buddy Guy has
ever made it to record before now. As an enthusiastic habitué of crummy blues bars, I've
caught the Buddy Guy/Junior Wells show about twenty times and no record I've ever heard
can match Guy's blustering showmanship live. On more than one occasion, I've seen him drag
a seemingly endless guitar cord out of the performance space over to the cigarette
machine, dig though his pockets for change, buy a pack of mules, open it and light one and
then saunter out to the parking lot for a contemplative smoke -- all without missing a
lick of a searing solo!
But that level of spit-in-your-eye mastery is exactly what
Sweet Tea has finally captured on disc. It's the Buddy Guy record we fans have
fantasized about for forty years.
Sweet Tea takes Guy's music back down South -- it
was recorded in Dennis Herring's Mississippi studio (yclept Sweet Tea, geddit?) and
features seven numbers penned by contemporary Mississippi bluesmen such as the late Junior
Kimbrough, T-Model Ford, and Robert Cage. "I thought I knew everything that came out
of Mississippi," Guy said. "But when they brought me songs by Junior Kimbrough,
I said, 'Now that's something new.'" Well, yes -- but what it really sounds like is
the really good old stuff.
The other element of the session that pays huge dividends
is the collection of classic tube amplifiers Herring (literally) dusted off for the
recording. "Those things have a tone," Guy said. "A tone you just don't
hear any more."
Hell, yes! Guy's thick, dark tone rumbles with menace here.
It seems to personify the crushing humidity of the Delta -- not to mention its sense of
doom and gloom and pervasive rot. Sweet Tea is a veritable primer in blues tone.
The record opens with Guy playing unaccompanied acoustic.
"Well, I done got old / Can't do the things I used to do / 'Cause I'm an old man /
And I'm not the same . . ." Sh'yeah, right!
By track two, Guy has plugged in his polka-dotted Strat'
and has started spitting, bending, chunking, and sputtering notes all over the landscape.
Not the same? Maybe not -- the man may have even gotten better.
Sweet Tea's sole weakness lies in its production.
Guy's tone is captured perfectly -- any electric guitarist would gladly make his own trip
down to the crossroads and sign away anything for a chance to own any one of the
amps used on this disc. The problem is that the overall sound tends to be murky as well. I
might even forgive that, chalking it up to the Delta's thick air, if there wasn't also a
hole in the center of the soundstage as big as on any early-era stereo Blue Note
recording. Oh, it won't stop me from listening to Sweet Tea because Guy at the top
of his form is impossible for me to resist, but I sure wish I didn't have to apologize for
this record even a little bit.
My minor quibble aside -- Guy is definitely smokin'
on this recording and he didn't even have to leave the room.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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