Keep The Guy

Here's everything that fleet-fingered Buddy Guy waxed for Chess from 1960 to 1966, including numerous unissued-at-the-time masters, offering the most in-depth peek at his formative years imaginable. Stone Chicago blues classics ("Ten Years Ago," "My Time After Awhile," "Let Me Love You Baby," "Stone Crazy"), rockin' oddities ("American Bandstand," "$100 Bill," "Slop Around"), even a cut that features guitarist Lacy Gibson's vocal rather than Guy's ("My Love Is Real") – some 47 sizzling songs in all.

A classic recording by one of Chicago blues' finest living legends, Left My Blues in San Francisco consists of 11 smoking tracks, featuring Buddy Guy's matchless guitar work and equally distinctive vocals. This recording is for people who like their blues straight up; like whiskey, it burns all the way through. Included are some of Guy's classic original songs, such as "She Suits Me to a Tee" and "I Suffer with the Blues," as well as excellent performances of "Buddy's Groove," "Keep It to Yourself," and "Goin' Home." All of this material can also be found on the Complete Chess Studio Recordings collection, but if you're new to Buddy Guy, Left My Blues in San Francisco is an excellent place to start.

The first time the Nick Moss Band recorded a full album with harpist Dennis Gruenling went so well, the gang decided to reconvene for a second set just a year later. Like many sequels, 2019's Lucky Guy! doesn't offer surprises, but it could be argued that The High Cost of Low Living didn't exactly shock either. That was by design. Moss and Gruenling make it their mission to keep the greasy sound of Chicago blues alive, and while they're traditionalists, they're not stuck in the past. Lucky Guy! makes that plain by heavily relying on originals – Moss wrote 11 of the tunes, with Gruenling delivering a matching pair for good measure – that let the band show both a bawdy sense of humor and a big heart.

Buddy Guy's career and discography have been marked by inconsistency. Especially since his high-profile comeback in the early '90s, it seems he's been all too willing to turn over creative control on his albums, both for better and worse. Even just looking at the covers of those albums bears this out: 1991's Damn Right I've Got the Blues has him dressed in your basic '90s casual dress, but the next album has him wearing overalls! Anyone who saw Guy live any number of times before that album was released would realize that he never wore overalls. Then fast forward to the neo-psychedelic look of Heavy Love. The productions themselves have been similarly schizophrenic: big glossy guest star-laden albums to a heavy blues-rock sound to deep modal electric blues to acoustic albums. Well, this time out, drummer/session man Steve Jordan is in the producer's chair, and it seems that he wanted to give Guy a more contemporary sound…