Buddy Guy has been playing the guitar for basically his entire life.
He was born in 1936 in Lettsworth, Louisiana, a community just a stone’s throw from the Mississippi River that, at the time of this writing, has a population of less than 1,000. Growing up, Guy picked cotton and learned to play music with homemade instruments. In 1957, he moved to Chicago and started discovering people like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Otis Rush and others. Before the decade was out he got a recording deal with Chess Records, and was playing as a session man for some of his heroes.
Guy listened and listened and listened, which is how the eight-time Grammy-winner came to develop his own style of playing.
“Actually, in Chicago then, we didn’t have stages,” he explained to NPR in 2025. “We’d always go in a corner and play. And they had jukeboxes during their breaks, and they would play tunes. And that’s how I learnt, by listening to other people, greats — Muddy Waters, Wolf and so on.”
In turn, other people, many of them aspiring young guitarists, began listening to Guy. It’s quite possible there would not have been a Keith Richards, Eric Clapton or John Mayer without him.
Those are just a few of the rock guitarists who have made clear Guy’s influence on their own careers. Below, we’re running through 20 Rock Guitarists and Their Praise for Buddy Guy.
20 Rock Guitarists and Their Praise for Buddy Guy
Without Guy, it’s hard to say if these artists would have become who they did.
Gallery Credit: Allison Rapp
