Buddy Guy’s Massey Hall shows might be the blues guitarist’s last in Toronto

He’s pretty much the last man standing.

With blues icon Buddy Guy’s announcement that his current “Damn Right Farewell Tour” will be his final road trek except for the occasional festival and his annual January residency at his Chicago club Legends, the 86-years-young guitar slinger’s three Massey hall dates this week could be his definitive Toronto finale.

As such, it could mark the end of an era: aside from fellow Louisianian Bobby Rush — his elder by three years — Guy is one of the last surviving connections to both the authentic Louisiana delta and Chicago blues scenes.

An electrifying blues guitarist whose fiery, yet dynamic technique has influenced such superstar rock guitarists as Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards and the late Jeff Beck, Guy has mesmerized peers and audiences since the late 1950s.

In a 2019 documentary called “The Torch,” Carlos Santana called Guy “the Moses of the blues.”

“Buddy Guy is a revelation,” Santana told director Jim Farrell. “He definitely parts the sea; he’s the one that created a certain frequency, a certain vocabulary.”

And he’s got the accolades to prove it: 19 studio albums, a few more partnered with harmonica blues giant Junior Wells, and years as a Chess Records sideman supporting the sessions of such blues pioneers as McKinley “Muddy Waters” Morganfield, Marion “Little Walter” Jacobs, Willie Dixon, Koko Taylor and Chester “Howlin’ Wolf” Burnett. Guy has earned inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, as well as eight Grammy Awards, a separate Grammy for lifetime achievement, Kennedy Center Honours, a National Medal of Arts and 23 Blues Music Awards among others.

Guy has granted only one interview for this tour — to Billboard’s Gary Graff — to explain why he’s calling it quits when it comes to one-nighters.

“You get in the 80s, man, and the little aches that didn’t used to ache, they come on and you don’t know where they’re coming from,” Guy said. “I can play, but getting from Point A to Point B, the trips that take all day on the bus or the airport and all that … Anybody would say, ‘That’s enough.’

“I’m still going to probably play some of the big festivals,” continued Guy, whose tour began in Mumbai and will extend into Europe and Australia before he wraps in October.

“The New Orleans Jazz Festival wanted me to play there for the rest of my life, which is once a year, so that’s not too bad. But what’s coming up this year is a lot. We’re gonna make it to a lot of places we’ll probably never play again.”

If one of those places is Toronto — which is probably Guy’s biggest stronghold — it will be the city’s loss.

In another documentary included in the 2006 Silvertone Legacy boxed set called “Can’t Quit the Blues,” Guy remembered travelling to Toronto with Wells to his biggest crowd ever — 30,000 people — at the Mariposa Festival in 1967.

“I will never forget that,” Guy told the interviewer.

He’s been a frequent visitor to these parts, participating in such historic events as 1970’s Festival Express with Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, the Band and Ian & Sylvia, or just performing at one of the city’s many music establishments in the late ’60s and early ’70s.

Richard Flohil, who met Guy in Chicago in the early ’60s and has promoted a few of his shows in Toronto since, recalled several displays of the guitarist’s showmanship when Bernie Fiedler would book him at Yorkville’s the Riverboat.

“He would walk out of the club with a roadie behind him, with yards and yards and yards of cable, as the band was playing onstage, and Buddy would just go crazy playing screaming guitar on the sidewalk,” Flohil remembered. “There was a tiny, narrow alleyway between the Riverboat and the neighbouring building, and he’d walk through that and enter through the back door of the Riverboat and hit the stage again.”

Flohil, who also served as artist director for Mariposa during the ’90s, offered another memory of Guy accidentally risking injury when a stunt went wrong at the festival.

“At one point, he jumped off the stage into the area directly in front of it and bounced backward to lean against the front of the stage,” Flohil said.

“But it was actually just plain canvas and he literally disappeared right through it. A friend of mine, Bob Stevens, and I raced under the stage, thinking, ‘This guy must be hurt.’

“And there was Buddy, lying on his back, covered in sawdust and two-by-fours and everything else they put under the stage, still playing. He didn’t miss a note.”

Born in Lettsworth, La., in 1936, George “Buddy” Guy was one of five children, son of sharecroppers who lived on a plantation about 93 kilometres west of New Orleans.

He used to work the cotton fields, earning $2.50 for every 100 pounds picked. The family home was electricity-free until he was 15 and, when they finally had power installed, they bought a phonograph that only played 78-rpm records.

The first record Guy bought was John Lee Hooker’s “Boogie Chillun,” which he learned how to play using a makeshift guitar. A stranger noticed his desire to learn and bought him an acoustic guitar, but it was a visit to Lettsworth by Otis “Lightnin’ Slim” Hicks that sealed Guy’s fate when he saw his first electric guitar performance.

He moved to Chicago in 1957 to try his luck there and the story of a broke, hungry Guy, whom Muddy Waters fed a salami sandwich and took under his wing, is one of the greatest blues tales of all time.

Guy was eventually hired by Chess Records as a guitar and bass studio musician for $25 a session and also recorded under the pseudonym “Friendly Chap” on Junior Wells’ sessions for a competing label.

Despite the frequent work at Chess, Guy felt suppressed by label owners Leonard and Phil Chess, who asked him to tone down his aggressive style for a cleaner feel. After Guy visited the U.K. for the first time as a player and all the rock stars of the day heaped praise upon him, Leonard Chess heard about it and he reportedly requested Guy, once he had returned home, kick him for not listening to the guitarist’s wishes.

But it was too little, too late: Guy recorded one album — 1967’s “Left My Blues in San Francisco” — and left the label.

His true breakthrough didn’t occur until 1991 when he signed with Silvertone Records and released “Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues,” his first and only million seller. Subsequent albums like “Feels Like Rain,” “Slippin’ In” and “Heavy Love” have received mainstream attention, and Guy has filled clubs and soft seater theatres around the world ever since.

He’s also influenced a slew of younger guitarists, including local “Little Magic Sam” Taylor.

“I had a teacher in Grade 10 and in the morning he’d be playing Buddy Guy, Colin James and Stevie Ray Vaughan,” recalled Taylor, who next appears at Castro’s Lounge on April 14.

“I got a guitar just the year before so I didn’t know much about blues at all, but as soon as I heard the ‘Damn Right, Got the Blues’ album, a switch flipped in my head and that’s all I wanted to do.

“There’s something about Buddy Guy’s tone that sounds like his amp’s going to explode … He’s 86 and he’s got one of the most killer electric guitar tones of anybody.”

Toronto-born Colin Linden, a well-known producer, solo artist and member of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, used to sit in with blues musicians on the Yonge Street club strip when he was a teen.

He met Buddy Guy during a matinee show performed by Muddy Waters at the Colonial Tavern and says one of the best recordings he’s heard is “74 Years Young” on Guy’s 2010 album “Living Proof.”

“The absolute joy, chaos and anarchy that came from Buddy’s playing was life-affirming, unbridled, uncensored: this is what a life completely committed to music means at 74, tearing the world’s head off with a solo,” he enthused.

Flohil said Buddy Guy is the last to uphold “a 100-year tradition.”

“Buddy is the most versatile guitarist: he can imitate anybody’s style,” said Flohil. “He can appropriate different genres very easily. He’s recorded with every major blues-based artist of our time.”

Going back to “The Torch,” Guy recalled the promise he made to Muddy Waters in several conversations the two held about the future of the blues.

“Muddy used to tell me, in case who died first, ‘Don’t let the blues down,’” Guy told Farrell. “And Wolf told me that. Junior used to tell me that.”

When Farrell asked him, “Out of that group, who’s still left?” Guy had a one-word answer.

“Me.”

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