Buddy Guy – This Is Buddy Guy! – Vanguard Records VMD 79290 

Another Buddy Guy anthology being regarded as essential?  Yes, and one listen of this astounding collection will lead to the next, then the next, and so on.  The astute blues fan will undoubtedly recognize the Guy blues genius here and, once found, this outing will become an invaluable part of their personal blues library that is sought out again and again.

The original 1968 release of This Is Buddy Guy!, recorded at Berkley, California’s New Orleans House venue, has seen the light of day in many international markets through the years.  This CD version of the collection was first made available in the U.S. in 1989.  This is Buddy Guy at his very best, with both restrained and impassioned inventive guitar stylings, emotionally soaked singing, by a man who knew just how to deliver his blues goods to a rabid audience completely under his command.

With the outing’s visionary production from American music historian and writer Samuel Charters, the ideal mix of Guy originals (with one co-written by Chess legend Willie Dixon), and covers by the likes of Guitar Slim, Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell, and Eddie Floyd and Steve Cropper, summarizes, quite possibly, into this effort as representing the finest Guy “live” recording ever.

In his very early thirties at the time of this concert, Guy was most definitely at his peak, already venerated by guitarists and other musicians the world over, and someone non constrained by the parameters of a recording studio. 

Front-to-back, not a single throw-away cut is to be found, with Guy’s fervent and affectingly soulful vocals being the counterpoint to his innovative single-string snakings, some which squeeze every ounce of emotion from a solitary note, and others that pummel forward ablaze with sonic intensity.

Notable titles?  “I Got My Eyes On You,” “I Had A Dream Last Night,” and “(You Give Me) Fever,” for starters, but the whole of this collection simply satisfies.

This endures as one of Guy’s unsurpassed blues assemblages ever, and upon that merit alone it is deemed essential.

Buddy Guy at his early stridently poignant best!  Listen closely to this one and truly hear his magic.