Sweet Tea

Performer: Buddy Guy
Artist: Bobby Whitlock
Engineer: Chris Shepard
Producer: Dennis Herring
Distributor: BMG (distributor)

Notes: Personnel includes: Buddy Guy (vocals, guitar); Jimbo Mathus (guitar); Bobby Whitlock (piano); Davey Faragher (bass); Spam, Sam Carr, Pete Thomas (drums); Craig Krampf (percussion). Recorded at Sweet Tea Studios, Oxford, Mississippi. Includes liner notes by Andy Schwartz. SWEET TEA was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Personnel: Buddy Guy (vocals, guitar); Jim Mathus (guitar); Bobby Whitlock (piano); Pete Thomas , Sam Carr (drums); Craig Krampf (percussion). Audio Mixers: Chris Shepard; Clay Jones; Dennis Herring. Recording information: Sweet Tea, Oxford MS. Over the years, blues guitar hero Buddy Guy has embraced everything from Chicago blues to R&B and pop balladry, always retaining his hardcore blues underpinning and fretboard wizardry as touchstones. While SWEET TEA represents a significant stylistic detour for Guy, it's a surprisingly familiar one. Seemingly inspired by the raw, electrified Mississippi blues of Fat Possum recording artists such as R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, Guy presents one of the most impassioned, gritty albums of his career. A couple of musicians from the Fat Possum camp are on board to lend ballast, but the heart of the sound is the titanic fury of Guy's guitar. The album opens with a low-key solo acoustic tune ("Done Got Old") in the manner of John Lee Hooker, but from there on it's no holds barred, as Guy delivers simple, slashing riffs and leads over pounding, primal rhythms in a Delta-meets-Chicago stew that's transcendently visceral. While blues-rockers like Led Zeppelin and Cream got rich by turbo-charging the riffs of vintage bluesmen like Guy, the guitar wizard turns the tables here by beating them at their own game. The pure, blazing, electric energy on these tracks makes the heaviest efforts of those bygone bands sound like Gerry & the Pacemakers. Kudos to Guy for making such a gutsy album so late in the game.

Rolling Stone (5/24/01, p.86) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...As stark, savage, and unsettling as Guy's classic work in the '60s....turning on the primoridial tensions between sex and death...Guy roams over this spooky terrain...wrenching notes from his guitar in fractured bursts and howling..." Spin (9/01, pp.166,168) - 9 out of 10 - "...Guy rekindles his late-game magic by descending deeply and satisfyingly into the sempiternal mysteries of sex and death..." CMJ (4/23/01, p.4) - "...Sounds less like a Fat Possum record and more like the first Led Zeppelin album. It's that heavy, and that sweet." Down Beat (10/01, pp.61-2) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...His most satisfying album since the underrated STEPPIN' IN....unlike anything Guy has recorded before....It's refreshing to see that he still shows something new in the studio..." Living Blues (7-8/01, p.45) - "...Works hair-raisingly well from start to finish..." Mojo (Publisher) (7/01, p.112) - "...Guy may be 65 but he capers like prime lamb at the end of his 150-foot guitar lead..."

Eric Clapton once called Buddy Guy "the greatest blues guitarist ever." Guy, along with contemporary Magic Sam, took the sounds of Chicago blues of the 1950s and ratcheted them up a notch, in the process creating a new form of controlled blues mayhem. Born in Louisiana, he moved to Chicago as a young man in 1957 and served an apprenticeship with Chicago blues king Muddy Waters while getting his own solo career underway. Guy's frequent collaborations with harmonica player Junior Wells are among his best work.

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