After more than 30 years of partnership, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells have developed a level of intimacy that few married couples, let alone musicians, possess.
Their interplay borders on the telepathic. So rehearsals and set lists are regarded with disdain.
No wonder their acoustic performance at Buddy Guy’s Legends on Monday was so loose it often threatened to come unhinged.
It was daring stuff for a concert that had become a media event. Guy is now a national star with two recent major-label records and a Grammy award. A portion of Monday’s performance was broadcast live by WXRT Radio (93.1 FM).
Yet Guy and Wells treated the event like an intimate sit-down in their living room, using the postwar blues of Jimmy Reed (“Big Boss Man”) and Willie Dixon (“Hoochie Coochie Man”) as a jumping-off point for their acoustic improvisations and lyric embellishments, rather than as a sacred, immutable text.
In the 1960s, when Wells was cutting some of the toughest blues records on the West Side-and the world, for that matter-he often enlisted Guy as his guitarist. While Guy is prone to flamboyance as a front man, he remains the quintessential team player-never overplaying, and listening intently-when paired with Wells. Not for nothing was he often billed anonymously as “Friendly Chap” on the harp player’s records.
They continue to complement each other remarkably.
With his uptown threads, a red kerchief jutting from his lapel pocket, Wells played the urban sharpie, while Guy, in his overalls and leather cap, remained the Louisiana “Country Man,” as he sings on his latest album, “Feels Like Rain.”
So while Guy sang the cuckold’s blues, Wells teased him for not seeing it coming.
The topic of infidelity got a low-key but intense working over on Robert Jr. Lockwood’s “That’s All Right.” Wells’ extravagant vocalizing, replete with clicks and pops, was nearly as baroque as his harp blasts.
There were plenty of slack moments. Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say” was performed not once but twice, and the duo threw in the biggest blues cliche of them all, “Sweet Home Chicago,” to close the set.
But at times, the audience must have felt like it was privy to a private dialogue, participants in a musical conversation that was all the more fascinating for its spontaneity.
