Blues legend Buddy Guy opens UFPA's summer season June 15

May 25, 2006

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Blues legend, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and five-time Grammy winner Buddy Guy will kick off the University of Florida Performing Arts’ summer season with a concert at 7:30 p.m. June 15 at the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

While Guy is revered for pioneering Chicago’s “West Side sound,” his long musical story begins in Louisiana. He was born in 1936 to a sharecropper’s family and raised on a plantation near the small town of Lettsworth, about 140 miles from New Orleans. At age 7, he created a makeshift guitar with a piece of wood and two strings, fastened by his mother’s hairpins. He would not receive his first “real” guitar – a Harmony acoustic now on display in Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – for nearly 10 years.

For two years, a 19-year-old Guy worked as a custodian at Louisiana State University. In the summer of 1957, a friend encouraged him to move to Chicago, where he could work by day and play the guitar by night. He moved that September, but a few months later, he was broke, hungry and ready to return to Louisiana.

However, fate intercepted. After a chance meeting with one of his idols, Muddy Waters, Guy earned a residency at Chicago’s famed 708 Club. By the early 1960s, he was a first-call session man at Chess Records, where he backed up Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson.

Eventually, Guy ventured into new musical territory with albums like 1967’s “I Left My Blues” in San Francisco and 1968’s “A Man and the Blues.” He released more than 20 albums, many of them collaborations, in the 1970s and 80s. After a brief lull, Guy came back with a vengeance: his first three albums for the Silvertone label — 1991’s “Damn Right,” “I’ve Got the Blues,” 1993’s “Feels Like Rain” and 1994’s Slippin’ In — all earned Grammy Awards.

Guy’s recent work, including “Live: The Real Deal” (1996), “Heavy Love” (1998) and “Sweet Tea” (2001), is entrenched in his blues roots, but has helped move the genre forward – even at the risk of alienating blues purists.

Guy’s stinging, attacking guitar style and impassioned vocals influenced such musical giants as Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. “He was for me what Elvis was probably like for other people,” Clapton said at Guy’s Hall of Fame induction last year. “My course was set, and he was my pilot.”

Tickets are $25, front orchestra and mezzanine; $25, mid-orchestra; $20, rear orchestra; $15, balcony. $10 rush tickets for seats in the balcony may be available day of show.

Tickets to University of Florida Performing Arts events are available by calling the Phillips Center Box Office at (352) 392-ARTS (2787) or (800) 905-ARTS (2787) or by faxing orders to (352) 846-1562. Tickets are also available at the University Box Office at the University of Florida Reitz Union, all Ticketmaster outlets, www.ticketmaster.com or by calling Ticketmaster at (904) 353-3309. Cash, checks, Visa and MasterCard are accepted. Group ticket sales are available.

Student tickets for $10 may be available for balcony seats. Students must purchase tickets in person with student ID at the Phillips Center Box Office or at University Box Office in the Reitz Union. Each student may purchase only one student ticket per performance. Student tickets are subject to availability.

The Phillips Center Box Office’s summer hours are noon to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday. The Box Office will also be open on Saturday, June 3 from noon to 6 p.m..

Performance dates, times and programs are subject to change.