I Was Walking Thorugh the Woods

Buddy Guy | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 11, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Chess
• ASIN: B000002OB5
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #69,621 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Buddy Guy was an essential link between chitin' circuit bluesmen of the '50s and early '60s and the blues revivalists who translated their music for rock audiences in the late '60s and early '70s. Guy's recording career began in 1957 and he backed such legends as Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon, yet his delirious attack made immediate sense to blues newcomers. This 10-song collection highlights his work for Chess from 1960 through 1964. Guy is in his prime as a player and singer, and the sterling supporting cast includes longtime partner Junior Wells, Otis Spann, and Fred Below. --Steve Stolder

Product Description

Limited Edition Japanese pressing of this album comes housed in a miniature LP sleeve. 2007. --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some Still Call This His Ultimate Masterpiece, May 31, 2001

By 

BluesDuke "A sacred cow is worth but one thin... (Las Vegas, Nevada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Was Walking Thorugh the Woods (Audio CD)

To this day, as curious as it might sound given his unquestionable longevity and depth of sustained feeling, there are those, actually, who cling to the faith that Buddy Guy has never truly beaten himself at his own game. This is the album which makes the argument, and it is ... near impossible to argue with it after all these years. Cut between 1960 and 1964 and issued in 1970, as part of the original "Chess Vintage Blues Series" which helped give a lot of blues newcomers their first one-stop taste of the hard classic Chicago blues (after their appetites were whetted by such acolytes as the Rolling Stones and John Mayall and the late-1960s British hotshot blues-rock stars who apprenticed with him - Eric Clapton and Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac in particular), this was spinal column-decalcifying blues which lived up to Guy's reputation as perhaps the hottest of the hotshots who made the West Side Chicago blues scene of the late 1950s-early 1960s (Junior Wells, Otis Rush, and Magic Sam sprang up from the same scene) the first serious challenge to the empire of Muddy, Sonny Boy and the Wolf.

There's an urgency to the music which almost suggests most of it was cut on the sneak - Guy, after all, was mostly employed during these years as a Chess sideman - and that urgency amplifies the holler-to-heaven of his vocals and the fluid slice of his guitar playing. It didn't hurt him that some of the crack Chicago studio men (Jack Myers, Fred Below, Lafayette Leake, Willie Dixon, and even future Earth, Wind and Fire mastermind Maurice White, then a drummer and a sharp one) were in on the action; likewise, his future best-buddy Junior Wells on three cuts - they know they've got a young gun here who can probably shoot their tails right out of the saddle, and they're smart enough to just turn on the rhythm machine and let Guy cut loose. A wall of buttery, almost soul-style saxophones punctuates several tracks (most notably, "Watch Yourself" and "My Time After Awhile") with a delicious urgency. Small wonder B.B. King was calling Guy his heir apparent at one point - the man plays here as though the only way you stop him is to break both his arms and his guitar over his head. Which, considering his facility for making two simple notes sound light years beyond anyone else's shredded two hundred, is probably what a lot of players wished they could get away with doing.

He hasn't lacked for cutting good albums in all the years since, and he remains as singular as his reputation always suggested. But even now listening to this album - and, to his one actual planned Chess album, "Left My Blues In San Francisco" - makes it only too easy to say Buddy Guy's spent his career since trying to get back to so impossible a plateau as the one he set himself here. That is how overwhelming the immediacy of this music remains. And it's no disgrace to believe he has not and will not top this, ever. He's madea... lot of excellent music trying. And he's still in his own league.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Buddy's Best Albums, May 31, 2006

By 

A. Woodley "A Stooge" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: I Was Walking Thorugh the Woods (Audio CD)

This is probably one of Buddy Guy's top three albums. It's on the Chess label so it is early Buddy Guy and not the later rock sound of Buddy Guy. This is straight Chicago blues, not rock and roll. A lot of these songs appear on the Chess collection of Buddy Guy's greatest hits but it is really worth owning the album. In my opinion, the album is a lost art today. Many bands make two good songs and fill the rest of the album with filler. There is no concern on how a current album hangs together. This album is a work of art as an album. What I mean is that you have to take the whole album as a work of art. This album is full of great songs and hangs together beautifully. If albums were rated as works of art this album (and the time in which it was made) would be comprable to Picasso's Blue Period. This is Buddy Guy's Blue or as it were Blues period and is an amazing work of art.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Buddy's best and one of Chicago's best, October 11, 2006

By 

Boston Bluesman (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: I Was Walking Thorugh the Woods (Audio CD)

This is a great, great blues album. It is up there with the likes of Junior Wells Hoodoo Man Blues and it show cases all that is good with Buddy Guy and Chicagor Blues in general.

The album is short (less then 40 minutes), but intense. The supporting band is tight and this album really finds Buddy in the prime of his early career. Buddy's guitar playing and vocal styles are full of emotion and flair and the songs are a lot of fun. If you like the blues and in particular Chicago Blues this is a great album to buy.