When I Left Home: My Story - Couverture rigide

Guy, Buddy

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0306819570 ISBN 13 : 9780306819575

Editeur : Da Capo Press, 2012

Synopsis

When I Left Home According to Eric Clapton, John Mayer, and the late Stevie Ray Vaughn, Buddy Guy is the greatest blues guitarist. An enormous influence on these musicians as well as Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck, Guy is the living embodiment of Chicago Blues. This title tells Buddy's story, which stands at the absolute nexus of modern blues. Full description

A propos du livre

Revue de presse :

“[Guy] relates the story of his life in a lively conversational tone...Entertaining and enlightening.” Tucson Citizen, 7/3/12“The personal story of a man who helped redefine American music.” Bookviews Blog, July 2012
“For anyone who loves the blues, I guarantee you will love this autobiography.”

Elmore, July/August 2012“Not just an account of a musician’s triumphs, but a stunning representation of the struggles and sacrifices only a boy playin’ the blues knows. Vernacular intact, Guy tells an honest tale...Endearing and informative...When I Left Home gives the blues the attention it deserves—and then some.”

Asbury Park Press, 7/15/12“A pleasant read.”
KMUW.org“Anything but dull...Guy is a great storyteller. He also comes across as a clear observer, a surprisingly shy and modest man who has a unique perspective of one of the few remaining witnesses to the most important times and places in blues history...Thoroughly entertaining and engaging...A true pleasure to read.”

New Orleans Times-Picayune, 7/29/12“A big, bluesy autobiography packed with vivid anecdotes and authentic passion.”

“A 'must' for any collection strong in blues music history in general and the autobiographies of blues musicians in particular.”
Midwest Book Review, July 2012“For those who want a powerful personal story of a man fueled by music out of Chicago, "When I Left Home" is a fine addition to any biography collection focusing on musicians, especially the Blues men of the twentieth century."

Guitar World, October 2012“One of the very best books we’ve read in some time...A great read for anyone who loves music. Guy tells the entire history of the blues from the eyes of someone who saw it all go down. It is bawdy and hilarious and offers a true glimpse of what it was like to make music with some of the greatest guitarists who ever plugged in and bent a blue note to the heavens.”
Baton Rouge Advocate, 8/5/12“Guy is not afraid to reveal the dirty, humiliating and altogether human aspects of his long and fascinating like...He brings the story forth in vivid color.”

Gambit, 9/4/12“[A] breezy read. In tone, it's as if Guy is sitting on a barstool telling you his life story.”

“When I Left Home: My Story is exactly what is promises to be: the recollections of a 74-year-old blues maestro who paid his dues, grew up poor, gigged a lot and rubbed elbows with some of the most remarkable musicians of his time, even as he himself developed into another of that elite group...A compulsively readable book.” Blogcritics.org, 5/25/12“[A] lively autobiography...Throughout Guy’s vivid character sketches, anecdotes, and descriptions of his work in the studio and in clubs, Guy reveals the realities of the music business...A perfect blend of insights, observations, and behind-the-scenes looks into a seminal place and time in American music. Guy’s perspective seems balanced, candid, and level-headed...He knows how to tell a story with an open-hearted personality and down-home style.” WBEZ Blog, 5/29/12
“Guy takes the reader on a wonderful ride filled with humor, sadness, some regret, lucky breaks and, of course, music.” Los Angeles Times, 6/10/12“A colorful account of [Guy’s] 50-year-long tenure as perhaps the most influential guitar slinger in Chicago blues.” Jackson Clarion Ledger, 6/7/12

Blues News“[Ritz] has allowed Buddy Guy to tell his story simply but effectively...Guy’s narrative has a downhome elegance...An engaging account by one of the most acclaimed blues men of our time.”
Washington Independent Review of Books“Filled with wonderful tales—convincingly written in the conversational style you might expect from an old blues man...Throughout the book Guy’s confident yet self-effacing manner and his appreciation of other people inside and outside the music world is a winning combination.”
San Francisco Book Review, August 2012“[A] heartfelt autobiography...[Guy’s] anecdotes about mentors are priceless. Guy is an American treasure. Listen to a Buddy Guy playlist while reading this, and you’re in blues heaven.”

The Weekender, 7/25/12“[Guy] proves that his gift of song extends to every page he writes...Guy’s narration, much like his music, is deeply saturated by emotions... Impeccable transitioning from chapter to chapter, keeping readers interested and involved. There is a definite grittiness to the book, something raw at certain instances, but all the while addicting.”
Midwest Book Review, July 2012

Kirkus, 2/15/12
“Tasty as a Buddy Guy guitar lick.”

Library Journal, 3/1/12
“Guy is a vibrant and hilarious storyteller. With a natural ease and honesty, he captures the spirit of the age, the culture of violence in the clubs, and the personalities of his colleagues...Highly recommended for any fan of Guy and those interested in the history of blues music.” Publishers Weekly, 4/16/12“As mesmerizing a storyteller as a guitarist, Guy, writing with Ritz, regales readers with tales of growing up picking cotton in rural Alabama, of seeing his first guitar and standing transfixed in front of Lightning Slim for several hours just memorizing the movements of Slim’s hands, of his father’s friend buying his first guitar for him, and of his endless efforts to play the blues as he had heard and seen Slim and others play...Guy’s memoir is a joyous celebration of the blues, one of our greatest musical treasures.” Chicago Magazine, May 2012“[A] must-read autobiography...What makes the breezy and revealing book special is its ability to bring history—Guy’s own, as well as that of Chicago blues—to life.” Internet Review of Books, 4/6/12

GuitarInternational.com, 9/11/12“[An] amazingly rich and colorful, deeply insightful, and warmly jubilant, autobiographical document of his life and of the incomparable Guy’s lifelong love affair with the blues.”

Summit Daily News, 9/21/12“An autobiography wherein the reader can learn some great musical history...[Guy] writes a simple story that makes you feel like you’re listening to him in your living room.”

OffBeat, August 2012“The man who might just be the greatest living six-string electric guitar player portrays his life as mythology, which might offend without his perpetual humility , laced with humor, and without all the bona-fide myths surrounding him.”

Curled Up with a Good Book, 10/14/12“The beauty of the book is that it's written in the particular and colorful way in which Guy talks...Guy is funny and able to laugh at himself and turn the misery around him into something humorous and uplifting. If you're a fan of Buddy Guy or just want to hear the story of the history of the blues from one of the men who created the style, pick this up.”

New York Times Book Review, 12/2/12“A likable...telling of a classic American story...Certainly add[s] some new details to the history of the blues.”

“The stories in this memoir read as a veritable who’s who of modern electric blues...The man who defined the sound of the Chicago blues and influenced a generation of rock guitarists shares his life story.” BackstageAxxess.com, 5/8/12“The book is a musical journey...A great read, not only for the blues enthusiast, but for the rock and roll enthusiast as well.” Toronto Star, 5/13/12“[Guy’s] co-writer, David Ritz, has served his partner well: Guy’s down-home syntax reads like well-wrought fiction.”

Booklist, 6/1/12
“[An] amiable and entertaining biography...Full of fascinating anecdotes about some of the greatest of the twentieth-century bluesmen and the now mostly shuttered South and West Side Chicago blues clubs they played in...A must for Buddy Guy fans and blues enthusiasts.”

“Next to B.B. King, there's no bigger blues star today than George ‘Buddy’ Guy, a major influence on Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix...Blues fans will cherish this insider's take on the last half-century of the genre.” The Daily Beast, 6/7/12“Ramblingly entertaining.” A.V. Club, 5/28/12“In memoir, likeability helps, and Chicago bluesman Buddy Guy is an easy guy to like.” BlindedBySound.com, 6/1/12“It's fascinating to hear Guy tell of his formative years...In addition to seeing the journey of his life through his own eyes, the real joy in this book is the cast of characters we're introduced to...His stories bring these men back to life and his love for them is genuine and palpable...A breezy yet engaging read.” Maclean’s, 6/6/12“In unvarnished prose dotted with vernacular poetry, Guy relates his journey from rags to relative riches with the help of younger acolytes such as Keith Richards and Eric Clapton; along the way, he gives us the story of the blues as an art form and unstable, even dangerous, business. He tells it like it was.” 

“In When I Left Home: My Story we finally get inside Buddy Guy, guitar muse to Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and the Rolling Stones (to name but a few)...Buddy's narrative is cousin to his music. It's down home. It's not clean and prissy...This biography gives the reader unabridged stories of many of the great blues artists of his day and before, and raw images of the Chicago blues scene as it was from the 1950s to the 1980s...A valuable and rare insight into the music and the musician.” Record Collector, May 2012
“Gives the whole picture, from sharecropping family to big city hustling; guitar-playing to womanizing and back again...[Guy] gives a real flavour of the age and circumstances he grew up on.” Boston Globe, 5/11/12“A lively, sharply etched account of Guy’s unlikely ascent from sharecropper roots in Louisiana to the blues hotbed of Chicago and beyond.” Memphis Commercial Appeal, 5/4/12“The music fans [Guy] has affected so profoundly over his 50-plus year career will at last know how he feels.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 5/11/12

“Buddy makes his life come alive...Told in his own style and language, the book reads more like a blues song than an actual book, each verse telling a different story. And what stories they are...Buddy's book is as colourful as the blues...If you're looking for a reasonably unvarnished account of the blues life, Buddy has it here...The book is funny, sad, tragic, lusty, honest, loving and insightful. Just like the blues. Just like Buddy Guy. If you love the blues and all that it means, you should love this book.” Houston Press, 5/8/12“In this memoir, the story of [Guy’s] life is also the tale of the music itself of the past 50-plus years...There’s a treasure trove of stories here.” BluesPowR blog, 5/10/12
“When I Left Home covers an amazing amount of ground in its close to 300 pages...Relayed in a simple, conversational manner, the book does a terrific job of documenting the life of one of blues music's biggest living stars, making it a must-read for any fan of the blues...When I Left Home isn't, as the title indicates, just Buddy's story; in many respects, this is a story of the blues.” 
Shelf Awareness, 5/15/12

Présentation de l'éditeur :

This is the autobiography of blues legend Buddy Guy. According to Eric Clapton, John Mayer, and the late Stevie Ray Vaughn, Buddy Guy is the greatest blues guitarist of all time. An enormous influence on these musicians as well as Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck, Guy is the living embodiment of Chicago Blues. Buddy's story stands at the absolute nexus of modern blues. He came to Chicago in the fifties at the very moment when urban blues were electrifying our culture. He was a regular session player at Chess Records. Willie Dixon was his mentor. He was a sideman in the bands of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. He and Junior Wells formed a band of his own. In the sixties, he became a recording star in his own right. By the seventies, he was opening for the Rolling Stones. "When I Left Home" tells Buddy's picaresque story in his own unique voice, that of a storyteller who remembers everything, including blues masters in their prime, and the exploding, evolving culture of music that happened all around him. "I want you to know these people like I knew them", Buddy says. "I want them to jump off the page and talk to you just like they talked to me. Want you to see them for who they really were - crazy wild geniuses, sometimes sweet as pie, sometimes mean as rattle snakes. I'm talking about Muddy, Wolf, Big Mama Thornton, Lightnin' Hopkins, John Lee Hooker. I've lived the story, now I got to tell the story so you can see what I've seen, feel what I've felt, learn what I've learned".

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Da Capo Press
• Date d'édition: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0306819570
• ISBN 13: 9780306819575
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 320