“Heaven is lying at Buddy Guy’s feet while listening to him play guitar.”—Jimi Hendrix

Buddy Guy is 80 today.

The great blues player maintains a heavy touring schedule: about forty dates between tonight (live with Jeff Beck in Rochester Hills, Michigan) and mid-November. He is one of the lucky few artists to have been discovered, and then re-discovered, and then re-discovered by a third generation.

Musicians were influenced by him to the point of flat-out copying him: his sound, his riffs, even specifics of his showmanship. Jeff Beck is quoted in multiple sources saying, “He was playing behind his head long before Hendrix. I once saw him throw the guitar up in the air and catch it in the same chord.” Musicians emulated him, became famous themselves, and then when audiences saw Buddy Guy they thought he was copying their idols at first. The high quality of his musicianship firmly established him as the source behind some of Clapton’s sound, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s riffs, Hendrix’s licks. By the 1980s, he was a part of a Blues revival that is still ongoing, not that the Blues ever went anywhere.

His Twitter account posted this on Friday

Can you believe this guy turns 80 tomorrow!?! Lookin' good, boss! – Team BG #80yearsyoung (📷 by Chuck Lanza) pic.twitter.com/TlYqasUMSx

— Buddy Guy (@TheRealBuddyGuy) July 29, 2016

 
Here he is turning The Rolling Stones into his backing band on Muddy Waters’ “Champagne and Reefer” live last summer:

 
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President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Social Security Amendments of 1965 into law on this date that year. The law created Medicare and Medicaid; both of which have helped me personally.

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Labor leader Jimmy Hoffa was last seen alive on this date in 1975. He was declared dead seven years later on this date. To this day, the events surrounding his disappearance and the whereabouts of his remains are still unknown.

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On this date in 1990, New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was banned from running the team’s day-to-day operations, permanently. The ban was reversed in 1993.

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Ingmar Bergman died on this date in 2007. Bill Walsh died in 2007 on this date.

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Emily Brontë was born on this date in 1818. Henry Ford was born on this date in 1863. Casey Stengel was born in 1890 on this date. Henry Moore was born on this date in 1898.

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William H. Gass is 92 today. Sid Krofft is 87. Edd Byrnes is 83. Bud Selig is 82. Peter Bogdanovich (of Kingston, New York) is 77 today. Representative Patricia Schroeder is 76. Paul Anka is 75. David Sanborn is 71. Patrick Modiano is 71 today. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is 69. Jean Reno is 68. Frank Stallone is 66. Anita Hill is 60. Delta Burke is 60. Kate Bush is 58. Richard Linklater is 56. Laurence Fishburne is 55. Lisa Kudrow is 53. Hilary Swank is 42. Jaime Pressly is 39.

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