RECOMMENDED “YES, WE ARE OPEN!” declares the Buddy Guy’s Legends Web site: “It’s business as usual with live music seven nights a week.” The club lost its lease last year and is being forced out of its South Wabash location by its landlord Columbia College, which has thus far allowed Guy additional time to procure and settle into a new home. Such an extension of the inevitable allows owner and presenter Guy, who is better known as a legendary blues guitarist who spends much of the year traversing the globe, a chance to make his annual January pilgrimage back home to headline the club bearing his name. Chicago and Guy have been inseparable since Guy made his way up from his native Louisiana in 1957 to find work up north in Chicago and ended up procuring a regular gig with “the Mud,” as Muddy Waters was called, at the old 703 Club. The Grammy Award-winning Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee went on to become an icon of blues, influencing the likes of Hendrix and Clapton and pioneering the West Side style of electric blues. To liven things up every January—traditionally a dead time for clubs—Guy makes a point of playing the hottest shows of the year during its coldest month. Since this will be the last time that this will happen at the current location, note that many of the weekend shows for the entire month are already sold out. Guy himself takes the stage around 10:30pm (11pm Saturdays and 9pm Sundays) with a coveted back-up set of the who’s who in blues that this week includes Larry McCray (Thursday), Billy Branch (Friday), Big James & the Chicago Playboys (Saturday) and Nick Moss & the Fliptops (Sunday). (Dennis Polkow) Thursday, January 3 at Buddy Guys Legends
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