Buddy Guy at 90: the Blues legend who still has more to say

At 90, Buddy Guy has earned the right to slow down. He could spend his days looking back on a career that helped shape the sound of modern blues and inspired generations of rock guitarists. Instead, he is doing what he has always done best: picking up his guitar, stepping onto a stage and reminding audiences that the blues is not a museum piece. It is living, breathing music — and he is still one of its most compelling voices.

Born on July 30, 1936, in Lettsworth, Louisiana, he celebrated his 90th birthday this summer. Yet the milestone has done little to interrupt his remarkable working life.
In recent weeks, he has appeared at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival in Austin, Texas, continued his concert schedule and been honoured at a spectacular birthday celebration at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. And now comes another reason to look forward: a new studio album is scheduled for 2027.
The announcement arrived on October 1, the night of Buddy’s Got the Blues: A 90th Birthday Concert Celebration, a sold-out event that brought together an extraordinary gathering of musicians to celebrate a man whose influence extends far beyond the blues world.

But Buddy Guy was never one to be content with a lifetime achievement award and a polite round of applause. Even at 90, he remains a performer with his own unmistakable personality: mischievous, unpredictable, fiercely expressive and capable of turning a familiar blues standard into something that feels spontaneous all over again.
The concert featured Eric Clapton, John Mayer, Joe Bonamassa, Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks, Gary Clark Jr., Billy F. Gibbons, Robert Cray, Samantha Fish and many other distinguished musicians.
With Rolling Stones drummer Steve Jordan serving as musical director, the evening became a celebration not merely of Guy’s longevity, but of the musical family that has grown around his work.
Buddy Guy himself took centre stage, opening with an extended acoustic rendition of John Lee Hooker’s I’m in the Mood before switching to electric guitar and delivering the kind of spirited, playful performance that has defined his reputation for decades.

Fellow blues veteran Bobby Rush, approaching his 93rd birthday, also joined the festivities.
The connection between Buddy Guy and the younger generations of guitar heroes is one of the most remarkable threads in his story.
When he arrived in Chicago in 1957, he entered a world shaped by giants such as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walter. He worked his way into the city’s blues scene, recorded for Chess Records and developed a style that combined traditional blues foundations with explosive dynamics, unexpected phrasing and an almost theatrical command of the stage.
His influence would eventually reach far beyond Chicago. Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Stevie Ray Vaughan all belonged to the wider musical world transformed by the expressive possibilities of electric blues.
Buddy Guy was not simply preserving a tradition: he was helping establish the vocabulary through which generations of rock guitarists would speak. His induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2005, presented by Clapton and B.B. King, was a fitting recognition of that legacy.

And his story has never been one of overnight success. Despite his extraordinary reputation among fellow musicians, mainstream recognition arrived relatively late. His 1991 album Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues became a crucial turning point, introducing his incendiary playing to a much wider audience and helping establish him as one of the defining figures of contemporary blues. It was proof that a musician could spend decades influencing others before the wider public fully caught up.
Now, the next chapter is already taking shape.
The forthcoming 2027 album will be produced by Steve Jordan and is expected to feature bassist Willie Weeks, guitarist Isaiah Sharkey, multi-instrumentalist Ivan Neville and special guest Kim Wilson, among others. The title, track listing and precise release date have yet to be announced.
The record will follow Ain’t Done With the Blues, released in 2025 — a title that now sounds less like a declaration than a promise.
Featuring guests including Joe Walsh, Peter Frampton, Joe Bonamassa, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram and The Blind Boys of Alabama, the album underlined Buddy Guy’s determination to keep collaborating, recording and passing the music forward.
Its success continued into 2026, when it won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album.
There is something particularly powerful about that achievement at this stage of his life. Blues is a music built on experience: on hardship, resilience, humour, heartbreak and the ability to turn all of it into sound.
Buddy Guy has lived through enormous changes in the music industry, watched generations of musicians rise and disappear, and seen the music he loves repeatedly reinvented. Yet he continues to insist on its relevance, not by treating it as a relic, but by bringing it to audiences in the present.
His work offstage reflects the same commitment.
In 1989, he opened Buddy Guy’s Legends in Chicago, a club that became an important home for blues performers from across the world. The venue has helped keep the city’s musical heritage accessible to new audiences, while Guy’s own performances have maintained a direct connection with the tradition he inherited from the greats who came before him.

At 90, Buddy Guy is more than a survivor from another era.
He is a living link between the pioneers of Chicago blues and the musicians still discovering its power today. His influence can be heard in the playing of guitarists who grew up idolising him, but his greatest achievement may be that he has never allowed that influence to become a substitute for making music himself.
The title of his latest album says it all: Ain’t Done With the Blues. With a new record on the horizon, audiences still turning out to see him and a guitar that continues to tell stories words cannot quite capture, Buddy Guy has no intention of letting the final note arrive just yet.
And perhaps that is the most inspiring lesson of all: age may change the pace of a musician’s life, but it cannot necessarily silence the music that drives it. For Buddy Guy, the blues is not a career he is looking back on. It is a conversation he is still having — and, in 2027, he intends to have plenty more to say.