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POP MUSIC REVIEW : No One Else Does Those Blues So Wrong So Right as Guitarist Buddy Guy : Before an enthusiastic Coach House audience, Guy’s unruly ways and artistic roaming add up to an overwhelming torrent of passion.

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A typical Buddy Guy show, judged from any perspective within 80 miles of a blues purist’s viewpoint, is all wrong. He will clown and mug his way through a jumbled stop-start performance that kindly could be called scatter-brained. He will execute sloppy, skittering speed runs all over his guitar neck--as if to show the British guitar gods that he can top their excess--and play it all with a volume and distorted tone that is less derived from the black Chicago blues than it is from Black Sabbath.

But, as wrong as Guy is, he sure is right. Even when roaming far afield from the taste and traditions of his blues music, he is able to connect in a way few performers can. One might as well accuse a volcano of being sloppy because more often than not, Guy’s unruly ways add up to an overwhelming torrent of passion.

And, perhaps on evenings when Muddy is smiling down from on high, Guy sometimes reins in his excesses and finesses that passion with a mastery that reflects his history of working alongside nearly every major Chicago blues artist.

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His appearance Tuesday night at the Coach House was such a show. That doesn’t mean he didn’t stomp on his fuzztone midway through a tribute to T-Bone Walker’s jazz-based style, or that he--via cordless guitar--didn’t take his rampaging solos into the club’s men’s room and out the front door during “Knock on Wood.” But the rest of his set simmered so much that when it did boil over, it all seemed part of an inspired recipe.

Opening his show with the quintessential Elmore James riff on “Hand Me Down My Walking Cane,” Guy led his five-piece band through a set of blues standards, including “Five Long Years,” “She’s 19 Years Old,” “Love Me With a Feeling” and “I Just Want to Make Love to You.”

The biggest difference between the set and Guy’s past local appearances was the light touch he applied to many of his solos, finger-picking crying comments and his jagged angry flurries at an almost perversely low volume. His playing was often so hushed that one had to strain to discern his Strat’s notes under his softly percolating band, making it all the more effective when his finger would suddenly curl around his volume knob and send an IMPALINGLY LOUD E-STRING DEATH SCREAM (pat. pend.) searing into the listener’s brain.

Yet even when playing through an octave divider--a device that made his guitar sound like a cross between the Band of Gypsys-period Hendrix and a burning vacuum cleaner--Guy played with a rootsy emotion and a deft command of the blues idiom.

Guy paid tribute to some of his mentors with examples of the styles of Walker, Jimmy Reed and Lightnin’ Hopkins. The latter started as an example of John Lee Hooker’s style, but about three bars in he hit a note that evidently reminded him of Lightnin’ and off he went. He made a similar jump in his encore when, midway through a Muddy Waters-like treatment of “Rock Me Baby,” he announced “Hold it, I forgot to let you know I can play the rock--too,” and proceeded to bash out “Sunshine of Your Love” using a drumstick on his strings.

While Eric Clapton has exalted him as the world’s greatest guitarist, Guy’s vocals sometimes receive less attention than they deserve. If he lost his fingers, though, he would be scarcely less of an entertainer, setting lyrics quivering with a steamed, declamatory tenor range and a plaintive falsetto.

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Like Johnny Copeland and New Orleans’ Walter (Wolfman) Washington, Guy’s concept of the blues isn’t static. Even the Waters’ Chicago landmark “I Just Want to Make Love to You” was updated with a funk treatment, with the band cooking like the early-’70s James Brown revue. Guy has players who compliment his free-wheeling style--particularly the rhythm team of drummer Willie Hayes and bassist Greg Rzab, and guitarist Scott Holt playing with a fire that could be fronting bands.

The passion Guy and his band poured into the music wasn’t lost on the Coach House audience, which gave him two standing ovations.

And that enthusiasm, in turn, might have been what propelled Guy to a stellar performance. Responding to the crowd at one point, Guy shouted: “If every place I played was like this, I’d feel like a millionaire.”

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