Pop Music Review : Buddy Guy Turns on Blues Power at Long Beach Fest

The blues has its heroes, shouters and players of profound emotion and ability. And Buddy Guy stands tall among them, even if his guitar chops are known mainly to blues aficionados, and less to fans of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and other pop-rock icons he’s deeply influenced.

So Guy was a fitting and amiable choice on Saturday to headline the first afternoon of the three-day Long Beach Blues Festival, which was attended by a large crowd scattered across the lawn at Cal State Long Beach.

He followed a typically high-octane set by Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, who mixed feverish guitar work with warm, rollicking horns. Guy strolled onto the stage with an explosive rendition of Willie Dixon’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You.”

In his hands, the songs themselves hardly mattered, acting more as launching pads for Guy’s lengthy instrumental workouts, backed by a four-piece band that could roll with his eccentric shifts in volume and tempo. It was an intimate style, with aching silences and a light touch on the guitar strings, turning these old blues patterns into something personal.

Part of a bill that also included the formidable singer Koko Taylor, among others, Guy was versatile enough for a moving passage of straight-ahead soul on the Temptations’ “I Wish It Would Rain.” But his set too often veered into crowd-pleasing impersonations of Hendrix, Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Which was maybe fitting, since so many of them did Buddy Guy impersonations their whole careers.