Rui and Muddy,
Muddy, Junior Wells did pass away in the mid-1990's, but you are right - Buddy and Junior when they were together (no matter how drunk, and despite their only partly theatrical fussin' and fightin') were vibrant and sublime, indeed!
Rui, Charlie Musselwhite is an amazing harp player - sounds like you managed to give him a listen. His "Blues Never Die" album is superb from beginning to end. Highly recommended.
Buddy (as well as Jimi Hendrix) was highly influenced by a player named "Guitar Slim" who used to (in the 1950's) dress in very outrageous clothes and do things like hang upside-down from the rafters of the club (wrapping his legs around the rafters) while playing guitar "upside-down", and would play his guitar backwards while he held it behind his head. Sound familiar? ...
I do treasure my time getting to know and working with Buddy Guy (who was a "guitar hero" of mine for some time before knowing him). It was a combination of initiative on my part, luck to have access, and having something truly useful to offer (the "magic box"). He told a friend of his named Clapton about it, and I nearly connected with EC backstage one night (but he had just been treated for an abscessed tooth, and I only got to talk with his snotty roadie). EC's attorney Roger Forrester wrote me a number of times - but they would not sign my legal agreement, etc ...
I met and "courted" Roy Buchanan, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Robert Cray, and communicated with Johnny Winter. (In the end)
none of these fellows were able to use it (as a result of attorneys, and $$$ concerns, etc.). If I had been a "man of means", I would have built custom amplifiers including the "magic box" for all of these greats, and just given them away. What they were able to do with my tools was a wonder and a joy of a value far beyond materialism! In retrospect, I am thankful that it did not all get caught up in money, marketing, and sleazy and phony characters (as $$$ always leads to). I despise deception and phoniness in general, and have (on occasion in my life) "taken-on" (rather than succumb to) those who place monetary profit over honesty and truthfulness.
Other artists who
did have a chance to use and enjoy it were jazz greats Herb Ellis (who signed a Letter of Endorsement), Larry Coryell, Howard Roberts, and blues/rock greats Elvin Bishop and John Cipollina. Strangely, within just a few years following my efforts in the late 1980's nearly half of the people who I had approached had passed away (Buchanan, Vaughan, Roberts, Cippolina).
Rui, your flute-playing is really interesting and beautiful - keep it up!
I've seen all of Martin Scorcese's blues documentaries - they are about as good as it gets. I particularly like the one about the Chicago sound (titled "Godfathers and Sons") about Marshall Chess, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, etc. Other favorites are "Red, White, and Blues" (about how the young white artists in the British "invasion" introduced the USA to the very gems within our country who had existed completely unrecognized - black blues artists), and the one about BB King and the Memphis Sound (titled "The Road To Memphis").
I lived in Memphis in the late 1960's, and saw many great rhythm and blues artists perform. "Booker T and the MGs" used to put on concerts free in the park. BB King's cousin (Bukka White, who BB stayed with when he first arrived in Memphis early on) came to our house, drank an entire bottle of whiskey, and played his National Steel guitar for many hours for a group of my father's college students. I was about 12 years old. The very next day, I went to the local drugstore and bought a "guitar" (made of hollow sheet-metal, and costing a mere $30 USD). Owned a Fender Mustang, then a couple of Stratocasters after that. I wanted to play like Hendrix, and discovered his major influences (Albert King and Buddy Guy) along the way. Seeing Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer Group in 1976 at the Paramount here in Seattle was another "great inspiration". Modified my amplifier and built quite a few "guitar boxes" in the years to follow, culminating with the "magic box". In the end everything from the Seymour Duncan "JB" Humbucker pickup on my Stratocaster to the speaker in my custom amplifier (a 10 Inch Celestion, the same that Hendrix used in his "stacks") was custom designed and built by me personally. The only surviving evidence of any of these exploits is a short video tape of me played a couple of numbers with a friend in the late 1980's. After playing for about 20 years (the early 1970's through the early 1990's), I began to play my guitar less and less. A couple years ago I gave my guitar and sound system to a friend. From dust to dust ...
So, before I became a "Detail Man" in this world of visual aesthetics and signal processing, my "previous incarnation" was as a (non-professional) musician (completely self-taught), and electronic designer of professional audio signal processing tools. In both the audio and the visual domains, I love to work towards marrying technology (machines) with the intangible, non-linear, mysterious, and sublime realms of human aesthetic perception. My acquired knowledge about signal processing (in general) has been quite helpful in learning about this (relatively new to me over the last four years time) world of photography and image-processing. (Perhaps) my intense sense of cerebral perfectionism and technological detail in approaching the sublime (and implicitly personal and subjective) realms of visual perception make more sense when one considers my previous audio and musical interests ... I hope that the images that I have been lucky enough to record (and have attempted to suitably "polish") bring some joy, and a sense of wonder about the intricate and mysterious worlds both around as well as deep inside us ...
Rui, I managed to track the moon pretty well with the mono-pod (even at x12 zoom). I was sitting down on a chair, as was able to partially brace the mono-pod against the chair. (Not surprisingly), I took about 100 shots to get just one "gem". I was lucky that one taken so close to full eclipse came out (I was trying very hard during those times). As you can imagine, a 1.0 Second exposure time is a pretty long time to keep a mono-pod stable. My secret? Mostly luck, determination, and ... holding my breath! I guess that I should "thank my lucky Moon" ...
