Buddy Guy on Maxwell St, Chicago...

 Buddy Guy: Some of the guitar gunslingers wouldn’t help you if you was bleeding to death. They’d see that as one less competitor to worry ‘bout. But others, like B.B. King and Muddy couldn’t do enough for you. God blessed them with a generous spirit. Those are the guys I was trying to be like.

You can read books that say there was a South Side style to the Chicago blues and then a West Side style, but I say that’s bullshit. We was playing all over. I started out at the 708 on the South Side, but I went to the Squeeze Club on the West Side.

Muddy told me before he ever played regularly in clubs that he and Walter and them would set up on Maxwell Street in Jewtown—this is on the Near West Side—where pushcarts were selling everything from lima beans to lime-green trousers. “It happened on the weekends,” said the Mud. “You’d get over there around noon to find you a spot on the street. You just started playing. If it rained, you stuck an umbrella over your head and played again. Could be snowing, could be sticky hot—didn’t make no difference ’cause the people, they’d come no matter what. They shopping for junk and jewelry and God knows what. Everyone looking for a bargain. You ain’t ever seen so many people out there as there was on Maxwell Street. You’d make good money on Maxwell Street. I liked it a lot better than being up in these clubs with the guys pulling out their knives and shooting off their pistols. Ain’t no more music on Maxwell Street these days, but if you wanna good suit at a cheap price, go down to Jewtown, Buddy, and tell ’em Muddy sent you.”

Guy, Buddy. When I Left Home: My Story