Buddy Guy would do just about anything for the blues. So when the guitarist and singer got the call for a role in Ryan Coogler’s musical horror period-drama “Sinners,” the answer was an easy yes.
Then the nerves kicked in.
“Man, I had goose pimples everywhere. I couldn’t hardly sleep that night after shooting and the night before,” Guy, who turns 89 in July, said in a phone interview from his home in Chicago. In his main scene opposite Michael B. Jordan and Hailee Steinfeld, in a bar after the film jumps from the 1930s to the ’90s, he said he almost needed a stiff drink.
“I never did drink alcohol until I met Muddy Waters and them, and they said, ‘If you drink a little schoolboy Scotch, Buddy, your nerves would be a little better off.’ And that wasn’t schoolboy Scotch during filming, that was just water, but I hoped they would bring me a shot because I didn’t want them to see me shaking,” he said with a laugh.
In the film, which has become a box office and critical smash, and a cultural phenomenon, Guy portrays the older version of Sammie Moore, a blues musician played by Miles Caton in his earlier years. (The plot revolves around the Smokestack twins, both played by Jordan, and their efforts to ward off vampires, who offer Sammie eternal life.) Guy said he hadn’t watched the entire film yet — “I’m afraid to see it because I don’t want to say if I’m bad or good” — but he’s hoping “Sinners” bridges the gap between younger audiences and the blues, and shines a light on the genre’s legacy.
“I saw a little clip of the movie and said, ‘Wow, this may help the blues stay alive.’ Some kid who never heard of the blues might wake up and say, ‘I better check that out,’” Guy said. “Blues has been treated like a stepchild ever since the big FM stations came out,” he added. He said he made a promise to Waters and B.B. King “that I would try to keep the blues alive because the blues is the history of all music.”
The frequent Coogler collaborator Ludwig Goransson, the composer and an executive producer of “Sinners,” geeked out when he went to Chicago to record a new song with Guy, a spare 12-bar blues called “Travelin’.” Goransson, who grew up in Sweden, learned to play the guitar as a child and shares his love for the instrument with his father, who is a blues guitarist and guitar teacher.
“Half of the day was just me asking questions and getting a bunch of useful information because, I mean, he’s obviously a living legend,” the 40-year-old musician said. “Telling my dad that I’m going to the studio with Buddy Guy was surreal.” (Coogler’s film is personal for the director too; it’s in part a tribute to his uncle James, who was from Mississippi and loved blues music.)
Goransson said the influential bluesman Son House was one of Coogler’s models for “Sinners,” and before meeting Guy, Goransson watched a YouTube clip of the two playing guitar and discussing the evolution of music. “That’s part of what the movie is,” the composer said, adding that he sees its final minutes, when Guy picks up the guitar, as the most powerful part of the film. “It’s just how he plays it. You can hear all the music in that one-and-a-half minute of him playing.”
The blues sound is at the center of “Sinners” and its main inspiration is the blues legend Robert Johnson’s mythical encounter with the devil, in which he exchanged his soul for musical prowess. “That story has been out for a while,” Guy said, “but I’m from Louisiana and I don’t believe in all of it.” He waved off the idea of voodoo: “In my mind, I say, ‘Oh Buddy, you don’t believe in that whole stuff.’ Because a fortuneteller can tell you how to make money, but he can’t tell himself how to make money — so I never did fall for that.”
“Sinners” has a 22-song soundtrack that features a mix of originals and older tracks, including the gospel classic “This Little Light of Mine” and the folk tune “Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go?,” along with Guy’s “Travelin’” and contributions from Bobby Rush, Brittany Howard, James Blake, Rod Wave, Rhiannon Giddens and Don Toliver.
Goransson said he was obviously impressed with Guy’s musicianship onscreen, but his acting chops were noteworthy, too: “When we tested this film, as soon as he showed up in the movie, people immediately knew this is someone very special.”
“Sinners” isn’t Guy’s first film: He technically made his acting debut in the 2009 thriller “In the Electric Mist,” a film set in Louisiana starring Tommy Lee Jones that had a limited release in the United States.
“I don’t know if it was just because I was from Louisiana, but they got me to do that,” said Guy, who was born and raised in Lettsworth, a small town about 60 miles from Baton Rouge. “But I was surprised then. I wasn’t as surprised as I am by this one because every time I turn around somebody calls at me and says, ‘Man, Buddy, did you see the movie?’”
He compared the success of “Sinners” to meeting his blues idols for the first time: “When I first saw B.B. King, I was afraid to say anything, him and Muddy Waters and all those great people, Son House, Fred McDowell. And you can’t dream of that where I come from. This is a dream come true.”
Guy will hit the road next month — “when you get my age you can’t jump off the stage like I did when I was 23, but I’m going to still give 100 percent” — and remains dedicated to getting himself, and his fellow blues greats, their proper due.
“If you got any flowers for me, give them to me so I can smell them because I ain’t going to smell them on the casket,” he recalled telling Louisiana state officials before the naming of Buddy Guy Way in 2018. (The highway runs in front of the plantation where his parents were sharecroppers, and where he picked cotton as a child.) He also led the charge to get a street in Marksville, about 30 miles from where he grew up, named after the harmonica pioneer Little Walter. It happened last year.
“I don’t cry that much, but I cried that day because a lot of musicians should be more recognized than we are,” he said. “I’ll be fighting for that as long as I’m alive because that music has led to the music you got today. And they should be remembered.”
That’s why he was so excited to be part of “Sinners”: “I kept pinching myself, saying, ‘Are you really Buddy? Is this you Buddy?’ Because I didn’t have a high school education and I always felt like, ‘Be quiet Buddy. Just listen.’” But he’s learned to speak out — especially when it comes to the blues. That could even mean more acting.
“Whatever it takes to keep the blues alive,” he said, “just ask me and I’ll be there before the sunrise.”
