SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The blues has stirred and soothed the souls of people for generations and in Ryan Coogler's musical horror film "Sinners," also the souls of vampires. "Sinners" is set in the 1930's Clarksdale, Mississippi, where segregation is the law, and blues is the language of grief and hope.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CAN'T WIN FOR LOSIN'")
CEDRIC BURNSIDE: (Singing) Oh, Lord, if you condemn me to freedom. I'm chained by the blues. I can't win for losin'.
SIMON: After vampires appear one day, people of color in the town must band together to survive. "Sinners" is on the short list for the Oscars. It has also received a number of Grammy nominations. And one of the stars of the film is the blues legend Buddy Guy.
BUDDY GUY: You know, it was a surprise to me that this came to me, and I'm still trying to keep the blues alive. So I said whatever will help the blues a lot, not just Buddy Guy, these young people. See, I was influenced by blues by listening to the greats that are no longer with us, Muddy Waters. When you had your AM/FM stations, they played everybody's music - gospel, jazz and blues. Now, unless you got satellite, you don't hear nothing about blues. They don't play that highly on the radio no more. So my grandkids, other people's grandkids, they didn't know. And when the movie came out - I've been going to this grocery store for 40 years, and this lady been waiting on me. And I walked in, and she starts screaming. I said, what's wrong with you? You in a movie. And that's when she recognized I was a blues player, 'cause I don't go in and say, hey, here's Buddy Guy.
SIMON: Yeah.
GUY: I just sit back, you know, and just try to be a normal person.
SIMON: Mr. Guy, I mean, you're, like, the most famous blues musician in the world right now.
GUY: Well, I don't know about that. The famous ones' no longer with us. And thank God I had a chance to meet them before they got ill and passed away. And we used to have conversations about who'll live the longest. Please try to keep the blues alive. Because most of them didn't make a decent living playing the blues. You played the blues when you was somehow (ph) - Fred McDowell, Arthur Crudup and people like that, even before them. They just played the music, having fun in Louisiana - called Saturday night fish fries - and a jug of wine. And you played - if you play good enough, you got you a good-looking girlfriend and a hangover the next day.
SIMON: Well, that's well said.
GUY: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TROUBLED WATERS/HOMESICK")
OG DAYV: (Singing) Hmm, that sacred ground. I was lost, but then I found in the shadows, an abandoned home. But the soil was drenched in blood.
SIMON: "Sinners," as I don't have to tell you, is a horror film set in the 1930s. The 1930s were a kind of horror film for many Black Americans, weren't they?
GUY: Yeah. I guess so, you know, 'cause I was born in 1936. From all the information I've got from some of the older guys, they said they got the blues by listening to people moaning and groaning and working in the fields.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TROUBLED WATERS/HOMESICK")
DAYV: (Singing) Hmm, I pledged my life to glory. I studied every word. I walked into the valley with a Bible in my nerve.
GUY: The white people where I grew up in Louisiana - you know, if a Black guy knew how to swim better than anybody else, they didn't want to give him credit for that, but if he teach somebody else white how to swim like them, then they got the credit. You know, so my name got bigger after the British come back to Chess Records and said, do you know who that is playing them licks behind Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter? That's a Buddy Guy. And they say about six months before Leonard Chess passed away, he sent Willie Dixon to my house - say, go get him. And Leonard Chess bent over and said, I want you to kick me in my butt. I say, for what? And he'd say, you been playing this all the time, and we didn't have sense enough to know it was that good.
SIMON: How does the blues make you feel?
GUY: Well, (laughter) you should see me get a standing ovation when I answer this when I'm on the stage, man. Do you know when I play, I don't play for me. I watch you or somebody else. And they sit there and stare at me with a frown on their face. If I hit the right note, a smile instead of a frown. And that's what I tell people each night before I go to the stage. I say, I know some of you all got a frown on your face, but I'm going to try to hit a note to take that frown off your face.
SIMON: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF BUDDY GUY SONG, "TRAVELIN'")
SIMON: The film's soundtrack has been nominated for several Grammys.
GUY: No. I didn't know that. You know what? I don't never listen to somebody when they say I got something to do with it. I like to be surprised, so this is the first time I'm hearing this from you, you know? 'Cause that makes me - I feel a little goose bumps on me now.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TRAVELIN'")
GUY: (Singing) Travelin'. I don't know why in the hell I'm here.
SIMON: Buddy Guy, what can we learn from the blues, do you think? How can it make our life better?
GUY: Just listen to the lyrics (laughter). I don't want to get into the politics to you, man. But if you listen to the lyrics that was sung before me a hundred years ago, it'll remind you what you're going through now. Ain't nothing changed with, like, you can do me wrong, but I'd like to be done better. My biggest record - I wrote it - called "Damn Right, I've Got the Blues." And I love sports, and I never did learn how to shoot pool, and I knocked the eight ball out of the pocket...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TRAVELIN'")
GUY: (Singing) I don't know why in the hell I'm here.
...And the guy started laughing at me. He said, man, you see what you did. I said, why don't you play some guitar? I said, you damn right. I got the blues. I knocked the ball out of the pocket. And the producer said, that's what we're going to name the album. And they named the album "Damn Right, I Got The Blues."
SIMON: Buddy Guy, who appears in the new film "Sinners." So good to talk to you, Mr. Guy. I've been looking forward to doing this for years.
GUY: Well, thank you very much. I'm going to do this as long as I can, 'cause, you know, this year I'll be 90 years old. And when you get that old, you can - you need help to the stage. But as long as my fingers can move a little bit, I still think I'll play as long as I can. And if you can't give people what they pay for, it's time for you to get the hell out of the way.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PALE, PALE MOON")
BRITTANY HOWARD: (Vocalizing). Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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