Buddy Guy Goes South For 'sweet Tea'

To record his intrepid new Silvertone/Jive Records album "Sweet Tea," due May 15, bluesman Buddy Guy says, "They sent me down to Mississippi and said, 'Buddy, get on top of this!'"

What 1993 Billboard Century Award honoree Guy got on top of at producer Dennis Herring's Sweet Tea studio in Oxford, Miss., was the elemental, hypnotic blues style of the North Mississippi hill country -- a quantum leap, formally speaking, from the brawling Chicago blues that the Louisiana-born guitar wizard has played since he began his Windy City career in 1957.

Yet backed by a sympathetic group of mostly regional musicians, Guy thrillingly navigates the rough-hewn songs of such North Mississippi bluesmen as T-Model Ford, CeDell Davis, Robert Cage, and the late Junior Kimbrough. Applying his formidable chops and soulful voice to this unlikely repertoire, Guy has crafted what may be his most exciting and dramatic record since his 1991 Silvertone bow "Damn Right, I've Got the Blues," which re-established him internationally.

According to Michael Tedesco, director of Silvertone Records North America, "Sweet Tea" was an attempt to break the mold for Guy's albums, which for a decade has involved pairing the singer/guitarist with established rock, pop, and blues performers and songwriters. From the star-studded "Damn Right" to Guy's last studio album "Heavy Love" (1998), which featured a guest appearance by axe Wunderkind Jonny Lang, there has been little deviation from the formula.

"You always feel like you want to really present a challenge," Tedesco says. "I knew that by putting him in a context where it was going to be significantly less commercial from an obvious perspective, you might in fact get something that was just so unique and refreshing that you may in fact wind up selling more records than you might [have if you had] made a more conventional record."

Even as Tedesco was seeking a new direction for Guy, producer Herring -- who has worked with such rock acts as Cracker, Jars of Clay, and Counting Crows -- hit upon an inspiration of his own.

Four years ago, Herring relocated from Los Angeles to Oxford. That city is also the home of Fat Possum Records, which has made a name for itself over the last decade with a series of primal but widely praised blues albums by Kimbrough, Ford, Davis, Cage, and the latter-day alternative-rock favorite R.L. Burnside.

According to Herring, a local restaurant he frequented, Proud Larry's, played music by the Fat Possum artists regularly. He recalls, "I just kinda got enthralled with [the music]. I got to thinking that somebody big should come and do it -- somebody who would show the whole blues world this kind of music, where it's not like a little sect. One day, it kinda dawned