He did life his way, all the way

BUDDY
THE ORIGINAL TEXAS MUSIC MAGAZINE
JUNE 2015
VOLUME XXXXII, NUMBER 12
He did life his way, all the way
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Friends pay tribute on new Bugs Henderson: The King of Clubs: 1943-2012
By Tom Geddie
OME PEOPLE, WE JUST DON’T WANT
them to be gone. We remember them the best
we can. I interviewed and wrote about Bugs
Henderson several times. I would never claim a
close friendship with him, but we talked privately
from time to time at Moore’s Store in Ben Wheeler,
where he’d sometimes play and sometimes stop by
for lunch on his way to and from his home in
Jefferson.
I know — again, not well —
his second wife Patty, his youngest daughter Zoey, and his first
daughter Rose. I imagine I’ve met
his granddaughter Miley, although I’m not sure.
It just seems wrong that he’s
gone.
This is one reason I’ve been
spending time with the tribute
album, Bugs Henderson: The King
of Clubs: 1943-2012.
The 23 faithful covers of songs
Bugs wrote — and a handful he
didn’t write, but often played —
are blues and blues-rock snippets of life, love, and love lost:
often bewildering — “bewildered” is a word that comes up in
at least three of the songs — and
sometimes emotionally trying
times.
Bugs did life his way all the
way. A few years ago, he slowed
down just enough to walk
through the literal and figurative
gardens of Northeast Texas and
to stop just long enough — not
too often — to smell the roses.
enough for the blues, which are
at the heart of much of our best
music, and his live performances
still blazed. Bugs and his “starvation box” — the red guitar —
wandered for years through good
times and bad — mostly good —
making some of the best electric
blues-rock on stages across the
world.
Driving along Interstate 20 to
a doctor’s appointment in Dallas
in late January of 2012, Bugs
talked on his cell phone about
some of his realities.
His realities
AMONG HIS REALITIES IS
being tagged with expectations,
19 albums, countless shows with
his Shuffle Kings band, and surviving heart surgery and early
substance abuse. He lost his first,
beloved wife, Duchess, after 30
years, to cancer.
He has four older children —
Shawn, Buddy, Cody, and Rose
— who have sat in with him on
stage from time to time; Buddy
played guitar with him for quite
a few years. In 2000, Bugs married again and moved to Jefferson
from the Dallas area. He and
Patty have a daughter, Zoey, and
family began to come first, followed by making music and then
career.
Not that family wasn’t always
part of his music, often right
there on the stage with him.
Executive producers Bill Allen
and Sherman Allen spent two
years making the tribute album,
recording disc one — The California Sessions” — with Chuck
Kavooras at SlideAway Music
Studio in Shadow Hills, California. Disc two — “The Texas Sessions” was recorded in various
studios in Texas.
Sherman Allen’s back cover
notes include: Texas as a tough
proving ground for blues guitar.
“The undisputed virtuoso of
fire-breathing Texas blues guitar, Bugs Henderson, held the
top spot in The Lone Star State
across a span of the decades,
from pre-Beatles to pirated
MP3s,” Allen wrote, calling the
“ferocity” of his playing “stunning to behold.”
“Bugs was simply one of the
greatest and most venerated blues
guitarists of the last 40 years. He
always played the blues his way.
He never kowtowed to ‘The Blues
Police,’ or to anyone. He was a
Texan, after all,” Allen wrote.
“His blistering guitar playing
was overwhelming; it tended to
The accolades
ALONG THE WAY, HE PICKED
up his share of well-earned accolades.
Guitar One called him “The
world’s greatest unknown guitar
player,” commenting, “He can
flat out blow most pickers away.
Bugs will fry the skin off your
butt with his monster chops and
fatback tone.”
Guitar Player Magazine wrote,
“Bugs Henderson should be declared a national treasure.”
Blues News in Germany called
him “the prototype of the brutal
Texan guitarist who takes no
prisoners.”
Then, there’s Bugs’ personal
favorite, from Living Blues, “struggling to reach basic musical competence.”
He’s played with and influenced the likes of good friend
Freddie King, B.B King, Eric
Clapton, Ted Nugent, Roy
Buchanan, James Burton, and
many others.
Bugs was near 70 years old
when he died of liver cancer.
Some people said that’s too old
for rock ’n’ roll, but that’s nonsense; in 2010, he was still doing
150 shows a year.
He was just seasoned well
10
BUDDY JUNE 2015
He was inducted as a Buddy Texas Tornado in 1978: Bugs Henderson
draw focus away from the dozens and dozens of first-rate songs
he composed.”
Some of those songs are featured here.
Favorites
PICKING FAVORITES IS ALways a questionable process because people’s tastes differ so
much, but let’s start with “Judy
Likes the Blues (she knows what
it’s like to love and lose),” the last
song on the second disc (not
counting alternate takes of “Drug
Stores Blues: and “Hit the Bricks.”
The reason to start with this
song is that his daughter, Rose,
sings it, and his granddaughter,
Miley, offers a short, spokenword intro.
Plus, off that same disc, “Lost
in Austin,” sung by Marc Benno,
who also wrote the song, with
Anson Funderburgh on lead guitar. And “Anthem for the Blues”
— “she finally found someone to
save her from the hell I put her
through” — with Jim Suhler on
vocals and guitar.
From disc one: “Please Have
Mercy” with Teresa James on
vocals and Billy Watts on guitar;
“The Road,” a sly take on hazards
of the music business that we
seem to love, uh huh, sung by
Ray Wylie Hubbard with
Sherman Allen on guitar; and
“Cowboy,” hoping for time to
live childhood dreams, with
Kenny Lee Lewis on vocals and
Jimmy Vivino on guitars.
“Bugs was simply one of the
greatest and most venerated
blues guitarists of the last
40 years. He always played
the blues his way. He never
kowtowed to ‘The Blues Police,’
or to anyone. He was a Texan,
after all.”
–BILL ALLEN
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Contributors
AMONG THE MANY OTHER
contributors to the CD are lead
guitarists Michael Ault, Paul Reed
Smith, Billy Yates, and, on vocals
(and, often, lead guitars), Teddy
Andreadis, Mark Campbell,
Sugar Ray Rayford, Vivian
Campbell, Kara Grainger, Kirk
“Eli” Fletcher guitar, Steve
Lukather, Lance Lopez, Josh
Smith, Snuffy Walden, Tommy
Kay, Buddy Whittington, Junior
Clark, the Jimmy Wallace Guitar
Army, and the Stratoblasters.
On various instruments, additional familiar names sprinkle
throughout the recordings including — certainly not limited
to — Bobby Chitwood, Kirby
Kelley, Tim
Alexander,
Ronnie Weiss,
Lynn Groom,
Bob Gentry,
Brady Mosher,
and
Milo
Deering. One of
Bugs’
sons,
B u d d y
Henderson,
adds drums to
“Love Jones.”
Bugs told me
that he once
“thought anybody who didn’t
play the blues
was an idiot”
until he started
hearing music
he already knew
and realized he
had limited myself and that he
wasn’t moving
forward at all.
“I like to hear
something I did
a year ago, and
think that it’s
bad — because
I’ve learned so
much that I’ve
advanced.
“People work all week, and
take a piece of that money and
give it to you, and that’s a big
deal to me. I want people to leave
going, ‘My god, what was that!’
— to be flattened up against the
wall. That’s another reason I have
an excellent band; it would be
easy to be anybody and play some
flashy guitar stuff and collect my
money and go.”
He quit trying to define his
music.
“I just play it,” he said. “We
just call it American Music, and
that’s what it is — all of the
American influences: blues,
country, jazz, rock, and all that.
I look back on the people who
influenced my playing the most:
the Ventures, Chet Atkins, James
Burton, all the Kings (Freddie
and Albert and B.B.), and Link
Wray. You can either play or you
can’t.
“There are some blues guys
who play very economical and
play the one or two notes that fit
a song just perfect. But that’s not
all there is to it. There are moments when you feel like blazing. There are moments when
you feel like playing very little.”
Bugs considered himself
lucky.
“I was married to an incredible woman for 30 years who
understood the business and the
kind of person I was,” he said in
another conversation.
“I was blessed to have her,
and then I lost her and discovered another woman a couple of
years later who seems made for
me.
“And I have a great family. I
don’t deserve all this happiness.
That sounds like BS, but my life
is so blessed. I live so much
better than I ever thought I
would.
“Success and happiness are
meaningless if you don’t know
you have it. I know it. I’m well
aware of how good I have it.” ■