It's true -- you can't teach an old bluesman new tricks.

But you can, apparently, help them relearn things they may have forgotten.

In the case of legendary electric blues guitarist Buddy Guy, that re-education came in the recording of his latest release Sweet Tea.

Recorded over a 10-day stretch in the studio of the same name, it's an album of material written, for the most part, by hill-country bluesmen Robert Cage, T-Model Ford, and the late Junior Kimbrough.

Artists who have enjoyed their own resurgence thanks to having material released on hip labels like Fat Possum Records and Epitaph.

When he was first approached by producer Dennis Herring (Camper Van Beethoven, Timbuk 3, Counting Crows) with the idea of returning to his roots, the 64-year-old Guy was wary, to say the least.

"I didn't like it," he says, "because I told the record company, 'You know, this is the music we all learned from, and I'm gonna mess that up.' When I left Louisiana, this was the music, and I said 'I've got to study this for a year before I can play it. This music is not played by the book.'

"But they said, 'No, we want you to play Buddy Guy along with these guys.' And I said I don't know, I wasn't happy with it at first."

So what do you do when the student is uncooperative?

Send him out of the room, of course. "I didn't even go in the studio and record -- not one minute in the studio. They put me in a hallway," laughs Guy. "When I got to Mississippi (Herring) said 'We'll put you out in the hallway, I don't want you to even see the band, I want you just to play Buddy Guy.' The first day I smiled, the next day I padded my feet, and the third day they couldn't stop me from playing ... I said, 'Man, get away from me, I'm having too much fun.' "

And the Fender Stratocaster-led Sweet Tea -- one of the best albums, blues or other, released this year -- is steeped in the obvious joy Guy and the assembled band (including Jim Malthus of Squirrel Nut Zippers, and drummer Pete Thomas from Elvis Costello's Attractions) are having while rocking mightily out.

In turn, it's one of those rare guitar records that's so raw and powerful it makes you feel cool for having heard it.

Which begs the question: If being Buddy Guy was all Buddy Guy needed to produce his best record since 1991's Damn Right, I've Got the Blues, why did it take him a decade to figure that out? "Well, sir, to be honest with you, a lot of times I would try to do that and a lot of producers and even the late Willie Dixon they would tell me I was sounding too much like (every) Tom, Dick and Harry," he says.

"Damn Right I Got the Blues, I went to England like Jimi Hendrix did and they let me have my way mostly on that one. And that was my biggest record. But the ones behind that, I don't have nothing against these other guys, but I was being told do this or do that.

"And I would be in the studio, and I'm a good listener, and I would say, 'Well maybe these guys ... wouldn't be producers if they didn't know what they was talking about.' But so much for that." (More on: Buddy Guy).