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EDMONTON - There are few things as stirring as a theatre full of white people going crazy for a black Chicago bluesman.
Whether this says anything about the blues or the tastes of Caucasian Canadians is a matter open for debate.
Why play the race card? Buddy Guy played the race card. Performing for a full house at the Winspear Centre last night, the 72-year-old blues showman pulled out selections from his latest album, Skin Deep. The title track, a lilting slow blues jam among many liliting slow blues jams in his catalogue, goes like this: "Things been always black and white, just like you can't judge a book by the cover, we all gotta be careful how we treat one another" and then, "Underneath we're all the same."
That explains everything. While young African-Americans listen to hip-hop, the blues - invented by young African-Americans of the past - has been wholeheartedly embraced by white culture of the present.
There are no colour barriers to the blues. Buddy Guy knows this better than anybody. Rescued from obscurity by a man people consider to be the greatest white bluesmen of all time - Eric Clapton - Guy is the poster child for the mainstreaming of the blues. Well, poster senior citizen, anyway.
Come to think of it, there are no colour barriers in hip-hop, either.
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Well, back to the show. A Buddy Guy concert can be a strange experience to the uninitiated: half blues, half burlesque.
First of all, as a player, he is the real deal. He's a shouter of the highest order, a soloist to rival B.B. King, just with more notes, and a master of the blues style who performs with an obvious love for what he's doing. Just two songs filled the first half-hour of the show - rich in extended solos and vocal riffing - to give you an idea.
There's no faulting his "blues cred" in the slightest. It's just that the guy can't seem to go a full minute without inserting some joke, exaggerated grimace or sexual reference into his performance, sometimes to the detriment of the song. It's frustrating.
At one point in the show last night, he traded licks with his piano player - a monster in his own right - in a routine that ended up as plain silly. Eat your heart out, Victor Borge. Oh, he's dead. Is it OK to laugh so much with your daily dose of blues?
Exaggerated dynamics, too, are a hallmark of the Buddy Guy Experience. From a whisper - at several points filling the hall with his booming, 'unamplified' voice - he can explode into a full-blown shout, startling the unwary.
His highly skilled and highly trained band was with him every step of the way, of course, and together they rode a roller coaster of fluctuating volume in almost every extended blues jam.
Like I said, the crowd went crazy. High spirits and other intoxicants were evident. One moron kept shouting words of encouragement: like "We love you!" and "From the heart!" and, strangely, "Eric Clapton!"
Looking just swell at the age of 72, Guy got a standing ovation merely for showing up. He wasted no time for the opener and ripped out a particularly high note on his polka-dot Stratocaster, as the band fired up the funky groove of Goin' Down, a song about, well, going down. The ladies seemed to like that one. A mash of mannish boys and hoochie coochie men sort of riffs followed - and the Buddy Guy Blues Express was on its way.
He promised to give us the "best I got tonight," to "play all night if you want me to" (there was general assent), to play something "so funky you can smell it" - to which the moron heckled: "I can taste it!" - and to generally rock the blues like it's never been rocked before, at least until the next gig down the line.
At the rate Buddy Guy is going, he can keep this comedy blues train going a long time.