‘Living Proof’ of greatness

Buddy Guy is one of the last surviving bluesmen of a sort-of golden era of blues, a group that includes Muddy Waters and B.B. King.

I think there’s a rule in blues music that once you are older than the age of 70, you can literally do no wrong. Guy is now 74, and he drives this point home on “Living Proof.”

Guy’s new album shows age and experience help tremendously in blues. Nothing sounds fake or inauthentic. It’s obvious this guy is a real blues player, not someone just mimicking the stereotypical version of it.

With a lot of old blues players’ more current albums, the music is overproduced and kind of cheese-a-fied.

But what’s great about “Living Proof” is that, while it still has a polished sound, it retains a certain rawness to it that makes it sound fresh. That, I think, is the hardest thing for these old bluesmen to do — to keep their music fresh — and that’s exactly what Guy achieves here.