Buddy Guy's $5 Million Home - Brief Article

Ebony, Sept, 2000 by Joy Bennett Kinnon

Blues legend enjoys multilevel oasis in the Chicago suburbs

LEGENDARY Chicago bluesman Buddy Guy has made a living playing the blues, and the blues have been very, very good to him.

Looking around his $5 million country oasis, 45 minutes from downtown Chicago, it's hard to believe how far he's come from the shack where he spent his early years. It's a long way from the Lettsworth, La., plantation that George (Buddy, a.k.a. Buddy Boy) Guy called home.

"This is all I thought I would have in a house," he says proudly, looking down on the Mexican-glazed tile in his kitchen. It's raining on this day, and the sharecropper's son is in a pensive mood, as he points toward the ceiling to describe how his mother put pails under the holes in the roof to catch the water pouring down from open holes in the ceiling when it rained.

It's as if he can't quite believe it himself. "I wake up every day and say, `Thank God,'" he says. "It can be done, look at me and say it can be done."

While Guy's up-from-the-boot-straps-with-no-boots life story is fairy tale enough to fill the major screen, his home is truly his castle.

Located on 14 acres and literally over the creek and through the woods, the contemporary rambling 11,000-square-foot, ranch-style home has 20 rooms.

While some might think that the home of a legendary bluesman might resemble a juke joint, they would be wrong here. With the quiet elegance of this home, the king of Chicago blues can retreat from the road and his responsibilities as owner of the downtown Chicago blues club, aptly called "Buddy Guy's Legends."

Jennifer, Guy's wife of 26 years, says she looked at more than 300 homes before deciding on this one. "I walked in and was home," she says. "She picks them, I just pay for them," Guy says, laughing. Although the couple own four other homes, most occupied by their adult children, Guy keeps one house completely empty, and uses it solely for rehearsing. "We needed another home because where we lived before was right off the road and we really didn't have enough privacy," he says.

The multimillion-dollar home they bought three years ago features rambling decks that completely encircle the home; you can access a deck from virtually any room in the house. "It's like living in a huge garden," Jennifer Guy says. The property has more than 1,100 trees and is filled with the wildlife that makes a country boy feel right at home (like deer and raccoons, and a wide variety of birds, even hawks and owls). The master bedroom suite opens onto a deck that overlooks a creek, and the sounds of the water rushing over the rocks are "like music to my ears," Guy says. Other amenities include a cedar closet for fur storage, a wine cellar and an 11-foot-deep indoor pool with separate hot tub. The guitarist's Grammy Awards for "Damn Right I've Got the Blues" and "Feels Like Rain" (along with dozens of other awards and trophies) are stored in his trophy case in the game room with a jukebox, pool table and wet bar decorated with the feel of a hunting lodge, complete with a stone fireplace and a chandelier made from deer antlers.

Guy's home is so impressive guests often don't want to return to their homes after visiting the Guy estate. "It's a house made for entertaining," Jennifer Guy says. The home features a custom-made brick barbecue pit, a gazebo, and not one, but two guest bedroom suites, each with its own separate bedroom, bath, and sitting room. Although Jennifer worked with an interior decorator, it was her tasteful input that gave the house its elegant look. "I never wanted it to be overdone," she says. The elegant formal great room has a sumptuous look but intimate feel with its marble floors, cream-colored d6decor, 30-foot-high ceiling and wood-burning fireplace. Two focal points for the room are the teal-colored, guitar-shaped cocktail table with interior lights and a mirror imported from France that is so large it had to be transported by ship, and required seven men to hang it. Many of the home's windows feature crystal and stained-glass designs and were created especially for this house, Guy says.

In the well-appointed kitchen, Buddy Guy's passion for cooking is evident. Known for his mouthwatering shrimp etouffee and "hurt-yourself" gumbo, Guy's downhome, "get-yourself-a-plate kitchen is equipped with a commercial-grade stove and a sub-zero refrigerator. Another interesting feature is his custom-built spice "closet," not cabinet, where racks and racks of spices--hundreds of them --are prominently displayed and easily accessible. Right off the kitchen and within his view, Guy can glance over and keep his eye on his other passions--his cars. Although he owns about 10 vehicles, he is particularly fond of three of his prize vehicles--a 1958 Edsel, his Rolls-Royce and his red Ferrari.

The fancy foreign cars and the Illinois mansion are a far cry from that Louisiana town, where as a boy he taught himself how to play guitar on a homemade instrument. These days he's known for his trademark polka-dot guitar. "I said if I ever made it out of Louisiana, I wanted to drive back in a polka-dot Cadillac," he says. He thought later a polka-dot Cadillac would be silly, so he settled for a polka-dot guitar.