Blues legend’s road to Symphony Hall

Buddy Guy. 8 p.m. Feb. 13. Symphony Hall, 1280 Peachtree St., Atlanta. $35.50-$77.50. 404-733-4900, aso-info@woodruffcenter.org.

Buddy Guy’s latest release, “Rhythm & Blues,” is a rarity in an era of short-form music sales: a double album with 22 all-new tracks.

Guy and producer Tom Hambridge went into the project expecting to make a single album.

“What really happened was every time we came up with a song and we were both excited about it (we’d say) let’s do it,” Guy said. “And every time we finished that, there was another one. … All of a sudden we had, I figured, 22.

“I’m like saying, ‘Oh, thank God,’” Guy said. “I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen. If we can get a little airplay, hopefully I can sell … more CDs and keep the blues alive a little longer.”

Introducing the blues to more fans and breathing life into the genre has been part of Guy’s mission for more than two decades.

“I’ve dedicated my life to the music,” he said. “The late Muddy Waters, Little Walter, the late Junior Wells, I could go on and on, and we used to sit down and talk and be having a shot of wine or a shot of whiskey, and we would be joking and laughing about it. ‘If I leave here before you do, you had better not let that blues die.’

“Muddy Waters, he didn’t let me or a lot of us know that he had cancer,” Guy said. “I kind of got it from the grapevine. And Junior Wells and I were in a little club, the Checkerboard Lounge (in Chicago), and I said ‘Man, we’ve got to go out there and see him. Let’s call him and see. We rang him up and he cursed us out and said, ‘I ain’t sick, just don’t let the blues die.’ I remember that precisely.”

A week later, Waters had died, and Guy continues to do his part.

He is 77, but doesn’t act his age. He’s energetic and passionate and is doing more shows this year than many musicians half his age. However, Guy and long-time friend B.B. King are the last of the major stars from the post-World War II wave of blues artists still recording and touring regularly.

A native of Louisiana, Guy began his career in earnest when he moved in September 1957 to Chicago, where he was signed by the legendary blues label Chess Records in 1960. It was home to legends such as Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walter.

Already an accomplished guitarist, Guy was recruited to play with the label’s leading artists, but struggled to get co-owner Leonard Chess to embrace the highly charged, hard-edged type of blues he wanted to record. Guy’s tenure with Chess ended in 1967, when he moved to Vanguard Records. He went through the 1980s without a record deal, before he was signed by Silvertone Records and released the 1991 Grammy-winning comeback album “Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues.”

He has recorded regularly ever since, and Guy has delivered one of his best albums in “Rhythm & Blues.” Even with 22 songs, there isn’t much filler, as Guy shows his command of several forms of the genre. There are hard-hitting rockers like “Never Gonna Change,” “Justifyin’” and “What’s Up With That Woman”; tunes with a little funk and Memphis soul (“Best in Town”); a little (mostly) acoustic country blues (“I Could Die Happy”); and even some horn-filled jump blues — a style Guy has not often recorded.

Guy may be enjoying some of his greatest popularity now, but he sees the future of the blues as less certain than it perhaps ever has been.

“The radio stations have almost completely quit playing blues, man,” Guy said. “It’s not like it was in the ’50s. There weren’t as many guitar players. If you played two or three good licks, somebody knew about you and we had all of the AM stations and the disc jockey could play what he wanted. You could take him a demo of something and he would play it. Well, you don’t get that now on blues.”

Blues artists also don’t have the extensive network of clubs that once existed.

“In the early days we had the little blues clubs all over the country and in Europe, where you could go and hopefully be seen and make a little name for yourself,” Guy said. “In the last 20 years, 30 years, all of those small blues clubs have disappeared.”