If you've been anywhere near the cinema lately and managed to catch Sinners – the buzzy new movie starring Michael B. Jordan – you may have noticed a familiar figure at the end.
Spoiler warning for those who haven't, but Sammie (who is played by Miles Caton for the majority of the film) survives, and lives on as someone who looks very much like Buddy Guy... although, it actually is Buddy Guy.
The cameo continues the legendary bluesman's ongoing mission to keep the blues alive – and, although Guy has previously hit the road for an extended farewell tour, he very much intends to keep on playing.
“They put that in: ‘farewell tour,’” clarifies Guy in an interview with Variety. “I’m having kind of a delayed farewell tour; maybe after this year, I might say that. But I’m still playing some of the big festivals.
“Bobby Rush, Willie Nelson, and me, they call us the last of the 89- and 90-year-olds that’s still out there, and that’s kind of kept me to say, ‘Buddy, you better go back out there and play a little more, because there ain’t nobody left after you of that age that’s still standing around.' Because B.B. King was in a wheelchair for maybe four or five years before he died, and I’m not on crutches yet. So I want to at least go another year.”
He continues, “Age takes effect on your voice, your walk, whatever you do as you get up into your 80s. And damn, I’m near 90 years old, man. You can’t do what you did when you was 25 or 26. But I’m gonna give you the best I got, and that’s all I got.”
In 2023, Guy told Guitar World that his previously-announced retirement is not a “full retirement. It's just time for me to be done with traveling” – insisting that he doesn't “want to cheat people”.
“I have a reputation for giving 100 percent, but I’m 87 now, and I can’t kick my leg as high as I did when I was 27,” he said. “I’ll still do blues festivals and one-offs, but I can’t tour the world anymore. I’m too old to be jumpin’ from town to town on a bus. I’ll still be playing guitar; I’ll do that until I can’t.”
The blues great's (very welcome) change of heart means he has a generous list of U.S. tour dates coming up, running through August. Earlier this year, he joined the star-studded 2025 Experience Hendrix Tour lineup on the final date of the tour in Atlanta, Georgia, to pay tribute to the late Jimi Hendrix.
