Remembering Mike Bloomfield (July 28, 1943 – February 15, 1981)

Remembering Mike Bloomfield (July 28, 1943 – February 15, 1981)

While Eric Clapton has won the praise and glory for his chops when he first appeared on American record stands in 1966 as the featured player on John Mayall’s Blues Breakers album, Bloomfield was already turning heads with this spiky fretwork on Dylan’s 1965 effort Highway 61 Revisited. Dylan had abandoned folk for rock, and Bloomfield was instrumental in creating a new kind of music; it was nothing anyone had heard before. Later that same year, he was featured on the first Paul Butterfield Blues Band record, an integrated band out of Chicago that brought Black blues back into the spotlight.

Combined with Butterfield’s serpentine harmonica work, it was an unbeatable combination, as Bloomfield’s fluid, biting style dominated the disc; audiences and reviewers raved and wrote about the guitarist, not the band leader. Bloomfield was the marvel, the toast among fans and critics, a white Jewish kid from the Chicago suburbs who’d learned his trade from the masters. It’s an old story; somewhat stale as you approach it in order to create a narrative, but it has the benefit of being true in large measure. Bloomfield was that good a musician; he was that important an innovator, his blend of blues-raga-jazz-and traditional was that far ahead of its time. It was a fast rise to the top, a sequence of memorable albums and live dates and then a long slide into a comparable obscurity. Ed Ward makes the case in his book "Michael Bloomfield: The Rise and Fall of an American Guitar Hero" that Mike Bloomfield is an artist whose influence is still very much felt today although his name is not often mentioned.

Article by Ted Burke

Shake Your Moneymaker - The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

another in the series Album bought when they came out!

I loved this album  (still do!) it is the sound my teenage was filled with . . . . . Paul and Michael here . . . 

Guitar: Elvin Bishop

Bass Guitar: Jerome Arnold

Organ: Mark Naftalin

Guitar: Mike Bloomfield

Vocals: Paul Butterfield

Drums: Sam Lay

Got My Mojo Working - The Paul Butterfield Blues Band