The Paul
Butterfield Blues Band was probably not the first “White” American blues band
though I do not really know of anyone else that could be classified as their contemporary
back in the mid-Sixties. The Blues Project had elements of blues but also
elements of psychedelia and pop. There was The Rising Sons featuring Ry Cooder
and Taj Mahal, but it was never a “name band” in the way the Paul Butterfield
band was. There were many White blues musicians, of course, although most of
them laboured in obscurity until the blues informed the late Sixties and many
of the new generation of San Francisco bands. There simply was no blues band as
well known and influential as the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. It was also one
of the first integrated bands of its time, with a Black bassist and a Black
drummer to provide the engine room backbeat that is so important to making the
blues swing and not plod. The tow lead instrumentalists were Butterfield on
harp and vocals and the quite astonishingly talented and passionate Michael
Bloomfield on lead guitar. Elvin Bishop played second guitar and Mark Naftalin played
keyboards.
The band was
good but at the time Bloomfield was the breakout star and all-round blues
guitar genius at a time when blues guitarists were just starting to make names
for themselves as virtuosos and not merely as part of the ensemble. That
Bloomfield was damn good is indisputable.
Both Bloomfield and Eric Clapton were the consummate sidemen to older
Black bluesmen on whose records they played.
My
introduction to Bloomfield was as backing musician for Bob Dylan on “Like A
Rolling Stone,” and for a number of other blues artists. I was suitably
impressed. Then I bought The Band Kept Playing,
the reunited Electric Flag’s album from 1974, and was still impressed with
Bloomfield’s playing though he was not as central as he might have been. At the
very least Bloomfield was the one highlight of an otherwise pretty mediocre
album Much later I bought the CD of East-West
(1966), the second album by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which is
particularly important for Bloomfield’s “epochal” instrumental title track that
combined blues with Eastern raga modes.
It was many
years before I actually bought The Paul
Butterfield Blues Band (1965) album and, in quick succession, The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw
(1967), the third album, recorded without Michael Bloomfield and the original
rhythm section, and with Elvin Bishop in ascension as lead guitarist.
It is quite
instructive to listen to the debut and third albums back to back as it gives
one a good idea of the progression in blues the band made. On the debut Bloomfield
is the lead guitarist; on the third album it is Elvin Bishop, who is good and
quite tasteful but not with the same brilliance as Bloomfield. Also, the first
band was a basic Southside of Chicago ensemble and by the third record a three-piece
horn section has been added, which gives more of e Westside or even Memphis
sound. Not quite the big band riffing of early BB King or T-Bone Walker but not
far off. There is also a difference in the rhythm section that makes this album
much more of a soul blues album than the hard blues of the debut.
The debut
album is tough blues with the exciting, incisive guitar work of Bloomfield as
the shining star of the show although Butterfield’s harp virtuosity is not far
behind. By the third album the sound is mellower, soul-inflected and bluesy
rather than hard blues.
Butterfield
had not gone progressive yet. Like John
Mayall he moved away from the blues into a jazzier field, as if jazz is the
more demanding, challenging and more artistic music, whereas it is trite that
blues is the wellspring of jazz as much as it is the bedrock of so much rock
music.
After
several back to back comparative listens, I must admit that Pigboy Crabshaw, although different in
sound, is by no means a distant second to the debut album. The band is on top
of its game on both albums and both Butterfield and Bishop play superbly.
Until his
death in 1980 Michael Bloomfield followed a tortuous and obscure path for the
most part once he left Paul Butterfield, and either stuck to solo gig or got
roped in, no doubt persuaded by big money, in all manner of superstar projects
and reunions which he enlivened with his stellar guitar playing but probably
was never wholly committed to. Elvin Bishop had a kind of southern funk career
in the Seventies, with a hit or two, and then settled into the life of a blues elder.
Paul Butterfield followed a long career path with many diversions until he, too
died and is probably rated as one of the best blues harp players of his
generation, and as much a populariser of blues to White American audiences as
John Mayall as to white British audi3nces, with many stellar sidemen passing
through his bands.
I love the
blues and if my focus has generally been on the Southside downhome electric
style of the Fifties, I am also keen on the mid- to late Sixties’ “modern”
version of the genre of the younger generation of bluesman (by now very much
the older generation) who absorbed contemporary soul and pop influences along
with the ancient tropes. Paul Butterfield Blues Band fits into this period and
notion and is of a piece with the Black blues scene albeit that, being a
(mostly) White band it automatically appealed to the broader White audience to
which so many of the older Black guys became heroes when the Black audience was
moving away from blues to soul and funk, feeling that blues was too primitive
and old-fashioned for them. Musicians
like Butterfield and Bloomfield brought attention to blues, preserved the old
traditions but also pushed blues forward and innovated, in a way that had
always been part of the folk process of blues. For this the Paul Butterfield Blues Band
should be lauded. They also released
some really good albums that are well worth listening to if you are a blues aficionado.
