I had the great fortune of having a sister that was 6 years older than me. And a mother who worked her whole life in the music distribution biz. By the time I was 12 years old, our house was full of records, my sister had an impressive LP collection of her own, and I was exposed to music that propelled me down corridors I wouldn't have found otherwise. In 1967, one of those corridors was the Blues. And it was the Paul Butterfield Blues Band that opened the door onto that corridor for me. Thanks, Sis...your Paul Revere and the Raiders, Beach Boys and Herman's Hermits albums were okay, but they didn't influence my future musical tastes nearly as much as your Paul Butterfield albums. Those LP's both introduced me to, and left me with a lifelong love for The Blues. I remember the song that grabbed me by the collar, and never let me go.
If the musical arrangement of that song sounds tight, well it should. Paul Butterfield had one of the tightest bands around at that time. The core group of musicians were from or based in Chicago. Paul Butterfield on harmonica, Elvin Bishop (aka Pigboy Crabshaw) on guitar, organist Mark Naftalin, and saxophonists David Sanborn and Gene Didwiddie. Prior to this album, there were two guitarists in the band's lineup, the other being Mike Bloomfield, also from Chicago. The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw was the first Butterfield album to include such a horn section, and marked a move towards R&B that differed somewhat from it's more straight forward blues and rock style on previous LP's. I'm sure that's what hooked me about "One More Heartache." It had a blues sensibility with the R&B horn chops and production tightness. It was accessible to a 12 year old kid. It was both catchy, and yet it had some blues licks, both by Elvin Bishop on guitar, but especially Butterfield's amplified harmonica playing, that called to me in a way that nothing else I had heard at the time did.
Paul Butterfield formed his first band in 1963 in Chicago. Paul was the son of a lawyer, and Elvin Bishop was a physics student at the University of Chicago. They teamed up with Jerome Arnold and Sam Lay, who had been playing with Howlin' Wolf's band around the city, and also Nick Gravenites, another Chicagoan. A couple of years later, Mike Bloomfield, a blues guitar phenom, would join the band. At their inception, they became the house band at Big John's, a club ojn Chicago's north side, before either Mike Bloomfield or Paul Butterfield were of legal age to drink. Their band lineup was interracial, given it's blues leanings, before Sly and the Family Stone came along.
After I first heard One More Heartache, I explored my sister's other Butterfield albums. From their 1965 self titled LP, I was drawn to their cover of the Muddy Waters hit Got My Mojo Workin, and their own song Born In Cicago
The other album she owned was "East-West", which also had some gems on it. Here is a live version of their song I've Got a Mind to Give Up Livin', recorded in 1966 at the Unicorn Coffe House in Boston. The sound leaves something to be desired, but not the musicianship. Just listen to Mike Bloomfield tear the guitar up...really, he had a brief career, but the man could play.
Paul Butterfield first met Elvin Bishop in the early 60's. Bishop recalls his first encounter with Paul:
One day I was walking around the neighborhood and I saw a guy sitting on a porch drinking a quart of beer -- White people that were interested in blues were very few and far between at that time. But this guy was singing some blues and singing it good. It was Butterfield. We gravitated together real quick and started playing parties around the neighborhood, you know, just acoustic. He was playing more guitar than harp when I first met him. But in about six months, he became serious about the harp. And he seemed to get about as good as he ever got in that six months. He was just a natural genius. And this was in 1960 or 1961.
Together, Butterfield and Bishop began hanging out together on a regular basis at the local blues clubs, listening to and at times joining such bluesmen as Otis Rush, Magic Sam, Howlin' Wolf, Junior Wells and Muddy Waters. They were often the only white guys in the venues, but because of their musical ability and obvious love for the blues, they were accepted and taken in, especially by Muddy Waters.
Later, when Butterfield had his own band, he developed his own sound with the blues harp. Faced with having to "compete", as it were, with two talented lead electric guitarists, Paul played a Hohner "Marine Band" harmonica which he played upside down. He used a handheld microphone attached to at least one, and often more amplifiers, which was then boosted through the concert venue's PA system. The resulting sound was loud and up front...and not in the least drowned out by either Bloomfield's or Bishop's high wattage guitar playing.
Bloomfield left the band in 1967 to form The Electric Flag with Nick Gravenites. Afterwards, he teamed with Al Kooper to release the album Super Sessions. Mike Bloomfield, though widely acclaimed at the time as a guitar master, was never cut out for stardom. He dropped out of the music business to a large degree and settled in the San Francisco Bay area in the late 60's. He struggled with depression and booze, and later herion. On Feb. 15, 1981, he was found dead in his car, which had been driven to and left on an out of the way street in San Francisco. He had died of a drug overdose the previous night at a party, and though the circumstances are still unclear, it is presumed that a couple of guys who had provided him his heroin and/or cocaine drove him off and left him there after his overdose, not wanting to have to deal with the cops.
Paul Butterfield had his own demons as well. Like Bloomfield, he battled both the bottle and the needle over his career. He died in Los Angeles in 1987 of complications from a perforated intestine and peritonitis, but really it was the booze and the smack that killed the man.
But he created a body of work that, in my opinion, is among the most underrated in rock and roll. He introduced me to the Blues, and once introduced, I have enjoyed a lifelong friendship with the music. I still listen to my Paul Butterfield cds. I'll leave you with one more track...the extended jam East-West. This song, released in 1966, is a 13 minute jam that was based upon Indian tonalities and jazz improvizations...not exactly the Blues, but certainly a precursor to similar improvisational rock music by the likes of the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead.