Mike Bloomfield & Carlos Santana
Muddy Waters & Mike Bloomfield
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Must have
been 1982, I was listening to the national radio station when they announced
there was a special about Mike Bloomfield, Mike who?
The program
started with Mike’s version of “Got my Mojo Workin’”, and the first note I
heard him play blew my mind away, it was perfect! The best intro I had ever
heard in my life!
Soon I was to
find out why they gave this special, it seemed this man died of a drug overdose
on the 15th of February 1981, they found him dead at the back seat
of his car in San Francisco, California.
I soon forgot
about him.
A few years
later I entered a blues bar and I heard the most breath taking music I ever
heard, who’s music was coming out of the speakers?
Went to the
bar owner and he said: ”Oh, that’s mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper on the album
Supersession”. The combination of Mike’s guitar and Kooper’s organ, with the
addition of the horn section was never heard by me.
The album was
reissued on CD, this time with as extras all songs without horns, and as extra
song “Fat Grey Cloud”.
So I decided
to deepen myself in the music of this American guitar hero.
Mike was born
in Chicago on the 28th of July , 1943 in Chicago.
He learned to
play the guitar at the age of 13, mainly influenced by Elvis, in particular Scotty
Moore, Elvis’s guitar player.
Here’s what
Mike had to say about his first Rock ‘N’ Roll influences : "Scotty Moore, Elvis' guitar player. Also
Cliff Gallup, who played with Gene Vincent's Blue Caps. See, when I was 15, I
couldn't really differentiate between rockabilly and blues. It all sort of
sounded the same to me. All I knew was that it had a lot of energy. It all had
this sort of outlaw quality to it that I was dying to get into any way I
could."
Soon his
musical taste changed to the electrified blues as played in the Chicago area
and soon he became a frequent visitor of the bars at Chicago’s South Side,
where musicians as Muddy Waters, Otis Spann and Howling Wolf were often playing.
Bloomfield
took an interest in old long forgotten blues players like Sleepy John Estes ,
Yank Rachel and big Joe Williams , and when he started managing the “Fickle
Pickle” , a Chicago folk music club, he soon started hiring some older acoustic
blues players for the Tuesday night blues sessions.
This is what
Mike had to say about them : "Guys like B.B. King and Muddy Waters who are
speaking to the people-there are so many things in their music that just
completely pass by the kids. Most kids listen to their music because it has a
beat or because they know it's Muddy Waters and it means something cloudy and
obscure to them. There's so much going on lyrically - an afficione will
appreciate things that another cat will miss. I'm using that Spanish word
because it's the only one. You have to live it, it's got to be part of you. To
get emotional is the most important thing in all music. If you can't get
emotions out of your audience, it doesn't mean a thing."
When Mike started
playing as a session musician, he was noticed by John Hammond Sr. , a CBS
producer and talent scout. He flew over to Chicago and gave Michael a recording
contract. However, the music made by Bloomfield’s band, which included harp
player Charlie Musselwhite, couldn’t convince CBS and they rejected the recordings
of their new artist.
So with a
contract in his hand Mike returned to the Chicago club scene, until he was
noticed by Paul Rothchild, the producer of “The Paul Butterfied Blues band”. He
proposed Mike to join the band to play the piano and the slide guitar.
This is what
Mike said about Butterfield : "Paul's the best in his field; there's not a
person living in the world today that can cut him. I didn't get to understand
playing the blues correctly until I started working with Butterfield. I learned
a whole lot working with him."
He recorded 2
albums with the Butterfield Blues band, the first one, recorded in 1965, was
named after the band, the second one, recorded in named “East , West”. On the first album the
musicians were :
Paul
Butterfield on vocals and harmonica, Mike Bloomfield on the electric guitar,
Elvin Bishop on Electric guitar and vocals, Mark Naftalin on piano and organ,
Jerome Arnold on the bass and Sam Lay on the drums. Lay was replaced by Billy
Davenport on the second album, “East West”.
The title
song of the second album, East West, written by Bloomfield after an LSD trip in
the fall of 1965, was inspired by Indian music. It is an absolute masterpiece,
never heard at that time!
Between
recording sessions with the Butterfield Blues Band, Bloomfield recorded with
Bob Dylan the album “Highway 61 Revisited” and appeared with Dylan in 1965 at
the Newport Folk Festival, where Bloomfield and Dylan stunned the audience by
playing electric music.
Here’s
Bloomfield talking about Dylan : "Dylan is a hero because he tells the
truth. He says all the little things that a kid knows are happening. On 'Like a
Rolling Stone' he tells it all. That's such an old story. That's why Lenny
Bruce and Malcom X and John F. Kennedy were heroes. They were truthful."
Here’s Dylan’s
“The Groom’s Still Waiting At the Altar” with Bloomfield on the guitar, one of
Mike’s last public performances, recorded on November 13th 1980 at
the Warfield Theater in San Francisco.
Bob Dylan with Mike Bloomfield : Groom"s Still Waiting At The Altar
When mike
left the Butterfield Blues band in 1967, he was soon to start his own band,
“The Electric Flag”. The band had as members : Mike Bloomfield on guitar, organist
Barry Goldberg, Nick Gravenites on vocals, Harvey Brooks on bass and Buddy
miles on the drums. The band played on the Monterey pop festival and made one
album but due to drugs, poor management and different egos, the band was soon
to fall apart.
Bloomfield
said this about his time with “The Electric Flag” : "The Flag was a good band but it got
incredibly pushed into the making. Real-fast- to-make-it-real-big syndrome. And
we never had time to mature as a band, dialectically, or even as people. If
somebody had taken control of the group, we would be together now. We'd have
been even more beautiful."
Here’s a
recording from the Electric Flag at Monterey, 1967.
The Electric Flag - Wine (1967)
Bloomfield,
tired of his status and suffering from insomnia and a heroin addiction,
returned to his studio session work.
Bloomfield
told this about his time as a session musician : "I love the idea of
complementing another musician. I love to play behind him and give him a nice
framework to play off. That's what the old blues guys used to call a second
guitar or accompanist – a complementor. It's playing the right background; it's
the vehicle for you to do your thing on, the proper and correct one. It's the
sugar in your coffee. I like that in music. I like a whole band to play that
way – that's how a band should play."
One of this
sessions with Al Kooper, whom he knew from the Dylan sessions, was recorded on
the album “Super Session”.
The first
side of the album was with Bloomfield, Kooper recorded the second side of the
album with Stephen Stills, after Bloomfield failed to show up due to his
insomnia.
Kooper
forgave him for not showing up, and recorded a live album with Bloomfield and
some friends, named Live at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West 1969.
Mike Bloomfield - Blues on a West Side
These albums
didn’t relief him from his status as a guitar hero, and Bloomfield left the
stage to record some traditional blues albums.
Here’s Mike’s
comment on his stardom during a 1971 interview with KPFA’s Dan McClosky
Bloomfield said, "All the sudden I realised it was the name that was being
sold. The hype was being sold. Cats were applauding the idolatry. The
mantle ship of rock star doesn’t hang easily on my shoulders. ‘Cause I’m just a
person. My God, I’m just a person, with every hang-up that everyone else
has."
He also
recorded an instructional album, “If you love these blues, play ‘em as you
please”.
This is what
Bloomfield said about it : "It's the best playing I've ever done in my
life. I tried to show as many styles of the blues as possible. I'd demonstrate
two periods of B.B. King and T-Bone Walker and it was a very personal record to
make. I was extremely flattered that Guitar Player asked me to do it. I read
the magazine and feel a great affinity for guitar players all over the
world."
Here’s a
track of this album:
Mike Bloomfield - If You Love These Blues
At the end of
the 70’s Mike began to miss gigs and began behaving erratic due to his drug
addiction. He toured in Italy at the beginning of the 80’s together with
guitarist Woody Harris and cellist Maggie Edmondson.
This is what
Bloomfield had to say about them : "Woody came into the Old Waldorf and
sat in. God, are you good, I said. I was amazed by his talent and asked him if
he'd like to make a record. Later on we decided that the musical form we'd use
would be gospel. Woody's lady was Margaret Edmondson, a superb cellist, and
that's how it all fell in place."
Here’s a
recording of this sessions :
Mike Bloomfield - Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bond
On Feb. 15, 1981, Bloomfield was hanging out
with some people-not his usual group of friends. He overdosed. Police found him
in his car on a San Francisco side street. Michael Bloomfield, the original
“Guitar God”, the man who played on the biggest rock record of all time “Like A
Rolling Stone”, who spread the gospel of Chicago’s blues and blues musicians to
the rest of the world, was dead at the age of 37.
Mike Bloomfield - If I Ever get Lucky
Goldberg
delivered the eulogy.
"He was
a beautiful person. And as sensitive and as sweet and as vulnerable as he was,
he could also be irritable and difficult at times. But his sweet and lovable
side always won out. No one else has ever replaced him in my life,"
Goldberg remembered.
Mike Bloomfield - Blues For Roy
I never
understood why this man wasn’t given the recognition he deserved in the States,
in my opinion Bloomfield was one of the finest guitar players ever , so enjoy
his music!
This clip comes from a lesson given by Bloomfield to a young guitarist
on March 16, 1976, probably at the Family Light Music School in
Sausalito. It was one of several lessons the student took, and he was
surprised to learn that he was Bloomfield's only student at the time.
Michael dissects "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" -- pretty
amazing. The clip was taken from the Bloomfield website
mikebloomfieldamericanmusicdotcom.
SOURCES : http://www.mikebloomfield.com/index.htm
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