Monocled Alchemist

“Mary, Mary” taken from the LP ‘East-West’ | (Elektra Records EKS 7315) September 1966

The Butterfield Blues Band | Mary, Mary | (Elektra) 1966 | ‘EAST-WEST’ is not the Paul Butterfield Blues Band at their best, but it’s still superior to most contemporary blues albums. The tingling electrical excitement of their in-person dates, evident in their first LP, seems forced on most tracks.

“Walkin’ Blues”, “I Got A Mind To Give Up Living” and “Work Song” come off best. “East-West” is good too, but we’ve had the perhaps unfair advantage of hearing it performed live a couple of times at the Cafe Au Go Go and the recorded version seems a dim caricature.

Come on, you guys, you’re the best blues band today. Let’s have something more representative on records. (ELEKTRA EKS-7315) (Hit Parader, 01/67)

Article published in Hit Parader, January / February 1967: Mike Bloomfield Puts Down Everything

By now, many of you must have heard the Paul Butterfield Blues Band albums and marvelled over the guitar playing of Mike Bloomfield. Through Mike’s incredible style, the world of pop music has become much more aware of blues in general and Mike’s idol, B.B. King, in particular.

Currently Mike is the most influential guitarist in pop music as evidenced by the hundreds of lead guitarists in minor bands learning from him. Mike is also in great demand as a session man. He has appeared on albums by Dylan, John Hammond, Peter, Paul and Mary and many others.

Jim Delehant cornered Mike at the Cafe Au Go Go, the meeting place of musicians, and had a little chat with him. Here goes.

JD: What was your very first experience with music?

MIKE: It was hearing “South Pacific”. Outside of children’s records like “Little Orley” and “Bozo Under The Sea”. My parents had absolutely no influence on me musically.

JD: What was your first experience with blues?

MIKE: With the guitar playing it was my cousin Charles. He started playing guitar when I was 13. I got a guitar because he had one. That’s when I started playing guitar. I really can’t tell you my first experience with blues because I was hearing it and didn’t know what it was.

Then, when I realized what it was, a whole new world of artists and entertainers from Chicago opened up to me. I was about 16 or 17. I had been hearing blues records since I was 13, and I really liked them. But, I didn’t know what they were.

I heard them on radio station WGES in Chicago. They had this DJ., Al Benson. It was an all-blues station. There were Chuck Berry songs I especially liked – “Deep Feeling” and “Wee Wee Hours”. I never knew what set them apart from the other ones. It was the sonority of those blues notes.

The Butterfield Blues Band | Mary, Mary | (Elektra) 1966

I could hear them in Gene Vincent guitar solos and Fats Domino songs. When I was 15, I started hearing guys like Lightnin’ Hopkins and John Lee Hooker. I bought albums by Blind Lemon Jefferson and Big Bill Broonzy and Jimmy Reed. But I still didn’t really know who they were or what the blues were.

JD: When did you find out what it all was?

MIKE: I had a fairly rough idea about the musical form and I knew mostly coloured people sang it. Then one summer when I was 17, we moved to Hyde Park. There were a lot of folkies around there. They were interested in blues from a musicalogical standpoint artists, their records, guitar styles.

That’s when I started to learn about it as an idiom. By then, my rock and roll experiences had made me a fairly proficient guitarist in that area. I just liked that type of guitar playing, not knowing it was blues. Then I heard guys in person that played that way.

I played with guys in hillbilly bars and coloured bars and started to sit in all the time. I couldn’t really tell the difference between what I played and they played, but there was a difference. Then I became more and more interested in the music as a musical form, intellectually – artists, data, the history.

But I didn’t get to understand playing the blues correctly, the notes right, until I started working with Paul Butterfield’s Blues Band. Well, no, I think I started to understand it when I had my own band a year before I joined Paul I wasn’t really into it on a full-time basis until Butterfield.

JD: Did you always play amplified?

MIKE: No. I started working clubs when I was 15 with rock bands. You see, the difference between a song like “Oop Oop A Doo” and “Money”, which every white rock and hillbilly band I knew did, and Muddy Waters songs is very slim.

When I was 17, I went down and saw these cats like Muddy Waters, heard them and saw them. And I really learned. Blues is not just notes. It’s a whole environmental thing with nuances of song, speech and the whole personality of the people involved. It makes me feel good to understand it.

It’s a personal thing. I have a personal attachment to the music and it’s absolutely part of me. It’s the music I understand best, with complete feeling and all the subtleties involved. It’s just something I’m really into.

The Butterfield Blues Band | Mary, Mary | (Elektra) 1966

My main influences in guitar playing are Lightnin’ Hopkins, but for a long time I played a lot of folk guitar – Travis style, finger-picking and a lot of country blues. But my main influence today is B.B. King. He’s my main influence in music. Enough can not be said about B.B. King. I consider him a major American artist.

There’s a book by Charles Keil called the Urban Blues, Chicago University Press. That book tells all the things I feel about blues that I just can’t say.

JD: Remember when you said you wanted to play with Ray Charles?

MIKE: I still want to very much. Some of the guitar playing on his records is vile. But he’s got a great guitar player now. I’m very content playing with Butterfield’s band. Playing with Ray is like a pipe dream. It would just be an incredible thrill to play with him because he and his band are so good.

JD: Besides B.B. King, who are some of the other guitar players that have influenced you?

MIKE: The whole school of Chicago guitar players. Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Freddy King, Albert King, Albert Collins, B.B. King, Elmore James, Hound Dog Taylor, Muddy Waters, Earl Hooker, Little Smokey Smothers, Big Smokey Smothers.

The different accompanists – little-known cats that played behind little Walter – guys like Luther Tucker, Fred Robinson, Louis Miles and some of the older Chicago guitar players like John Lee Granderson, and a lot of piano players because I played a lot of piano.

Piano players showed me a lot of stuff. Sunnyland Slim, Cats personally helped me, like playing along with them. Some cats would really take time to help me. Sunnyland took me to his house a lot and really helped me.

Other cats took time out – Big Joe Williams has been almost like a father to me. He’s been very kind and taught me a lot of stuff. Just watching him, I learned how a cat lives jungly. It’s a rough world, his world. But, he’s a rough guy.

The Butterfield Blues Band | Mary, Mary | (Elektra) 1966

And our own guitarist Elvin Bishop taught me a lot of stuff. About 4 years ago, Elvin taught me a whole lot about basic blues guitar. He got me started on playing stuff correctly.

JD: Did you play with Howlin’ Wolf’s band for a while?

MIKE: No. I sat in with him and with every band I could. I never played with any big name blues bands; Elvin did though. I mostly learned stuff from playing with my own bands.

JD: How did you get in with Bob Dylan?

MIKE: He called me on the phone. I met him once at the Bear in Chicago, in his earlier unamplified days so wanted to go down there and show him what a lousy guitar player he was.

Personally, I was incensed by the liner notes on his first album which said he was a good guitar player. I found out he was really a nice guy. Then I saw him again in New York at a party and we played a little. Through the strength of those two meetings, he called me to make a record with him. There might have been something else, I don’t know.

JD: Were you on his first amplified session?

MIKE: No, that was Bruce Langhorn, a very good guitar player. That was really folk rock – Dylan and a few side-men. The session I played on was just a big rock and roll band.

JD: There seems to be a lot of blues bands cropping up now. Do you think it’s about to happen in a big way?

MIKE: No. Because I don’t think any of them are any good. None of them even approach playing blues correctly. There are all kinds of blues, Chicago blues, country blues, jump band blues, there’s Joe Turner type, B.B. King, Ray Charles.

I’ve heard certain English cats who are extremely talented – Jeff Beck of the Yardbirds, the kid from the Spencer Davis Group, Steve Winwood – he’s unbelievable. There’s another kid, he’s on that Elektra “What’s Shakin” album we’re on, Eric Clapton.

Modern electric rock and roll

Over the years, I’ve heard certain white individuals that can really play blues well and a few good singers like the Righteous Brothers, who are a bit too affected for me. Most of these bands do good modern electric rock and roll music and lovely ballad things. But they don’t play blues, for my money. It’s not authentically right.

It’s good music, but it’s a farcical attempt to play blues. You’ve got to live with it, really hear it, you’ve got to know what’s happening in the world that created it. You’ve got to know the artists. It’s a rough thing to learn because it’s completely foreign to most cats’ environment. For my money, nobody plays it but us.

JD: Do you like country western music?

MIKE: I love it. I played blue-grass for a long time. I’m not really into modern country western and don’t know it a lot, but I was just interested in it for a while.

I love steel guitars and dobros and think I’d like to play steel sometime, but it’s a whole new concept, the pedals and all that. I play a little dobro but not good enough to play anywhere.

JD: Did you ever play any Chess / Checker sessions?

MIKE: I did an overdub on a Chuck Berry song called “It Wasn’t Me”. I just hung around there a lot. I wasn’t good enough to do session work when I was living in Chicago. Now I am. If I go back there, I’ll see if I can get more session work. Chess has a whole stable of cats.

They’ve got a hillbilly cat who plays pretty fair blues guitar and they’ve got Buddy Guy, a wonderful guitar player, but he’s got personal hang-ups. It’s a very tight clique-ish organization. It’s very hard to get with Chess and I imagine it’s the same way with Motown.

JD: Why are you interested in Motown?

MIKE: I’d like to play on their sessions. They don’t have anybody down there who can play like I do. I’d like to go down there and say “Well, here’s what I can do, maybe you can use it.” It’s really just the money that interests me and the clean arrangements.

Motown music is musically perfect, but I find it bland. It’s cultured soul. I really like the new Atlantic sound, Joe Tex, Percy Sledge, Otis Redding, and that new one “Laundromat Blues” by Albert King great lyrics. I like jazz things a lot, too. My own style has sort of been going towards that.

JD: Why do you think “Barefootin’” got on the chart?

MIKE: That’s on the chart? An old shuffle like that? I don’t believe it. I have very little faith in the taste of white people. Maybe it’s just because he sings “Barefootin’”. It’s a good record. How about “Get Out Of My Life, Woman” and “Hold On, I’m Coming”? It’s getting more liberal.

I’m sure Motown paved the way. Atlantic has really psyched out the Negro working class people and they’re really catering to their taste. Listen to the lyrics of some of the Joe Tex records, they’re really just simple and moving.

Jazz guys

“I’ve been beaten up and tossed around.” Straight gospel arrangements be hind them. Very moving. I like a lot of jazz guys, too. The ones that can blow real hard. Powerful musicians. Roland Kirk is one of the most incredible musicians I’ve ever seen in my life. You watch him and you’re so filled with joy, you’re seeing so much beauty and power pouring out of that guy,you just start laughing uncontrollably.

Archie Shepp, too. As I play more music, my taste gets better. I’ve been hanging around with a lot of music critics that have been helping me with my musical taste. Some cats are just geniuses and some aren’t. Those geniuses are really worth listening to.

Guys like Thelonious Monk and Charlie Mingus, really geniuses with great ideas. They’re humorous and intelligent people and their music is witty. If you hear it and understand it, you’re really in for some pleasant intellectual developments.

JD: What do you think of Bo Diddley?

MIKE: I don’t like Bo Diddley. I think he fell upon a gimmick many years ago and he’s milked it ever since. He has a Mississippi accent and he uses pretty pithy subjects – like mojos and all that.

JD: But I saw him play to a white audience and when he did his dirty dozens, the audience never even cracked a smile.

MIKE: No. They take it all too seriously. The white audience in this country doesn’t know what’s happening in music. They have no idea how to listen. In England they know intellectually what’s happening and what the words mean.

They’re rapidly pro-Negro. And old guys can go over there that can’t even play, and because they are archaic old Negroes, they’ll be applauded like mad. There are cats like Big Joe Williams that have a lot of poop left in them. But there’s cats that just don’t.

One cat, John Henry Barbee, an old authentic blues singer who died. I met him when they tried to revive him, but he was just too old and tore up to play. Peg Leg Howell, who was recorded on Testament, is another. It was like showing a movie of an old acrobat who now is a complete cripple, feebly trying to climb his parallel bars.

That’s a bad thing. But 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 some thing cloudy and obscure to them.

Folkies know it’s blues

Or they’re folkies and they know it’s blues, A few cats actually listen to blues and enjoy it with all the gusto they can. There’s so much going on lyrically a student 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.

JD: You once said the same thing about Indian music.

MIKE: Right, that’s another thing. I don’t know the scales, but if you hear it, you can understand emotionally what’s happening in that world of nuance that’s going on there. That’s very important if you want to get away from just playing the drone.

The long piece we do is not Indian by any means. It just conveys the feeling. 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. Swinging will almost always do that. Many of the blues bands don’t swing. Swinging is an archaic term. Sometimes we don’t, but were capable of hard swing.

JD: Is your single going to be a hard swinger?

MIKE: No. Our single and LP are in “drerd” so far.

JD: They’re what?

MIKE: It’s a Jewish word, it means they never got off the ground.

JD: Didn’t Dylan write a song for the band?

MIKE: The song is on his album. The song is in “drerd” too. It’s called “Pillbox Hat’. It’s a cute song, but nothing special. We’re so weary of putting out straight blues. We get uptight in sessions. Our organist, Mark, and I are writing songs and they aren’t blues at al!. I guess they’re folk rock. We’re not writing songs for the group and it’s a hang-up. We should have some good stun, but our tastes are too high and we’re all so different from each other.

JD: A little while ago you said the white blues bands aren’t good enough, but don’t you think they could be a commercial success?

MIKE: Sure, they might take over completely, but it will be so messed up and phoney that it won’t even have a chance. It happened before and it’ll happen again. It happened with guys like Elvis Presley who were talented and adapted blues in their own way. Even though he’s very groovy, he ruined the original idiom.

The Butterfield Blues Band | Mary, Mary | (Elektra) 1966

The Stones did it all over again with their ridiculous “Little Red Rooster”. We’re doing it in a way, too. ‘Cause we’re not the real thing, either. The Stones are groovy. They do good rock and roll, they do Chuck Berry songs well. But that cat can’t sing. Listen to Chuck sing and then listen to Mick Jagger – he just can’t sing.

I consider myself as good as most of the contemporary guitarists that I learned from. Paul Butterfield CUTS the guys he learned from. Little Walter and those cats. Paul cuts them. You gotta be THAT good to play this stuff. You’ve got to be as good as the cats that are okaying.

You can’t be a pale imitation. There are things that Muddy Waters did that you just can’t get to. I can’t play them myself. In Chicago those people are professional musicals and they’ll laugh at you. I’m sure Muddy says good things about the Stones because they do his songs. But you got to play just as good as the other cats. Then you know what’s happening.

Most of these British and American guys just listen to records and imitate them. When I say imitating, I mean ludicrous, accented ridiculous, bogus, uncle tom. tasteless, crude imitations of a really nice thing. Now they might get the notes right, but those ludicrous accents just embarrass me. I sang exactly like that for a long time and I still can’t sing. If those words really mean something to you, you’ll give them the right emphasis without copying somebody else.

I wish I could say something good about all those cats. I’ll tell you a good blues singer: Bob Dylan is a fairly good blues singer. On his new album, “Obviously 5 Believers” he does some nice singing.

JD: Do you think the Motown sound will kill blues?

MIKE: No. Because the people that are buying Motown records aren’t the people that are buying blues records. The people that buy blues records – that is, records by B.B. King, who is the biggest name in this country (Ray Charles is not straight blues any more and Muddy sells locally) – B.B. plays the South, New York, the West Coast. He has big crowds, working class people ranging in age from 20 to 60.

They know who B.B. is, he’s a legend. The people who listen to Motown records are kids. But, Motown is too sugar-flavoured. You can dance to it, but those dancers aren’t gonna buy B.B. King.

Negro culture

Actually, I think it’s good for the blues. Anything that gets Negro culture across to the white kids is good for the blues. It might water down the blues, but it will certainly help the income of a lot of artists that aren’t doing too well now. Like their songs will be recorded, and although B.B. is happy where he is, he might get the recognition he deserves.

JD: Have you met any young coloured musicians who want to work in the tradition of B.B. King?

MIKE: I’ve met lots of guys in their 20’s who play straight blues, but not teenagers. Maybe somewhere down south in Stonewall, Mississippi, maybe there’s another young Muddy Waters listening to Jimmy Reed on the radio and picking it out.

I think the music will always be there for people who dig it. It’s not going to die out. Maybe as living conditions get better and the basic causes for the blues get destroyed, it might. But I don’t think so. That music is going to move people always.

JD: How do you find Negroes re-act to your music?

MIKE: We’ve had very good reaction, because Negroes seem proud that we want to learn about their culture. Also, their standards are higher than ours. Shuck that will pass with white audiences, will be considered shuck by Negro audiences. I’ve had great experiences in cutting contests with other guitar players, sitting in with bands and freaking the house out jams for hours.

But we had a disastrous experience playing the “It Club” in L.A. It was just empty. That was the only disaster. But Paul Butterfield played for a whole year at an all Negro club. He did very well at Sylvio’s where Howlin’ Wolf plays.

JD: Do you think the band will ever be interested in electronic music?

The Butterfield Blues Band | Mary, Mary | (Elektra) 1966

MIKE: I’m already into it. But the way-out stuff I don’t know. I don’t use echo chambers and fuzztones and machines and stuff. It’s like learning to play a whole new instrument. You’ve got to learn how to play electricity.

Maybe I will someday. It’s too much right now. I’m still learning how to play music. Electric music is learning how to play the amplifiers too and the other equipment, like colours, strobe lights. It’s all very groovy, good way to make money and blah, blah, but we can still play music for a while.

JD: Are you serious?

MIKE: It’s the music of the future. It doesn’t have to be degenerating. It’s just too much work to do it now. I’d have to learn all new techniques.

JD: Who are some of the groups that you like?

MIKE: I could name good groups and bad groups. Groups that I like are: The Blues Project, The Fuggs, Mama’s & Papa’s, the Lovin’ Spoonful, The Mothers, The MFQ, the Byrds, the Beatles, very, very much. I think they’re geniuses. They’re electric musicians of the highest sort, and I like Bobby Dylan, Bobby Goldsboro. Dylan’s guitar player, Roby Robertson, is good, too. And that’s about it in the pop scene.

I could tell you more people I abhor, like Lesley Gore and Nancy Sinatra and all the people of their ilk. I’m amused by Herman. He’s getting better though, much more bluesy as he gets older.

JD: What kind of equipment do you use?

Gibson Les Paul

MIKE: I use a Gibson Les Paul guitar. It’s about a 1958 or 59 model. It’s gold and it’s got 2 pick-ups, a toggle switch, 4 controls. I use a Fender Twin Reverb amplifier, I put the volume on 10, the treble on 10, the middle on 5, no bass, and the reverb on 2. Lately at the Go Go I’ve been putting the volume on 5.

JD: Being from Chicago, do you like Nelson Algren’s books and stories?

MIKE: That’s one of my favourite writers in the whole world.

JD: Have you ever met him?

MIKE: No. I never have. I think he’s a cat that would really understand the blues and enjoy it. James Agee is another cat who might have understood the blues.

JD: Living in Chicago, are you at all aware of the romance of that city?

MIKE: No. I’m completely unaware of it. I lived in the suburbs, from a fairly wealthy Jewish home. I’m unaware of Chicago. I like it. It’s pretty slummy. I’m aware of a lot of the blues legends there.

The famous passing of Sonny Boy Williamson No. 1. His fatal stabbing. I heard it from five different people who all swore they were with him the night he died. How they brought him home, propped him up in the door, rang the bell as his inert, bleeding body tumbled in. That world I’m very aware of.

(Hit Parader, 01/67)