Product Code Database
Michael Bernard Bloomfield (July 28, 1943 – February 15, 1981) was an American blues guitarist and composer. Born in Chicago, he became one of the first popular music stars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, as he rarely sang before 1969. Respected for his guitar playing, Bloomfield knew and played with many of Chicago's blues musicians before achieving his own fame and was instrumental in popularizing blues music in the mid-1960s. In 1965, he played on Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited, including the single "Like a Rolling Stone", and performed with Dylan at that year's Newport Folk Festival.
Bloomfield was ranked No. 22 on Rolling Stone's list of "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2003 and No. 42 by the same magazine in 2011. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2012 and, as a member of the Paul Butterfield, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.
Bloomfield's family lived in various locations around Chicago before settling at 424 West Melrose Street on the North Side. When he was twelve his family moved to suburban Glencoe, where he attended New Trier High School for two years. During this time, he began playing in local bands, then put together one called the Hurricanes, named after Ohio rock band Johnny and the Hurricanes. New Trier expelled Bloomfield after his band performed a raucous rock and roll song at a 1959 school gathering. He attended Cornwall Academy in Massachusetts for one year and then returned to Chicago, where he spent his last year of education at a local Central YMCA High School.
Bloomfield had attended a 1957 Chicago performance by blues singer Josh White, and began spending time in Chicago's South Side blues clubs and playing guitar with such black bluesmen as Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rachell, and Little Brother Montgomery. He first sat in with a black blues band in 1959, when he performed with Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson at a Chicago club called the Place. He performed with Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, and many other Chicago blues performers during the early 1960s. In 1962 he married Susan Smith.
Writing in 2001, keyboardist, songwriter and record producer Al Kooper said:
Bloomfield had a certain innate talent for playing the guitar that was instantly obvious to his mentors. They knew this was not just another white boy; this was someone who truly understood what the blues were all about. Among his early supporters were B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan and Buddy Guy. Michael used to say, "It's a natural. Black people suffer externally in this country. Jewish people suffer internally. The suffering's the mutual fulcrum for the blues."
Bloomfield recorded a few sessions for Columbia in 1964 that remained unreleased until after his death. In early 1965 he joined the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which included Elvin Bishop and keyboardist Mark Naftalin, along with drummer Sam Lay and bassist Jerome Arnold, who had previously worked in Howlin' Wolf's band. Elektra Records producer Paul Rothchild recorded the band in spring 1965, but the majority of the tracks were not released until the 1990s. However, one of the tracks Rothchild recorded during his first pass at producing the group, a Nick Gravenites song titled "Born in Chicago", was included on the Elektra album Folksong '65, which sold two hundred thousand copies when it was released in September 1965. "Born in Chicago" became an underground hit for the Butterfield Band. Their debut album, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, was recorded in September and released the following month.
In June 1965, Bloomfield had recorded with Bob Dylan, whom he had met in 1963 at a Chicago club called the Bear. The club was bankrolled by future Dylan and Butterfield manager Albert Grossman, who would play a major part in Bloomfield's career. Bloomfield's Telecaster guitar licks were featured on Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone", a single produced by Columbia Record's Tom Wilson. Bloomfield would play on most of the tracks on Dylan's 1965 Highway 61 Revisited album, and he appeared onstage with Dylan in July at the Newport Folk Festival, where Dylan used Bloomfield and the Butterfield Band—minus Paul Butterfield—along with keyboardists Al Kooper and Barry Goldberg. The show marked Dylan's first use of an electric band in a live performance, and Bloomfield's playing on the songwriter's "Maggie's Farm" is considered a landmark electric-guitar performance. After the Newport Folk Festival ended, Bloomfield helped Dylan complete the sessions for Highway 61 Revisited, and Dylan asked Bloomfield to join his touring band. Bloomfield demurred, preferring to continue playing with the Butterfield Band.
When Sam Lay fell ill after a series of dates in November 1965, the Butterfield Band brought Chicago-born drummer Billy Davenport into the group. During the first part of 1966, the band played in California, and they recorded their second album, East-West, that summer. The record's title track found the band exploring Modal jazz music, and it was based upon a song Gravenites and Bloomfield had been playing since 1965, "It's About Time".
Bloomfield played on recording sessions between 1965 and 1967. His guitar playing had a huge impact on San Francisco Bay Area musicians after playing with the Butterfield band at Bill Graham's Fillmore in March 1966, San Francisco's Avalon Ballroom and also in the Los Angeles area due to the storied two-week run at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach. He became a mentor and inspiration for many guitarists, especially in the SF Bay Area. He did a 1965 date with Peter, Paul and Mary that resulted in a song called "The King of Names", and he recorded in 1966 with pop group Chicago Loop, whose "When She Wants Good Lovin' (My Baby Comes to Me)" made Billboard Magazine's chart that year. He also played guitar on recordings by Chuck Berry, Mitch Ryder and James Cotton.
The Electric Flag debuted at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and issued an album, A Long Time Comin', in April 1968 on Columbia Records. Critics complimented the group's distinctive, intriguing sound but found the record itself somewhat uneven. By that time, however, the band was already disintegrating, with rivalries between members, shortsighted management, and heroin abuse all taking their toll. Shortly after the release of that album, Bloomfield left the band, with Gravenites, Goldberg, and bassist Harvey Brooks following.
"Why not do an entire jam album together?" Kooper remembered in 1998, writing the booklet notes for the Bloomfield anthology . "At the time, most jazz albums were made using this modus operandi: pick a leader or two co-leaders, hire appropriate sidemen, pick some tunes, make some up and record an entire album on the fly in one or two days. Why not try and legitimize rock by adhering to these standards? In addition, as a fan, I was dissatisfied with Bloomfield's recorded studio output up until then. It seemed that his studio work was inhibited and reined in, compared to his incendiary live performances. Could I put him in a studio setting where he could feel free to just burn like he did in live performances?"
The result was Super Session, a jam album that spotlighted Bloomfield's guitar skills on one side. Bloomfield, who suffered from insomnia, left the sessions after the first day. Guitarist Stephen Stills completed the album with Kooper. It received excellent reviews and became the best-selling album of Bloomfield's career. Its success led to a live sequel, The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper, recorded over three nights at Fillmore West in September 1968.
During 1970 Bloomfield gave up playing because of his heroin addiction:
He recorded his second solo album, Try It Before You Buy It, in 1973. Columbia rejected it; the complete version of the record would not appear until 1990. Also in 1973, he cut Triumvirate with Dr. John and guitarist and singer John Hammond Jr. In 1973 he teamed up with Mark Naftalin, at a studio in Sausalito, to produce a one-off live album, Live at the Record Plant 1973. In 1974, he rejoined the Electric Flag for an album titled The Band Kept Playing. In 1975 he recorded an album with the group KGB. The group's name is an acronym of the initials of singer and songwriter Ray Kennedy, Barry Goldberg and Bloomfield. The band also included Ric Grech and drummer Carmine Appice. Grech and Bloomfield quit shortly after its release. As the record hit stores in 1976, Bloomfield told journalists that the group had been an ill-conceived moneymaking project. The album was not well received by critics, but it did contain the standout track "Sail On, Sailor". Its authorship was credited to "Wilson-Kennedy", and had a bluesy, darker feel, along with Ray Kennedy's original cocaine-related lyrics. In the same year, he performed with John Cale on Cale's soundtrack for the film Caged Heat. In 1976 he recorded an instructional album for guitarists, If You Love These Blues, Play 'Em as You Please, which was financed through Guitar Player magazine.
In the 1970s Bloomfield played in local San Francisco Bay area clubs, including the Keystone Korner, and sat in with other bands. In 1977, Bloomfield was selected by Andy Warhol to do the soundtrack for the pop artist's last film, Andy Warhol's Bad (also known as BAD). An unreleased single, "Andy's Bad", was also produced for the project. During 1979–1981 he performed often with the King Perkoff Band, sometimes introducing them as the "Michael Bloomfield and Friends" outfit. Bloomfield recorded "Hustlin' Queen", written by John Isabeau and Perkoff in 1979. He toured Italy and Sweden with guitarist Woody Harris and cellist Maggie Edmondson in the summer of 1980. He sat in with Bob Dylan at San Francisco's Warfield Theatre on November 15, 1980. Bloomfield played on Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" and "The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar". He continued to play live dates, with his performance at San Francisco State College on February 7, 1981, being his penultimate appearance. His final performance was at Mission Ranch, Carmel, CA, approximately 48 hours before his death.
Bloomfield came from a wealthy family, and received annual income from a trust created by his paternal grandfather, which gave him $50,000 each year.
Bloomfield originally used a Fender Telecaster, though he had also used a Fender Duo-Sonic while recording for Columbia following his 1964 signing to the label. During his tenure with the Butterfield Blues Band, he used that Telecaster on the first Butterfield album and on their earliest tours in the fall of 1965. By November he had swapped that guitar for International Submarine Band guitarist John Nuese’s 1954 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop, acquired in Boston and used for some of the East-West sessions.
In 1967, Bloomfield swapped the Goldtop for guitar repairman/musician Dan Erlewine's 1959 Les Paul Standard and $100. The Standard had proven unpopular in the late 1950s because it was deemed too heavy and expensive by rock and roll guitarists. Gibson discontinued manufacturing the model in 1960. Bloomfield used the Standard in the Electric Flag and on the Super Session album and concerts. He later switched between the it and the Telecaster, but his use of the Les Paul inspired other guitarists to use the model and spurred Gibson to reintroduce the Standard in 1968.
Bloomfield eventually lost the guitar in Canada when a club owner kept two he had left behind as partial compensation after Bloomfield cut short a round of appearances. He had been booked at the Cave in Vancouver, from Tue. Nov. 12th, 1974, for five days, until Sat. the 16th. The band played the first night but the next day Bloomfield boarded a plane and flew home to San Francisco with virtually no notice to the club, hotel, or band members; his friend Mark Naftalin found a note on a torn piece of paper in the hotel room that read, "bye bye, sorry". Wolkin and Keenom's biography
Unlike contemporaries such as Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck, Bloomfield rarely experimented with feedback and distortion, preferring a loud yet clean, almost chiming sound, with a healthy amount of reverb and vibrato; this approach would strongly influence Jerry Garcia, who segued from a career in acoustic-based music to electric rock at the height of the Butterfield Band's influence in 1965. One of his amplifiers of choice was a 1965 Fender Twin Reverb. His solos, like those of most blues guitarists, were based in the minor pentatonic scale and the blues scale. However, he liberally used chromatic notes within the pentatonic framework, and integrated Indian and Eastern influences in his solos.
Gibson has since released a Michael Bloomfield Les Paul, replicating his 1959 Standard—in recognition of his impact on the electric blues, his role in the revived production of the guitar, and his influence on many other guitarists. Because the actual guitar had been unaccounted for so many years, Gibson relied on hundreds of photographs provided by Bloomfield's family to reproduce it. The model comes in two configurations—a Vintage Original Specifications (VOS), modified by Bloomfield's mismatched volume and tone control knobs, missing toggle switch cover, and kidney-shaped tuners replacing the Gibson original, and a faithful process-aged reproduction of the guitar as it was when Bloomfield last played it, complete with the finish smudge below the bridge and various nicks and smudges elsewhere on the body.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Me and Big Joe by Michael Bloomfield (1980)
|
|
