The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

Performer: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Producer: Paul A. Rothchild
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: Personnel: Paul Butterfield (vocals, harmonica); Sam Lay (vocals, drums); Elvin Bishop (guitar); Mike Bloomfield (slide guitar); Jerome Arnold (bass); Mark Naftalin (organ). Includes liner notes by Pete Welding. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band: Michael Bloomfield. Even after his death, Paul Butterfield's music didn't receive the accolades that were so deserved. Outputting styles adopted from Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters among other blues greats, Butterfield became one of the first white singers to rekindle blues music through the course of the mid-'60s. His debut album, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, saw him teaming up with guitarists Elvin Bishop and Mike Bloomfield, with Jerome Arnold on bass, Sam Lay on drums, and Mark Naftalin playing organ. The result was a wonderfully messy and boisterous display of American-styled blues, with intensity and pure passion derived from every bent note. In front of all these instruments is Butterfield's harmonica, beautifully dictating a mood and a genuine feel that is no longer existent, even in today's blues music. Each song captures the essence of Chicago blues in a different way, from the back-alley feel of "Born in Chicago" to the melting ease of Willie Dixon's "Mellow Down Easy" to the authentic devotion that emanates from Bishop and Butterfield's "Our Love Is Drifting." "Shake Your Money Maker," "Blues With a Feeling," and "I Got My Mojo Working" (with Lay on vocals) are all equally moving pieces performed with a raw adoration for blues music. Best of all, the music that pours from this album is unfiltered...blared, clamored, and let loose, like blues music is supposed to be released. A year later, 1966's East West carried on with the same type of brash blues sound partnered with a jazzier feel, giving greater to attention to Bishop's and Bloomfield's instrumental talents. ~ Mike DeGagne The '60s Blues Revival begins here. Calling this album influential is an understatement akin to calling the Grand Canyon a rut; suffice to say that an entire generation of musicians (mostly young and white) heard this and had their lives changed forever. In fact, for at least a year after the album's release in 1965, it was impossible to walk down the hall of any college dorm in America without hearing one of the songs here echoing from somebody's room. Heard today, the thing still packs a wallop. Butterfield's harmonica and vocals are utterly idiomatic, without a hint of minstrelsy. Michael Bloomfield's lead guitar is stinging and eloquent, and the rhythm section, on loan from Howling Wolf, swings like mad. The only fly in the ointment is the fairly primitive production, which often makes Mark Naftalin's keyboards sound like a horde of angry bees, but that's a small criticism in the face of blues playing as passionate and accomplished as this. A genuine classic.

Q (p.126) - 3 stars out of 5 - "[H]e sang and played the blues like a natural..."

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