Michael Bloomfield - Biography
By J Poet
Mike Bloomfield was one of the leading white blues guitar players of the 1960s, responsible for the success of landmark albums like The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (1963 Elektra), East West (1965 Elektra), Highway 61 Revisited (1965 Columbia), The Electric Flag’s Long Time Comin’ (1968 Columbia), and Supersession (1968 Columbia.) After his glory years, roughly 1964-1969, Bloomfield struggled with creative, personal and drug problems. He died in 1981 of a drug overdose, only 37 years old.
Like the blues song says, Bloomfield was born in Chicago in 1943, and considered himself a juvenile delinquent and later a beatnik and bohemian. He got a guitar at age 13, at first influenced by the rockabilly sound of Scotty Moore, Elvis Presley’s guitar player. By 14 he’d discovered Chicago’s South Side blues scene and was jamming with Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, and Howling Wolf. The black community welcomed this skinny white guitar wiz and he met other young white boys also into the blues including Paul Butterfield, Nick Gravenites, Charlie Musselwhite, and Elvin Bishop. After he finished high school he managed The Fickle Pickle, a folk club, but he often booked acoustic bluesmen like with Sleepy John Estes and Yank Rachell. He was also playing with several bands, including his own short-lived combo with Charlie Musselwhite on harp. John Hammond, the legendary Columbia A&R man who signed Billie Holiday and Bob Dylan heard Bloomfield and cut an album with his band, but the label never released it.
In 1965 he joined The Paul Butterfield Blues band for their two greatest albums The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (1963 Elektra) and East West (1965 Elektra). The title track, “East West,” was a 13 minute plus psychedelic blues raga composed by Bloomfield and keyboard man Nick Gravanites and still stands one of the finest moments of 60s mind blowing music making. Dylan asked Bloomfield to join the controversial electric band he was taking to the Newport Folk Festival and took him into the studio to play lead guitar on Highway 61 Revisited (1965 Columbia.)
In 1967 Bloomfield and Gravanites quit the Butterfield Band and created The Electric Flag with Barry Goldberg, Harvey Brooks and Buddy Miles. They debuted at The Monterey Pop Festival in 1976 and cut Long Time Comin’ (1968 Columbia.) The combination of big egos and bad drug problems led Bloomfield to quit the band after one album. He teamed with Al Kooper for Supersession (1968 Columbia) but bailed out halfway through the recording, so Kooper brought in Steve Stills to play on the second half of the album. Nonetheless, the work Bloomfield put on wax for Supersession stands as some of his greatest recorded music. The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper (1968 Columbia) was the follow up, but lacked the fire of the original sessions. Dissillusioned, Bloomfield moved to San Francisco and “retired,” although he toured and recoded sporadically with various musicians as Bloomfield And Friends. Notable sessions from the 70s include Triumvirate (1973 Columbia) with John Hammond, Jr. and Dr. John, Live at the Old Waldorf (1998 Columbia) a sizzling 1977 club date never released while Bloomfield was alive, If You Love These Blues, Play 'Em As You Please (1976 Guitar Player Magazine), an instructional album for new players that contains fine acoustic guitar work and actually got a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Blues Album, and three now hard to find sets for John Fahey’s Takoma label Analine (1977 Takoma), Michael Bloomfield (1978 Takoma) and Between a Hard Place and the Ground (1979 Takoma).
In 1980 Bloomfield toured Italy with guitarist Woody Harris and cellist Maggie Edmondson and made the Live in Italy (1980 Mama Barley.) In February of 1981, Bloomfield was found dead in his car of a drug overdose.
