July 28: Play the Blues

Mike Bloomfield, the whiz-kid blues guitarist who was best known for his work with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, was born in Chicago on this date in 1943. He joined the Butterfield band in 1964 (which featured another fine guitarist, Elvin Bishop) and immediately gained acclaim for how he mixed traditional electric blues riffs with elements of jazz, rock and even Indian raga (most impressively on the title track of the band’s East-West album). Bloomfield was also Bob Dylan’s guitarist of choice when Dylan went electric, and was backing him at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 during Dylan’s controversial and much-storied first electric set. Bloomfield was a founder of Electric Flag, which added horns to rock music, and created the Super Session jam album with Al Kooper and Stephen Sills in 1968. His innovative career was cut short by heroin addiction and a drug overdose that took his life in 1981.

“Black people suffer externally in this country. Jewish people suffer internally. The suffering’s the fulcrum for the blues.”
—Mike Bloomfield a

Watch a short clip of Mike Bloomfield playing with the Paul Butterfield Blues Bank at Newport Folk Festival, 1966