Darkness and Light: the tale of Mike Bloomfield
If you look at any list of rock music’s greatest guitarists, you’re sure to find the same few names near the top each time. Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton and even Brian May or Slash. While they are all undoubtedly great guitar players, there is one who never seems to make the lists but who could run rings around the lot of them.
Michael Bloomfield, who made a name for himself by working with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Bob Dylan, The Electric Flag, Al Kooper, and Muddy Waters, was one of the best and most talented musicians to ever pick up a guitar. But despite his stellar career, he never seems to make the conversation in rock’s canonised list of greatest guitarists.
Born in Chicago in 1943, Butterfield developed an appreciation for the blues early on, regularly sneaking out to the city’s south side clubs to see performances by legendary bluesmen like Muddy Waters or Josh White. At first, he could only watch on and listen in through the windows of the clubs, but he soon talked his way inside and eventually made his way onto the stage, sitting in with his hero Muddy Waters and other greats such as John Estes, Big Joe Williamson and the Howlin’ Wolf.
Keen to share his love and appreciation of the blues, Bloomfield started running a weekly blues showcase at the Fickle Pickle Club on Chicago’s south side. He quickly built up such a reputation for the prowess of his playing that, before long, he outgrew the venue. As too many more Chicagoans wanted to come and see his prodigal talent than could fit inside the club, he took up residencies at both the larger Magoo’s and Big John’s.
During his time playing at Big John’s, Bloomfield got himself signed to not one but two major labels. He’d caught the attention of the legendary Columbia Records A&R man John Hammond, who had discovered Billie Holliday, Count Basie, and Bob Dylan, among others, and was soon signed to the label. The sessions he recorded with Columbia didn’t result in an album, though, and while he remained signed to them, his work went unreleased.
Back at Big John’s, Bloomfield was spotted by another talent scout. On a night when he had Paul Butterfield sitting in on harmonica, the duo impressed Elektra Records producer Paul A Rothchild. Convincing Bloomfield to join the Paul Butterfield Blues Band was not a foregone conclusion, though – with both performers seeing themselves as bandleaders – but he did join, and the group were signed to Elektra. Their first release, Born in Chicago, became an underground hit for the group, but it was their self-titled debut album that earned the group a wider audience.
Giving the world outside Chicago its first taste of his exciting playing style, Bloomfield lights up songs like ‘Shake Your Money Maker’ with a blistering performance, elevating the track from a jumping blues into a scorching piece of rock and roll. His guitar dominates the album, as much a lead instrument on it as any vocal or harmonica line.
His playing was revolutionary. Putting twists on the stock phrases and licks he’d learned from playing with the greats, Bloomfield took his playing in directions other guitarists wouldn’t reach for years. He found a fine balance between playing many notes and not overplaying any of them. He would take a familiar blues guitar part and explode it, exploring every way to play a phrase and breaking new ground all the time.
When Bob Dylan decided to plug in and play a more electric form of blues music himself, there was only one man who he wanted to play guitar with him. “He could outplay anybody, even at that point,” Dylan said in the 2005 Martin Scorsese film No Direction Home. “When it was time to bring in a guitar player on my record, I couldn’t think of anybody but him. I mean, he was just the best guitar player I ever heard”.
With both acts booked at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, after impressing with their own set, several members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band would back Bob Dylan on four songs the night he famously “went electric”. Louder than anything the crowd had heard before, Mike Bloomfield’s guitar work that night is legendary: raucous, electrifying, intimidating and almost frightening at times. Bloomfield would later join Dylan in the studio on songs such as ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and ‘Tombstone Blues’.
But while his career seemed to be taking off, Bloomfield was weary about his place in the scene. It was becoming a crowded field for blues guitarists at that time, many of whom he had himself inspired. However, while he could outplay any of them, Bloomfield often shied away from opportunities to test himself against the other guitar heroes of his time.
Burnt out by their tough touring schedule, Bloomfield quit the Butterfield Band and looked to set up a group of his own. With The Electric Flag, he added elements of soul and R&B to his blues-based sound, but his deepening drug habit and friction among the group caused him to walk out on the band he had started after only one album.
He also later walked out on the recordings that became Super Session. Originally conceived by Al Kooper as a vehicle to show off Bloomfields scintillating playing, which he believed had never been satisfactorily captured in the studio, the guitarist disappeared from the session after just one day. Citing his struggles with both addiction and insomnia for the walk-out, and despite his increasingly erratic and unreliable behaviour, Bloomfield still lit up the first side of the album with his playing.
In 1969, he devised a concept for an album that would see him reunite with Muddy Waters and Paul Butterfield. Pairing the two musical sons with the blues fathers, the album contains some of Bloomfield’s finest work, but once again, he lost his confidence at the session and abandoned the project halfway through.
His struggles with drugs, self-confidence and insomnia continued into the early 1970s. Bloomfield suffered multiple overdoses and had to be resuscitated by friends on several occasions. His habit began to affect not only his work but also his home life, leading to the deterioration of his marriage to childhood sweetheart Susan Smith. Though he continued to record and perform sporadically throughout the decade, he would never return to the profile that he had had in the mid-1960s. Bloomfield even supplemented his meagre income by recording soundtracks for the fledgling pornographic movie market, as well as for small-circulation blues-guitar tutorial albums.
Having eventually overcome his life-long drug habit in the early ’80s, Bloomfield was tragically found dead in his car from an accidental overdose and drug poisoning. He was only 37 years old.
Just a few short months before his death, though, Bloomfield had been brought back into the spotlight one last time by Bob Dylan. Calling his old friend to the stage, the pair joined forces for the last time on a joyous rendition of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’.
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