Témoignages, interview, articles divers (anglais)

[Bloomers]

Interview du Butterfield Blues Band pour le magazine Crawdaddy 1966



The Butterfield Blues Band was formed in Chicago in 1964 and has developed into one of the finest small bands in the country in any field. The present members are: Paul Butterfield, harmonica and vocal; Mike Bloomfield, guitar; Elvin Bishop, guitar; Jerome Arnold, bass; Mark Naftalin, organ and piano; and Billy Davenport, drums. This interview, which concentrates on the more vocal members of the band, was recorded June 24, 1966, at Cambridge’s Club 47; Daniel Alexander; Pamela Matz, transcriber; Paul Williams, interviewer and editor. The assistance of Mark Dorenson, road manager for the Butterfield Band, was extremely valuable in conducting the interview.

Crawdaddy!: The question is, basically, what do you call yourself now? Electric blues? Do you think you’re in some sort of bag?

Mike Bloomfield: We used to be in what you would call an exclusively Chicago blues thing, but we’ve come out of it in the last few months and we’re gradually working into the establishment of possibly a new idiom. Who knows?

Crawdaddy!: You’re not moving in any specific direction, it’s just what you want to do now?

Bloomfield: It’s just what’s coming out of us.

Bloomfield: Everybody in the group’s got a different background, a different thing. And everybody also, with the different backgrounds, has a very much mutual background due to the heterogeneous nature of our organization—you know, we get out own uniquely musical blend on certain numbers. And I’ll say this, the level of musicianship of our group is higher than almost any group of this nature that I’ve heard in the country. Almost any rock band that I’ve heard. Paul’s the best in his field; there’s not a person living the world today that can cut him.

Crawdaddy!: What is your personal background? I know you had a contract with Columbia for a while...

Bloomfield: I’ve been playing professional rock ‘n’ roll since I was 15.

Crawdaddy!: What sort of stuff were you doing before you got together with the band?

Bloomfield: Working with a guy named Nick Gravenites, a band with him.

Crawdaddy!: You had a rock band then?

Bloomfield: Well, no, it was a band sort of like this, but not nearly as tight or as good. But it was mostly Nick’s tunes, he’s a songwriter.

Crawdaddy!: What’s he doing now?

Bloomfield: He’s running a club in Chicago. Nick Gravenites in Chicago is one of the greatest singers and composers in the folk idiom, in the blues idiom, in the last five or 10 years. And B. B. King is one of the greatest guitarists who ever lived, and more people should listen to B. B. King’s records and his band work and his guitar playing, ‘cause he’s one of the greatest ones of all. Percy Mayfield too

Crawdaddy!: About this new electric blues business…

Bloomfield: The blues has been electric since the ‘40s. Most blues guitar players, even the old country cats, have electric guitars. They all do. They record for Folkways and Prestige without electric guitars, but they have them. Electric is ethnic, man, electric is where it’s at, it’s old as can be... and I think electric is really the music of the future. You’ll find that all music will be amplified one day. It’s a new type of musicianship. It’s a musicianship of this generation.

Crawdaddy!: Is the band pretty much open to doing any kind of music?

Bloomfield: No, different cats are purists, different cats simply refuse to do certain kinds of music. There’s music that I just can’t get interested in. We have our hang-ups, but there’s tunes we agree upon. Besides, we play blues, blues-based music, best.

Crawdaddy!: A number of people are interested in a particular style of yours, the slide guitar.

Bloomfield: I don’t play slide but very seldom.

Crawdaddy!: Yeah, I noticed you did more earlier this year than you do now.

Bloomfield: Right, because my main style is playing the slide guitar with my fingers, not using the slide, you know, doing it by tremeloing your fingers. Slide guitar was put on the record. It’s bottleneck. I don’t use it much, just for certain tunes, and for certain effects which I can get much clearer with my fingers than I can with a slide.

Crawdaddy!: Are you familiar with other people who are playing this sort of electric guitar?

Bloomfield: The masters I’m familiar with: Elmore James and Muddy Waters. And I’m familiar with a few other cats in the country who play guitar in my style and are my equal or better—Harvey Mandel in Chicago; Eliot Ingberton [spelling uncertain] in Los Angeles; a very good cat, Robbie Robertson, from Canada, who plays with Bob Dylan; and uh, there’s me; and a cat named John DeWeiss who isn’t quite where those other cats are, but he’s very good. He’s right here from Boston. And Jeff Beck, who’s one of the finest modern blues guitar players strictly in the blues idiom that I’ve ever met in my life. It’s unfortunate that he doesn’t play that way on the Yardbird records. But I’ve had the privilege, the stone privilege of hearing that dude play blues. He’s number one out of sight, a great guitar player. And there’s a guy named Alexis Korner that’s very good; he’s been around for many years in England.

Crawdaddy!: What do you think of your new album?

Bloomfield: Well, there’s one very long piece that I like. And Elvin sings a tune I’m very fond of on the album. I like it, it’s more modern than our other album, but I still don’t think it’s as good as us in person. And I thought that first album was one of the poorest production jobs, in terms of sound… but it was my fault, too, ‘cause I was there at the editing and I didn’t take care of business as well as I should have.

Crawdaddy!: What’s your opinion of the Elektra recording studios?

Bloomfield: I don’t think Elektra is as good as you’ll find. I don’t think Elektra holds a candle to Motown, the Motown sound. The Beach Boys and the Beatles on Capitol, their sound is far superior to Elektra’s [editor’s note: neither group, however, has ever actually recorded in Capitol’s studios].

les interventions du reste du groupes sont ici : http://crawdaddy.wolfgangsvault.com/Article.aspx?id=4524&page=1&cpage=1

[Bloomers]

Carlos Santana interview 2008
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/21004540/secrets_of_the_guitar_heroes_carlos_santana
As a teenager in San Francisco, you went to many early Fillmore shows. Who were some of the guitarists you first saw there?

Carlos Santana : The same people Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were into — Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Freddie King and Albert King — and Michael Bloomfield and [Fleetwood Mac's] Peter Green. Even before Jimi Hendrix came out in '67, Bloomfield was hitting it hard with Paul Butterfield's band on things like East-West. It was a different kind of blues, even for white people. When you closed your eyes, it did not sound white.

[Bloomers]

http://www.blueswalker.com/mycustompage0009.htm
Derrick Big Walker's souvenirs...

[Bloomers]

A ne pas manquer !

Michael Bloomfield: An American Guitarist

His Life and Legacy, Parts 1-4

*PART I • THE EARLY YEARS
1. Introduction
2. Beginnings: Allen Bloomfield / “Roy’s Blues”
3. Meeting Mike: Norman Dayron / “Bullet Rag”
4. John Hammond: Norman Dayron / The Group /
“I’ve Got You in the Palm of My Hand”
5. Butterfield: Mark Naftalin / “Nut Popper #1” / “Thank You Mr. Poobah”
6. Dylan: Michael on Bob Dylan / “It Takes a Train to Laugh”
7. Newport: “Born in Chicago” / “Like a Rolling Stone”
8. Joining Butter: “I’ve Got a Mind to Give Up Living”

*PART II • BUTTERFIELD & THE FLAG
1. Introduction
2. Creating East-West: Mark Naftalin / “East-West”
3. Michael on East-West: Michael Bloomfield / Toby Byron
4. San Francisco: Toby Byron / “Willow Tree”
5. Leaving Butterfield: Forming the Electric Flag
6. The Flag: Norman Dayron / “Peter’s Trip”
7. Monterey: Norman Dayron / “The Night Time Is the Right Time” / Toby Byron
8. A Long Time Comin’: Toby Byron / “Texas”

*PART III • GUITAR GOD NO MORE
1. Introduction
2. Another Country: “Another Country”
3. Super Session: Toby Byron / “Albert’s Shuffle”
4. Leaving the Flag: Toby Byron / Michael Bloomfield
5. Fillmore: Forming & Friends / “Born in Chicago”
6. Fathers & Sons: “Blow Wind Blow” / “The Ones I Loved Are Gone”
7. Getting Rusty: Michael Bloomfield / Mark Naftalin
8. MB & Friends: “Sweet Little Angel”

*PART IV • THE LAST YEARS

1. Introduction
2. Side Projects: Triumvirate / Flag Reunion
3. Try It Before You Buy It: Toby Byron / “When It All Comes Down”
4. Duets: Mark Naftalin / “At the Cross”
5. If You Love These Blues: Michael Bloomfield / “Death in My Family” /
“Thrift Shop Rag”
6. Takoma Sessions: Norman Dayron / “Mr. Johnson & Mr. Dunn”
7. Old Waldorf: Michael Bloomfield / Norman Dayron / “Kid Man Blues”
8. Acoustic Playing: “I’m Glad I’m Jewish” / “Greatest Gifts from Heaven”
9. Bloomfield / Harris: “Have Thine Own Way”
10. Dylan Calls: “Like a Rolling Stone”
11. Farewell: “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” / Allen Bloomfield

la story de Mike est à downloader integralement avec la bénédiction de Allen Bloomfield et Norman Dayron !!!

http://www.mikebloomfieldamericanmusic.com/mbshow.htm

n'hésitez pas

[Bluesboy]

Merci beaucoup pour ce lien !

[Bloomers]

Merci beaucoup pour ce lien !

bonne écoute !
n'oublie pas de donner tes impressions...

[Bloomers]

Your Mike Bloomfield experience!
http://forums.wolfgangsvault.com/forums/thread/10869.aspx

témoignages exclusifs de certains concerts de Bloomfield par ceux qui les ont vécus !

[Bloomers]

http://www.jannswenner.com/Archives/Mike_Bloomfield_Part1.aspx

interview rolling stone 6 avril 1968

[Ayler]

Il préfère God au Stones !

[Ayler]

La suite :

http://www.jannswenner.com/Archives/Mike_Bloomfield_Part2.aspx

Plus admiratif de Buddy Miles que Purple Jim l'ami Bloomfield !

[Bloomers]

La suite :

http://www.jannswenner.com/Archives/Mike_Bloomfield_Part2.aspx

Plus admiratif de Buddy Miles que Purple Jim l'ami Bloomfield !

Bloomfield s'entendait encore bien avec Buddy...en quelques mois tout va se dégrader


question à 0,50 euro...devinez qui fut interviewé le mois suivant ???

- réponse

[Bloomers]

May 2009

Rolling Stone Interview - Bob Dylan's America by Douglas Brinkley

I ask whether, as a bandleader, Dylan had ever played a set with the perfect guitarist. Dylan jumps at the opportunity to answer rather reminiscently. "The guy that I always miss, and I think he'd still be around if he stayed with me, actually, was Mike Bloomfield," Dylan says of his collaborator on Highway 61 Revisited (who also famously played electric guitar with him at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965). "He could just flat-out play. He had so much soul. And he knew all the styles, and he could play them so incredibly well. He was an expert player and a real prodigy, too. Started playing early. But then again a lot of good guitarists have played with me. Freddy Tackett, Steve Ripley - Mick Taylor played with me for a minute." Full of memory lane, Dylan goes on to tell a story about first meeting Bloomfield in Chicago at a headhunt on the South Side. A social misfit, Bloomfield was the rare white guitarist who had recorded with the likes of Sleepy John Estes and Big Joe Williams. "He could play like Willie Brown or Charlie Patton," Dylan says. "He could play like Robert Johnson way back then in the Sixties. The only other guy who could do that in those days was Brian Jones, who played in the Rolling Stones. He could also do the same thing. Fingerpicking rhythms that hardly anyone could do. Those are the only two guys I've ever met who could...from back then...the only two guys who could play the pure style of country blues authentically."

[Bloomers]

“Michael had the most amazing ear that I’ve ever seen – he could hear the death of a sparrow 100 miles away,” says Dayron. “He never cared about speakers, mics, hi-fi or any of that – he could hear everything you needed out of the cheapest transistor radio and play whatever he needed on whatever axe he could find.”

For that reason, Dayron is amused by the ongoing interest “about the instruments he played,” he says. “Michael basically didn’t give a shit. He said, ‘It’s all in the hands – bare meat on steel strings’.”

> http://www.mikebloomfieldamericanmusic.com/dayron.htm
norman Dayron on Recording Bloomfield

[Chino]

Rory Gallagher à propos de Mike Bloomfield:

"I was a Hendrix fan and a Bloomfield fan. I met Mike once – we did a TV show, Midnight Special, when the Electric Flag reformed. And he was a very nice, modest guy, and a beautiful player. A really soulful player.

I could see him in a situation with Hendrix where he wouldn’t go into that trickery, really. But it’s a compliment to Mike if Jimi was that scared, because normally Hendrix was quite prepared to lay back and even play bass on these jam sessions."

http://jasobrecht.blogspot.com/2010/06/rory-gallagher-1991-interview.html

[Bloomers]

merci Chino à ce propos je trouve que la version de "it takes time" d'otis rush interprété par Gallagher sur le premier eponyme ressemble très fort à celle de Mike (recorded live at fillmore west 69)

rory et Mike ont pas mal de points communs, deux anti-guitar-hero en plein !

[Chino]

merci Chino à ce propos je trouve que la version de "it takes time" d'otis rush interprété par Gallagher sur le premier eponyme ressemble très fort à celle de Mike (recorded live at fillmore west 69)

De rien Bloom!

Tiens, je vais réécouter la version de It Takes Times par MB alors!

rory et Mike ont pas mal de points communs, deux anti-guitar-hero en plein !

Tout à fait, 2 musiciens qui n'ont pas fait de compromis, ce qui a nui à leur popularité.

Tiens, encore Rory: "And I`m very inspired by BOB DYLAN`s new album (the equally all-acoustic "Good As I Been To You" which just came out). Even though the critics didn`t like it. I think it`s a fantastic project. I would like to work with BOB DYLAN, that would be my absolute maximum at the moment. That song "Could Have Had Religion" that I do, it`s not my song. I re-wrote it, it`s an old song. He was considering that for his acoustic album. But I would love to do an album and be his MlKE BLOOMFlELD for him, like on the "Highway 61"-song, on "Blonde On Blonde"

[Bloomers]

j'ai lu dans la bio de Coghe que Dylan voulait reprendre "Could Have Religion" mais pour finir il a renoncer parce qu'il trouvait que ce titre apartenait trop à Rory...grand respect mutuel

[Chino]

j'ai lu dans la bio de Coghe que Dylan voulait reprendre "Could Have Religion" mais pour finir il a renoncer parce qu'il trouvait que ce titre apartenait trop à Rory...grand respect mutuel

Oui, c'est vrai: "I Could Have Had Religion" est un titre que Rory a fait véritablement sien (mais il n'en est pas l'auteur), et Dylan pensait que Rory en avait livré la version définitive.

[Bloomers]

Nick Gravenites :

http://www.bluespower.com/a-ngbtb.htm

I remember my first impression of him (bloomfield) was that he pissed me off. Here I was grinding away at my folk guitar, fingers a-hurtin', trying to make something that sounded like music, and here was this sixteen year old smart-mouthed wise-ass that had it down, and he did it with a smile. Mike attacked the guitar like a hungry wolverine on a carcass. When he was nineteen years old he was managing a folk-music coffeehouse on the near-north side called The Fickle Pickle, and he'd search out these old bluesmen of the twenties and thirties, guys that hadn't been heard of in years, some whom people assumed had died, men who had blues hits on "Race" records and then somehow disappeared, and he'd find these guys, get out in the ghetto and search for them and get them gigs at the coffeehouse, and, while they played, Mike would be there watching their every move, learning at the feet of the master blues stylists of America. This was an extraordinary situation that can never be repeated, and it helps to explain Mike Bloomfield's mastery of the blues guitar.

[Bloomers]

Uploaded with ImageShack.us
10 things you gotta do to play like Mike Bloomfield
http://mikebloomfield.com/mbguitarplayer.pdf

[Bloomers]

Big Joe Williams immortalized his buddy with the Jewish “fro” in a song about The Pickle, a blues club Bloomfield managed at the time: "Pick A Pickle" included the line: "You know Mike Bloomfield ... will always treat you right...come to the Pickle, every Tuesday night."

“We were all just awestruck,” recalled Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir, when the Butterfield band hit San Francisco in 1965.
Upon hearing Bloomfield, Carlos Santana avowed, “This is what I want to do and be for the rest of my life.” 4. And the legendary Fillmore Auditorium’s Bill Graham began hiring black blues bands after Bloomfield explained their profound influence on the Butterfield band.

Biographer Ed Ward suggests that Bloomfield’s career long pattern of retreat from success involved a recoiling from the lifestyle of his cold, taskmaster father, who wanted him to be a businessman. Harold Bloomfield became wealthy creating and manufacturing various food service items, including the iconic fluted glass and metal sugar dispenser with the neat little metal flip top. His company has since evolved into industry giant Beatrice Foods.

“Mike was a lot smarter than most people knew but maybe he wasn’t the strongest personality,” says guitarist-composer Jim Schwall, who had played harmonica on Bloomfield’s first home recording in 1958. “So he’d get around guys who were doing stuff, and he’d go along with it, like Grams Parsons did.”

His fiancée, a modern dancer named Christy Svane, remembers that Bloomfield died on Valentine’s Day of 1981 in San Francisco. His body lay slumped, in his dilapidated 1971 Mercury, poisoned by methamphetamine and cocaine -- after months of apparently being clean, sober and about to marry. His producer Norman Dayron believes that a “lowlife” snared Bloomfield with “some kind of designer drug that asphyxiated him,”10. Then, when cocaine failed to revive him, the dealer fled



Plus d'infos : http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=56037483&blogId=523549114#ixzz0xtjOGHlG

[Bloomers]

from Barry "The Fish" Melton, (top right) guitarist and co-founder of Country Joe and the Fish and The Dinosaurs, continues to play music both as a solo artist and with friends. Barry practiced law, before retiring in 2009, and was a public defender for Yolo County,California

If I'd Listened to Mike Bloomfield, I'd Be Rich and Famous Today by Barry Melton

I'm sure you've heard the stories about Michael's incredible intellect, his photographic memory, his voracious appetite for listening to music and the fact that he spent many hours per day reading everything he could get his hands on: All true. But Michael was more than just a run-of-the-mill genius. He not only had an encyclopedic knowledge of literature, music and current events, he was also astute enough to draw conclusions from what he'd listened to and what he read.

When I signed with Columbia Records in 1971, of all the people I knew, I wanted Michael to produce my first album, 'Melton, Levy & the Dey Bros'. I figured Michael had worked with Columbia for some years, and -- since we were both primarily guitar players (neither of us were known for our singing abilitiesl) -- he would be able to relate to my situation better than most people. And Michael was friends with Rick Dey, who was playing bass with me at the time, so as the enterprise got underway, everything seemed to be falling into place naturally.

At a relatively early stage in the project -- somewhere in the summer of 1971 -- Michael called me early one morning. "Barry, you've got to come over to my house right away! I've got an idea about your record. We've got to change everything! I'll explain it to you when you get here." I dropped whatever I was doing and drove over to Michael's place (we were both living in Marin County, maybe 20 minutes away from each other).

When I got to Michael's house, he was completely energized. He looked as if he'd been up all night. "Barry, I've been listening to this totally new music! It's like the blues, but it's not the blues and it's like rock, but it's not rock, either. You've got to listen to it! We've got to change directions, stop what we're doing now and go into a recording studio with the guys who made these records -- it's a whole new kind of music. Well, it's not new really, but nobody seems to know about it outside of Jamaica. It's called 'reggae'. All we have to do is book studio time in Kingston. We'll put together the best musicians in town and we'll fly there immediately and start recording. LISTEN!"

So I sat down in Michael's living room as he gave me a tour de force of the reggae genre. It was great! So then I asked, "What kind of recording studios do they have down there?" Michael replied, "I think the most we'll be able to get is a 4-track studio but we're not going to be able to get our hands on this kind of music anywhere else." I shook my head and attempted to calm Michael down. "Michael, Columbia just gave me a ton of money to make a state-of-the-art record. State of the art is 16 tracks! How will we be able to justify taking all this money to go to a poor country and use a marginal 4-track recording studio? We'll never get away with it!"

We argued back and forth and eventually Michael relented. One year later, in 1972, Jimmy Cliff starred in "The Harder They Come," the story of a young man who comes to Kingston to make it in the recording business and dies in a shootout. The film was an almost instant success and its soundtrack was hugely successful, popularizing reggae music and bringing it to a broad-based international audience.

If I'd listened to Mike Bloomfield, I'd be rich and famous today!

[Bloomers]

http://www.mikebloomfield.com/artifacts04.htm

http://www.gadflyonline.com/archive/marchapril01/archive-bloomfield.html
Quelques articles très instructifs

[Bloomers]

During the psychedelic era, did you have favorite musicians on the scene?

Jorma Kaukonen : Yeah, sure. One of my favorite ones in the beginning was Bloomfield, like if you recall that Butterfield East-West album. I really liked Elvin Bishop a lot. You know, I wasn’t looking at psychedelic music so much per se, although I realize I probably got some of that out of it. But I loved Buddy Guy. I still love all these blues players, because I think the essence of my playing in psychedelic music is from the blues genre

http://jasobrecht.com/jorma-kaukonen-interview-jefferson-airplane-psychedelic-1960s/

[Bloomers]

http://www.americanbluesblog.com/2011/05/mike-bloomfield-interview.html

INTERVIEW 1974

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