Mike Bloomfield: The Root Of Blues

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Michael Bernard Bloomfield was born July 28, 1943, in Chicago, Illinois. A self-described social outcast, Bloomfield immersed himself in the multi-cultural music world that existed in Chicago in the 1950s. At the age of 14 the exuberant guitar wunderkind began to visit the blues clubs on Chicago’s South Side with friend Roy Ruby in search of his new heroes: players such as Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, Howling Wolf, and Magic Sam. Not content with viewing the scene from the audience, Bloomfield was known to leap onto the stage, asking if he could sit in as he simultaneously plugged in his guitar and began playing riffs.

Bloomfield was quickly accepted on the South Side, as much for his ability as for the audiences' appreciation of the novelty of seeing a young white player in a part of town where few whites were seen. Bloomfield soon discovered a group of like-minded outcasts. Young white players such as Paul Butterfield, Nick Gravenites, Charlie Musselwhite, and Elvin Bishop were also establishing themselves as fans who could hold their own with established bluesmen, many of whom were old enough to be their fathers. In addition to playing with the established stars of the day, Bloomfield began to search out older, forgotten bluesmen, playing and recording with Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rachell, Little Brother Montgomery and Big Joe Williams, among others.

The legendary CBS producer and talent scout John Hammond, Sr., immediately signed him to a recording contract, and Bloomfield was recruited to play slide guitar and piano alongside with Paul Butterfield and his band. In between recording sessions with the Butterfield Band, Bloomfield backed up Bob Dylan on the classic "Highway 61 Revisited" album, and appeared with him at the Newport Folk Music Festival in 1965 when Dylan stunned the purist folk music crowd by playing electric rock´n´roll. This great work established Bloomfield as one of the most talented and influential guitar players in America. He started his own band, The Electric Flag, and joined with Al Kooper and Stephen Stills to the successful "Super Session". By the late seventies Bloomfield's continuing drug and health problems started causing erratic behavior and missed gigs.
Michael Bloomfield was found dead in his car of a drug overdose in San Francisco, California on February 15, 1981.

Here´s a budget-label reissue of the instructional blues LP "If You Love These Blues, Play Em As You Please" released by "Guitar Player Magazine" in 1976. This version includes most of the songs but omits Michael's spoken passages about each track. Bloomfield pays tribute to his influences and favorites: acoustic and electric, solo and with a band. Standout tracks include "Death in My Family," aplayed in the style of Guitar Slim, "WDIA," a tribute to B.B. King, "City Girl," dedicated to T-Bone Walker, and an acoustic version of "Kansas City," aplayed, in Bloomfield's words, "in a style I would call 'Travis Picking´, after Merle Travis. It seems an anomaly to use a modern style for such an old song, but the method of syncopated contrapuntal fingerpicking is well suited to the song because the key of E has so many open strings."

Mike Bloomfield: The Root Of Blues
(mp3, 224 kbps, ca. 50 MB, front cover included)