Paul Butterfield
Paul Butterfield was an influential American blues musician and harmonica player, born in Chicago in 1942. Raised in an affluent family, he developed an interest in music at an early age, initially studying the flute before discovering the urban blues that characterized Chicago's South Side. Butterfield formed the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in the early 1960s, which became notable for its innovative blend of traditional blues and rock music. The band gained significant recognition with their self-titled debut album in 1965, featuring the iconic track "Born in Chicago," and became the first electric band signed to a folk label.
Throughout his career, Butterfield explored various musical styles and worked with prominent musicians, contributing to the popularization of blues among white rock audiences. Despite facing personal challenges, including struggles with substance abuse, his legacy endures. He is often credited with paving the way for future generations of musicians to engage with blues traditions, and his work remains celebrated for its passion and musicality. Notably, his performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 marked a significant moment in the integration of electric music into folk venues. Butterfield's contributions continue to resonate in the music world, underscoring the enduring power of the blues.
Paul Butterfield
Musician
- Born: December 17, 1942
- Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
- Died: May 4, 1987
- Place of death: Los Angeles, California
American blues singer and harmonica player
Butterfield was a major figure in the emergence of white blues bands in the 1960’s, bringing an overlooked, indigenous American music to a new audience.
Member of The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
The Life
Paul Butterfield was born in Chicago, and he grew up in the affluent area of Hyde Park. His father was a successful lawyer, and his mother was a painter, and they encouraged their son’s musical studies on the flute, which continued into high school. As a teenager, Butterfield starred on the high school track team, and it was also during this time that his older brother and a friend, Nick Gravenites (later a successful musician), pushed Butterfield to investigate the urban blues they heard on the radio. Chicago’s South Side hosted such African American blues greats as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Marion “Little” Walter Jacobs.
Butterfield and Gravenites began frequenting the black-only blues clubs, and before long Butterfield assembled the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which played for about five years. Butterfield continued to form other bands with different players until 1976, when he embarked on a solo career, releasing a few poorly received albums and working as a session player for other musicians. Butterfield developed peritonitis from heavy drinking, and he died in 1987 of a heroin overdose.
The Music
Once he saw Little Walter play an amplified harmonica, Butterfield became an avid fan of the instrument, and he quickly formed a band with Elvin Bishop, a guitarist from Oklahoma studying at the University of Chicago. They recruited two players from Muddy Waters’s band—drummer Sam Lay and bassist Jerome Arnold—and by 1963 they had become the house band at Big John’s, a folk music club. The group became so popular that it was the first electric band signed to the folk label Elektra Records.
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band.The group’s eponymously titled first record, released in 1965, was a hard-edged sampler of urban blues that challenged the dominance of the British and American pop songs that saturated radio airwaves. The album opens with the band’s signature song, “Born in Chicago,” which Butterfield sings with his trademark raw intensity, while belting out powerful harp licks. The band featured two guitarists, Bishop and Michael Bernard Bloomfield, as well as keyboardist Mark Naftalin, a player recruited for these sessions who remained with the band for several years. The album is a heady mix of traditional blues songs—“Shake Your Money Maker,” “Blues With a Feeling,” “I Got My Mojo Working,” “Mellow Down Easy,” among others—and original compositions, such as the loose jam “Thank You Mr. Poobah,” Bloomfield’s guitar workout, “Screamin’,” and “Our Love Is Drifting.” The album immediately became popular with a predominantly rock audience, and the band was launched.
East-West.The following year, East-West, the band’s second release, continued with traditional blues numbers, such as “Walkin’ Blues” and “Never Say No,” as well contemporary offerings, such as Allen Toussaint’s “Get Out of My Life, Woman” and a reinterpreted Monkees’ song, “Mary, Mary.” The album also featured two lengthy instrumentals, “Work Song” and “East-West,” a rock raga homage to Ravi Shankar.
Un-Banded. By the next year, half of the members of the band had left, including Bloomfield, and Butterfield reconfigured the band to include a horn section. In 1967 he released The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw, an album featuring fewer traditional blues numbers and less of Butterfield’s signature harp work. In My Own Dream, the band’s fourth album, released in 1968, continued in a similar, though far less satisfying, vein. The last original members had left the band, and each successive release was inconsistent in quality. Keep on Moving and Sometimes I Just Feel Like Smilin’ were disappointing, and in their wake Butterfield broke up the band.
In 1972 Butterfield had modest success with a new band, Better Days, releasing two records, Better Days and It All Comes Back, and he then pursued a solo career. Releases such as Put It in Your Ear, North-South, and The Legendary Paul Butterfield Rides Again were uneven or simply embarrassing. The harmonica was now largely absent as Butterfield ranged through rhythm and blues, jazzy arrangements, or synthesized music.
Rereleases. A decade later, The Original Lost Elektra Sessions, the first recordings of the original band, appeared from tapes once considered lost and inferior. The performances are not as polished as later studio offerings, but the power of the first band is clearly evident. Strawberry Jam, a collection of live performances, was released, along with East-West Live, a disk that provides a fascinating view of the evolution of that seminal song. Tapes of a stellar performance of the Better Days band, Live at Winterland ’73, was issued in 1999, and they reveal how accomplished that collection of musicians was. An Anthology: The Elektra Years (1998) collects some of the best early material by Butterfield.
Musical Legacy
Though some rock journalists and historians dismiss Butterfield’s contributions as merely derivative, that assessment is contradicted by his contemporaries, among them Bloomfield, Corky Siegel, Levon Helm, and Muddy Waters. Butterfield revered the blues, and he never corrupted the genre for commercial purposes.
His principal contribution was bringing the blues to a white rock-and-roll audience, paving the way for other white musicians to play and build upon the traditions of the blues masters. He was so successful that in 1965 his band was invited to play at the historic Newport Folk Festival, which had never before featured electric music. At that same festival, members of Butterfield’s band backed up Bob Dylan when he switched from acoustic to electric music.
Butterfield’s best albums reveal a musicologist’s broad knowledge of sources and an impassioned playing. East-West is a tour-de-force, with its mixtures of styles and astounding virtuosity, and “East-West” is an audacious musical experiment, with its emulation of Eastern modalities and its pure inventiveness.
Principal Recordings
albums (solo): Put It in Your Ear, 1976; North-South, 1981; The Legendary Paul Butterfield Rides Again, 1986.
albums (with Better Days): Better Days, 1973; It All Comes Back, 1973; Live at Winterland ’73, 1999.
albums (with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band): The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, 1965; East-West, 1966; The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw, 1967; In My Own Dream, 1968; Keep on Moving, 1969; Sometimes I Just Feel Like Smilin’, 1971; The Original Lost Elektra Sessions, 1995; East-West Live, 1996; Strawberry Jam, 1996.
Bibliography
Butterfield, Paul, and Happy Traum. Paul Butterfield Teaches Blues Harmonica Master Class: Sessions with a Legendary Player. Woodstock, N.Y.: Homespun Tapes, 1997. This book and accompanying compact disc offer detailed instructions on the playing of blues harmonica.
Ellis, Tom, III. “The Real World of Paul Butterfield.” Blues Access 23 (Fall, 1995): 11-19; “The Glory Years: The Maturation of an Idea.” Blues Access 25 (Spring, 1996): 22-35; “Building a New Tradition: Butterfield Gets the Blues Back in Touch with Jazz.” Blues Access 27 (Fall, 1996): 28-40; “The Woodstock Years.” Blues Access 29 (Spring, 1997): 20-36; “Paul Butterfield: The Final Years.” Blues Access 31 (Fall, 1997): 13-25. A detailed and comprehensive assessment of Butterfield is contained in this series of articles from Blues Access magazine. Ellis traces Butterfield’s career, with its high and low points.
Sebastian, John, and Paul Butterfield. Blues Harmonica. Woodstock, N.Y.: Homespun Tapes, 2005. Originally released as a collection of tapes, the book offers advice from two musicians on playing the harmonica, and it includes observations on the blues and the great musicians who have mastered this instrument.
Wolkin, Jan Mark, Bill Keenom, Michael Bloomfield. Michael Bloomfield—If You Love These Blues: An Oral History. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 2000. In this memoir, Bloomfield reflects on his bandmates and his career. Butterfield figures prominently in reminiscences.