Check out the tone in this version of 'Everything's gonna be alright'. Sounds like he has an octave pedal, but I reckon its just awesomeness of technique. When I first started playing amplified I would have hunted his mic and amp setup; now I know better......
Nice stuff. I wasn't familiar with that track. I notice two things. First, he's playing a dynamic mic, not a crystal/ceramic. I forget the name of the two mics of this sort that he normally played, but they're Shures. This accounts for the particular power of his sound. I can't explain it in sonic terms, but there's some lower frequency that is holding the sound together. (The cuisine equivalent would be some particular stock in the soup.)
Second, he's lip pursing the lower notes, including all the bends, but he's tongue blocking the 14 draw, 25 draw, and 63 blow octave/chords. At least that's how it sounds to me. I pretty much took these two things as my model, early on.
His vibrato is too fast for my taste these days, but that's just me. His blues pitches are right on target, and he's got an immediately identifiable sound. This couldn't be anybody else. Not one single note or phrase. This is his stuff. Nobody listening to this would say, Hmmmm, I'm not sure if this is Butterfield or Magic Dick, the way even some people say, "I can't tell if it's Big or Little Walter." That's saying a lot, considering how distinctive those other two heroes are!
He's probably playing through a Fender amp, either a Twin (which is what I saw him play through) or a Deluxe. Those are just educated guesses.
Last Edited by on Oct 22, 2011 6:17 AM
When that cut was done, octave pedals hadn't been invented yet so it's all him and NOT a pedal. I saw him on Boston Common's old Sunset SEries on the Common in the 70's using a Super Reverb. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
When that cut was done, octave pedals hadn't been invented yet so it's all him and NOT a pedal. I saw him on Boston Common's old Sunset SEries on the Common in the 70's using a Super Reverb. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Butterfield most commonly used Super Reverb (the PBBB album was apparently a "tweed Fender" but no record AFAICT as to model, with a crystal Altec wand mic? - Though the clip above was not obviously not from that album/time). Indeed, also used tolex twins & all sorts (SS Randall for example) as would any player on the road.
@Kudzurunner "Second, he's lip pursing the lower notes, including all the bends, but he's tongue blocking the 14 draw, 25 draw, and 63 blow octave/chords. At least that's how it sounds to me. I pretty much took these two things as my model, early on." I'm not sure what evidence there is to support this, I'd be very keen to hear from anyone who Butter told, face to face, what his embouchure choice was.
What you can hear in Butter's playing is how the column of air is supported by his daphragm, the "power" is more a product of technique than force.
Butterfield's tone is something that a lot of players typically assume is very "accessible", it's harder than it sounds. ---------- www.myspace.com/markburness
Last Edited by on Oct 22, 2011 7:33 AM
My guess about his LP on the lower notes is based on the fact that I hear, in those notes, none of the "dirt" that Joe Filisko talks about as the important byproduct of TB. I just hear good, solid notes. But I, too, would be interested in hearing what you've asked for. I suspect we won't get it. Butterfield--at least when I met him and watched him play live--didn't strike me as the sort of guy who cared about chewing over this sort of detail. Of course he was a pretty gone alcoholic at that point (1985). I remember watching him one night at the old Lone Star Cafe on 13th street and 5th avenue, picking a series of harps out of his trumpet case, squinting at them, grinning like a fool, and tossing them back. He was too drunk/high to find the right harp. It took him about 60 seconds to find the right one, while the band vamped in the background.
Every single time I saw Butterfield live, he was playing through a Fender Twin. The first time I saw him, at the old Tramps in the East Village, he was playing through a pair of Fender Twins. But I'm sure he used other size Fenders as well.
Last Edited by on Oct 22, 2011 7:53 AM
When I saw Butterfield he was using the black face fender twin. I know I used to have the same amp. He's my number one harp hero. If I had to point to any one school of harp playing that I come from it would have to be the Butterfield school. ---------- Emile "Diggs" D'Amico a Legend In His Own Mind How you doin'
The mic is huge in butter sound, it looks like a gun, I think it is a shure 545, but don't quote me. If you play through one of these mics, your Butterfieldness will shoot through the roof. However, he's the guy who popularized uit and the licks, phrasing and acoustic tone, which he shows on almost all later recordings is his and awesome. Butter is my number 1 favorite.
Here's some live Butter, July '65 so presumably before the tolex Fender/545 combination, sounds very similar to the PBBB album recorded a few months later...
Here's the 545 & BF Super Reverb from Woodstock....
A great recording for really hearing Butter's unadulterated tone is the tracks he recorded as a sideman with James Cotton on "2 sides of the blues" (especially "Diggin my potatoes" & "V-8 Ford Blues" produced by Bloomfield/Goldberg/Dayron at Bill Puttnam's Universal (where many great Chess & V-J sides were cut). ---------- www.myspace.com/markburness
The track in the Didjcripey's post has very heavy studio reverb in the harp intro which is backed off once the band kick in (compare to the harp break starting around 3:00), which adds to the impression of "size". ---------- www.myspace.com/markburness
I dig Butterfield's phrasing, tone, and power on that version of Everythings Gonna Be Alright. I also like Marc Ford's treatment of this song on Robben Ford's tribute album to Butterfield.
You know, if you play a 545 through the "normal" channel of a Super Reverb, you get a very recognizable "Butterfieldish" tone.
I read somewhere that PB considered the on/off switch on the 545 (the PE54 is a pistol grip hi-z 545) to be very important. Apparently, he would crank the amp and use the switch to turn the mic off when he'd stop playing in order to avoid feedback. If you watch vids of his live performances closely, you can see him do this. Amps don't feed back WHILE you are playing. Btw, Sugar Blue does the same thing, only he uses a VC on his mic to turn off the signal when he's not playing,
I also read somewhere that PB changed one tube on his Super Reverb. I assume he swapped out an AX7 for an AT7 but that's just a guess.
I've read accounts of PB performances where PB used a Twin Reverb, a Twin Reverb and a Princeton Reverb in tandem, a Randall tube/ss hybrid and, of course, a Super Reverb.
Last Edited by on Oct 22, 2011 9:44 AM
Wow, talk about a blast from the past! The Sunset Series on the Boston Common. Saw my first concert there: Johnny Kay (not Steppenwolf - his own project) opening for Deep Purple. Summertime, free, the smell of grass wafting through the air. Probably '72-'73 ish, man those were the days.
LOVE the Butter stuff. Some GREAT embeds here, made my Saturday.
It should be noted that Butterfield is the only white guy in this website's list of Top-10 all-time blues harmonica players. That should tell you how I feel about him--and how I objectively assess (insofar as that's possible) his overall importance to the instrument & idiom.
He was unquestionably one of the greats; he was powerful, original, and has had a lasting influence--an audible influence--on the players of subsequent generations.
I'd be the first to say that Charlie Musselwhite has a wider range than PB and that Kim Wilson has at least as much power and arguably a higher level of technical accomplishment. I'd also argue that Jason Ricci exceeds Butterfield on power, technical accomplishment, and (arguably) originality. But PB plays with as much or more feeling than any of those players, and his influence has been greater. I don't believe that many players have specifically modeled themselves on Musselwhite's sound, and those who have modeled themselves in Kim have, I believe, tended to let that influence point them back in the direction of LW and Kim's other audible influences. JR, on the other hand has clearly had an influence on the Young Turks of today. But it's not clear what sort of long-term influence his approach will have. (I think it will have a huge long-term influence, but it's just too early to know.)
Butterfield's influence, by contrast with Charlie and Kim, and much like JR, has been PERSONAL. Contemporary players will talk about being influenced by a Chicago/West Coast sound. But they don't clump PB in with that, because he's not part of any school, even though he made his mark in Chicago. His influence is personal, and immediately audible. Bill "Kid Java" Ferns, Felix Cabrera, and Rob Paparozzi, three of the strongest NYC-area players, were all pointedly and audibly in the Butterfield "school." Without Butterfield, none of those three has a sound. All three organize their playing (at least their diatonic, second position playing) around many of Butterfield's best-known licks. When one specific player has that kind of audible influence--as Little and Big Walter had, and as Sonny Terry had--then something important is going on.
I'm sure others will disagree with what I've said--and that's great!
Here's one cut that I've always loved. At a couple of moments, Butterfield breaks into fast triplet runs coming down off the 6 draw. This is where I think he breaks fresh ground. Lip pursing, BTW. The stuff sounds fairly tame these days, but in 1975, who else was playing uptempo shuffles with those sort of fast triplets? Big Walter wasn't. He did dazzling stuff back at Sun Studios in the early 50s, but it was much more patterned. He wasn't phrasing with the freedom of a jazz man. Little Walter very much had that sort of jazz-freedom, and the TB'd stuff he did is in some ways much more complicated and less linear, hard to decode, than Butterfield's runs. Still, Butterfield is doing something distinctive here. His phrasing is impeccable. And he's leavening it all with that inimitable vocalized grunting-stuff: his own version of what Junior Wells was doing. Altogether, it is superb:
The other thing worth noting here is that Butterfield is signifying on Little Walter's playing on the same cut with Muddy 20-odd years earlier. His own accompaniment to the verse roughly tracks LW's comping. But then he does his own thing, decisively, rather that getting lost in an homage. THAT, my friends, is why he matters.
EDITED TO ADD: One of PB's coolest licks, I should say, is plainly TB'd: On a bar 12, at the end of his second solo, he glisses down from a 36d to a 14d.
Last Edited by on Oct 22, 2011 10:31 AM
@Kudzurunner "The other thing worth noting here is that Butterfield is signifying on Little Walter's playing on the same cut with Muddy 20-odd years earlier." LW didn't play on "Goin' Down To Main Street" it was Junior Wells.
Butterfield matters also because of the impact that the BBB had on bringing the blues to a wider audience (in BB King's biography he makes several references to how Butterfield's band renewed interest in the blues in th US)...and of course for his superlative execution. ---------- www.myspace.com/markburness
Last Edited by on Oct 22, 2011 10:53 AM
In the book "Masters of the Blues Harp" by Glenn Weiser it says: "According to Charlie Musselwhite, Paul Butterfield was primarily a pucker style player who sometimes used tongue slaps and octaves". This seems pretty accurate but he used octaves more than "sometimes" in my opinion. I think I've also read that he would often go straight into the (tube) PA. He's my all time favorite and I tend to gravitate toward players who seem to have been influenced by him (Paparozzi, Fitting, Gussow, etc.).
Last Edited by on Oct 22, 2011 11:32 AM
Sonvolt you left Rod Piazza off your list of Butterfield influenced players ;-)
I have heard every embouchure going mentioned with respect to Butter, some are convinced he TB'd, others he puckered, some that he U blocked...all are adamant & stand their ground, it's really the man himself's word that will settle it...not that, as Kudzurunner said, we are ever likely to get it, nor that that it really matters...if no one can conclusively tell, it has no bearing. So why am I bothered? Just the age old issue of passed on greats being recruited to "camps/sides/outlooks/philosophies" when there is no evidence to back it up, the old lie/assumption/guess repeated enough becoming truth.
On the PBBB album there are no octaves, only a few vamped chords, but none of this is conclusive of any particular embouchure. Unless you have survived a nasty accident whilst running with a bunch of razor blades held in your lips, the only way to play octaves is to TB the middle holes, so again this has little bearing on preferred embouchure...which of course, still doesn't matter ;-) ---------- www.myspace.com/markburness
Last Edited by on Oct 22, 2011 12:29 PM
@5F6H: On the back of MUDDY WATERS: ROLLING STONE, Chess CH-9101, a compliation LP released in 1984 that I purchased the year it came out, the personnel on "Gone to Main Street" are listed as follows:
Little Walter - harmonica Jimmy Rogers - guitar Elga Edmonds AKA Elgin Edmonds - drums
I'm not saying you're wrong. In fact, I'm quite sure you're right. I've just checked THE STORY OF CHESS RECORDS, by John Collis and Buddy Guy, and they note that in September 1952, when Little Walter was off on the road promoting "Juke," Junior briefly replaced him in Muddy's recording ensemble--a dynamic that was later nipped in the bud--to record four tunes, including "Standing Around Crying" and "Gone to Main Street." (p. 68)
I can hardly be blamed for assuming that the credits on a Chess compilation LP were correct, but apparently they weren't, and I'm grateful for the correction.
Of course, unless Butterfield knew who that harp player was on that recording--and he came along somewhat after 1952--he might well have been signifying on Little Walter. :) Assuming, that is, that he was as confused as the folks at Chess seem to have been.
Last Edited by on Oct 22, 2011 12:54 PM
@Kudzurunner: There are copious mis-credits & mis-spellings of artists & staff names on the Chess album sleeves & literature...we've all been caught out at one time or another! ;-)
The first Butterfield LP, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, was released in 1965. The second album, East-West, was released in 1966.
I saw Paul Butterfield live in the October or November of 1968. Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop had both left the band by then and the new guitarist was Buzzy Feiten. At this show Butterfield was using a Fender Princeton Reverb Amplifier and a Fender Twin Reverb Amplifier simultaneously. His microphone was plugged into the first input of a Fender Princeton Reverb amplifier, and a guitar cord linked the second input of the Princeton Reverb amp to the first input of the Vibrato (Reverb) Channel of a Fender Twin Reverb Amplifier.
Peter Madcat Ruth madcat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx www.madcatmusic.net
Posted by Madcat to Harp-l
Last Edited by on Oct 22, 2011 12:58 PM
I would have to concure with Paul Shapiro-Butter was primarily a lip-purser.
Hello group, I would like to add my two cents to this Butterfield thread. I saw many Butterfield gigs in the sixties and my band ,"The Hallucinations(Peter Wolf,front man and Steven Bladd drummer,both who became members of the Jay Geils Band after we broke up) let the band use our practise loft in Boston and we got to experience the rehearsal of the East West Album and hang out with them for a week. What was so different about Paul, which I later realised, was his articulation. It was very different from the classic blues players of the time. It was definitly not Little Walter etc. This guy played the harp with either trumpet,flute or sax articulation. I had heard that he had played the flute in his past. He was not a tongue blocker and really approached the harmonica like a real articulated instument and was a pioneer for his original approach to the harp. The key word is pioneer. After the mile was run in four minutes many people could do it,the 100th monkey theory. I was there and believe me no one else approached the harp like he did. Paul Shapiro Santa Fe,NM
Dang that cut of Everything's gonna be alright is darn sweet. I should pick up that album. I really enjoy his playing as well. I particularly enjoy their first two albums.
----------
~Ryan
"I play the harmonica. The only way I can play is if I get my car going really fast, and stick it out the window." - Steven Wright
Pennsylvania - H.A.R.P. (Harmonica Association 'Round Philly)
this song could be used as an example to argue that butterfield is THE pivotal point in modern blues harmonica.. he goes from top of the beat edgy rock-influenced approach, to using sonny terry-like whoops.. YEAH. to gospel in the later part. not to mention all future players who took up the torch he burned so brightly.
The woodstock video shows that his powerful voice is coming from the diaphragm. It's great evidence for the fact that his powerful harp tone is likely coming from the same place as his singing techniques. It's a great reminder for me and I'm sure all of us on good form.
I have listened to an instructional that Butterfield made. As far as tounge blocking vs. lipping, all he really says is that he uses his tounge but couldn't really say how. As far as amps go he said that he played through a super reverb but that early in his career he played through a bassman. His take on mics was that you don't need any kind of special harp mic. I suppose that is why he used the 545, they were widley availible in that era. The most valuble thin that I took from the instructional was not to play too hard or you might as well throw the harp on the ground and step on it. Sometimes I even remember this advice.
@tjtaylor, that's interesting about not playing too hard. Sounds like breath control. Apparently Little Walter said he liked using a mic so he didn't have to play hard and Big Walter also played at lower volumes.
"I read somewhere that PB considered the on/off switch on the 545 (the PE54 is a pistol grip hi-z 545) to be very important. Apparently, he would crank the amp and use the switch to turn the mic off when he'd stop playing in order to avoid feedback. If you watch vids of his live performances closely, you can see him do this."
Very true. I've seen his on/off on /off workout w/ the switch many times. ---------- MP affordable reed replacement and repairs.
"making the world a better place, one harmonica at a time"
click user name [MP] for info- repair videos on YouTube. you can reach me via Facebook. Mark Prados
