When I first delved into the harmonica twenty years ago and simultaneously immersed myself into the blues, I discovered Butterfield. I had been listening to the older 'greats' for a while, and was digging what I heard, but got my hands on Butterfield's version of 'Blues With a Feeling'-Wow! He opened my eyes to new layers of tonality and playing style, and has been a very strong influence in my playing ever since. ---------- Todd L Greene. V.P.
Paul Butterfield was my first big influence I'd say. I think you can hear him a little in some of my playing, especially acoustically. He was awesome and he had a lot of power, it is too bad he went so young. Him and Michael Bloomfield were the ORIGINAL Jason Ricci and Shawn Starsky in my opinion.
He for sure influenced countless young harp players, me included. I had all his records and really looked up to him. Sadly, I got to know him somewhat towards the end of his life. He use to hang out at Tramps in NYC. He was a hopeless addict at that point and almost impossible to hang with. I tried my best, but his addiction made hanging with him a painful affair. I heard him play there and in California. Both times were terrible. In california I actually tried to talk to him about getting straight. It was embarrasing watching his performance and I meant what I said out of kindness. He raged on me. I left in a hurry out of respect because he was deserving of KO punch. That was the last I saw or heard of him. I post this to all out there that think getting loaded and playing is cool thing. It will end up killing you in a sad and painful way and drive all who care away. RIP Paul, I guess you finally found peace. Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " No one can control anyone, but anyone can let someone control them"
Walter, that's interesting. You don't hear much about the end of his life. From what I have heard in 1987 he was actually doing a lot better, but I've also hear he wasn't. Thanks for that information.
Hi Zack: I was around him in the early 80's. Like I said, it was very sad to see one of my idols no better off than a street person. If it wasn't for his name, he would have been just that. I have watched drinking and drugs do in way too many musicians. It always starts out as a real cool thing and then it has you in its power and you are done. Stay straight, eat decent, exercise, follow your dreams, work on your emotional baggage, and you will live a happy life. Being a great technical player really means nothing with having a happy life. Too many great artists have proven this over and over. Imagine what levels the tormented talented artists could have hit if they were in harmony with themselves. The tormented soul= being a great artist is BS. That is a manufactured hype to sell products. People have paid money since day one to watch tormented souls. Walter
I hope he did find peace in the end of his days. I was with Stevie Vaughn at his last austin city limits show. He was totally straight and a pleasure to be around. I treasure that night. He died soon after that show. It is important to leave this earth in peace.
---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " No one can control anyone, but anyone can let someone control them"
Thannks Zack. I speak the truth I have lived and watched. One reason I have become very selective in what gigs I play is because of the loaded card. Hanging out in a scene that is dominated by people loaded on stuff of various poisons, just is plain boring and sad. Being straight is a happy high. I get nostalgic at times to get smashed, but give it a little thought on to what that process is all about, and I reach for the bubble water :-) Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " No one can control anyone, but anyone can let someone control them"
This fallacy was begun by the Romantic poets and still hasn't left us. The good artist is a skilled and dedicated worker whose soul underpins what he does.
If you're looking to start something, Drew, I won't participate, but Butter was well received by black US audiences as well. As far as outside the US, there were probably so many living legends still alive and working then that Butterfield may not have been promoted much outside the US, don't know or care really. Yo pal, JD
Hi JD, I thought he was part of that whole scene in the 60s, with Hendrix, Bloomfield, etc. Wasn't looking to start anything - I just thought he was a key popularizer in the US scene, whereas there was a whole different group of cats into blues in the UK and Europe who got it via other channels.
I know Butterfield was hugely influential here in making blues more accessible to an Australian audience - and still see it today. There are a lot more cats who play that style of rocky-blues harp than do the Walter/Cotton/Walter thing.
Hey I know what troublemaker you are! Just jokin with ya, but wanted to point out that his popularity wasn't just with young whites, in fact Muddy Waters was a big Butterfield fan, he was a big hit at the southside clubs where he sat in from all accounts I've read. I'm color blind anyway, I think that's of the least importance.
Woof woof, JD
Last Edited by on May 05, 2010 9:08 PM
Don't forget his band was integrated something rare for the time back then. TV audiences were segregated. I can remember the show shindig with James Brown performing with all these white kids around him.
If there is any doubt to his blues credentials check out Father's and Son's.
Butterfield's influence goes far beyond bringing blues to a white audience. The top pros who site him as an influence (Paparozzi, Ford, Just, Ricci, Del Junco, Gussow, etc.) would probably agree.
The Butterfield Blues Band helped introduced electric blues to a white American audience. Prior to their 1965 debut--their first album and their appearance with Dylan at Newport--the white blues audience, such as it was, greatly preferred acoustic blues. This fact is indisputable and the reasons for it are complicated. "Electric blues" was felt by this audience to be overly commercial, degraded, unpoetic. B.B. King was all but unknown among white blues fans at that point. But Butterfield and, almost simultaneously, the British Blues Invasion, helped change that. Or at least they began the change. Musselwhite was part of this movement, too.
By 1969/70, electric blues was THE music, and the white blues audience was huge. There was a big show at Madison Square Garden in 1969, I believe, in which the King and Queen of the Blues were going to be crowned. Butterfield and Janis Joplin were the stars that night.
The emergence of a mass white blues audience and, even more, the emergence of white Kings and Queens of the Blues, mightily pissed off black intellectuals such as Larry Neal, Hoyt Fuller, and especially Ron Wellburn. Younger blacks, for the most part, didn't like or respect the blues; Maulana Ron Karenga notably opined that "the blues are invalid"--which is to say, the blues and the complaints they moaned and groaned were inimical to the Black Revolution, which demanded positive thinking on all fronts. But the younger black intellectuals, or many of them, still thought of the blues as black cultural property, a black cultural inheritance, and they were alarmed by the surge of white interest. Larry Neal called for "the destruction of the white thing," and one thing he meant was the white need to appropriate, mishandle, and take credit for black music, including the blues.
What's often forgotten is that the Butterfield Blues Band was an interracial quartet: two white front guys backed by a black rhythm section. That complication is usually left out of the story when the question of "white blues" rears its head.
The issues are complicated, not simple. I've always argued that Butterfield was an original, somebody who truly innovated. He wasn't always at his best, by any means. I saw him several times live in 1985 and he was very good, but he was also limited: he played cross harp all night (sorta like me), played mostly the same kind of stuff, and didn't think musically when he played first position. I still think that his fast triplet playing (lip pursed, I'm willing to bet) on TOO MANY DRIVERS and THE MUDDY WATERS WOODSTOCK ALBUM has no direct precedents in what the black players of his time and earlier were doing. Ditto for some of the stuff he did on the live version of "Driftin Blues" on the GOLDEN BUTTER album. I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for what he did. And of course he's the only white player in the Top-10 all-time list on this website--a nod both to his innovations and, just as importantly, his remarkably wide influence on contemporary playing.
He was a flute player, early in life. I'm sure that had something to do with his approach to the harp--including his emphasis on lip pursing. (He tongue blocked some octaves and the 25 draw chord, of course. He used both techniques.)
Last Edited by on May 05, 2010 8:42 AM
Butterfield and I share the same birthday, so I've always had a bit of a softspot for him. My first "aha" moment with blues music came when I heard him playing on the "Blues Brothers" soundtrack. I ran to the store and bought the CD - one of my very first - as was disappointed to not find the track on there (I had no idea who Paul was, who was playing harmonica, etc.).
I didn't pick up my first harp until sometime later in college, but he was definitely one of the first artists I started listening to. Two years after buying my first harp, I started a blues-based band with a guitar player who was a huge Michael Bloomfield fan. That got me into Paul's later work (without Bloomfield) and I think that is what his legacy has become to me.
He was one of the first harmonica players to try and innovate in blues harp AND take the harp into genres that "made it". That is not to say that others didn't innovate before him or do it better, but he had a level of crossover and success that others didn't. Although he isn't my favorite harmonica player, and maybe not super proficient technically, he came up with a style that makes him one of those player you can name in just a few notes.
I can't imagine what it was like at a time where the resources for learning harmonica were so limited and essentially being a "pioneer" of the instrument.
I will never forget the first time I saw Butterfield play live at the Troubador in L.A. It was during his "Better Days" days and although I had listened to a lot of his records, I was completley unprepared for his live sound. It was my first exposure to live electrified harp, and I was completley blown away, it was so unbelievably powerful. I was lucky enough to see him four or five times after that, but as they say, you can only experience it for the first time once. (Looking back and trying to remember what he played through, I remember seeing what looked like a big Fender Showman cab on stage and he appeared to be playing though a Shure of some kind.) ---------- http://www.myspace.com/jeffscranton
Paul Butterfield deserves to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The first Butterfield Blues Band changed a lot of peoples lives. Butterfield brought an authenticity that convinced some people that a white boy could indeed play Blues. That's because he hung around the Black Blues clubs on the South Side of Chicago and learned from the masters like Walter Horton and Little Walter Jacobs. That first Butterfield album (actually an 8 track tape for me) turned me on to Little Walter. I think (somebody correct me if I'm wrong) The Butterfield Blues Band was the first racially intergrated electric Chicago Blues band. I don't understand why ABBA is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Butterfield is not.
Last Edited by on May 07, 2010 12:16 AM
I saw Butterfield several times between 1967 and 198? here in the Seattle area, the crowd was always quite diverse. Young white kids, middle aged black folk, hippies, american motorcycle enthusiasts, just folks. No different than the crowds when Muddy, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, Jr Wells, J B Hutto, Albert Collins, BB, etc.... came to town, proportions alway varied, but always a mixed crowd, Thank god I live in a liberal city. I don't remember the band being a quartet, I guess that would have been Butter, Bishop, Lay and Arnold? I knew Bloomfield just kind of passed through the band, but I thought Naftalin was around early on. I'm surprised Adam never mentioned the Better Days stuff, I think that was some of his best.
That king and queen thing is gonna bother me for a while, I don't remember that sort of thing at all, again I think things are a little different on the west coast. JD
@JDH - It may be possible that Butterfield was the first racially integrated blues band in Chicago, but I think Applejack Walroth may actually predate Butterfield being one of the first Caucasian blues harp players on the scene in Chicago.
Joe, It wasn't me making those claims, but who is Applejack, that rings a bell, but nothing is coming back. They told me this would happen, I used to have such a great memory.
Also, I guess Booker T and the MG's may not be a blues band to everyone, but they were integrated and around before Butterfield BB, I think, in Memphis rather than Chicago of course, if not as BT&MG's maybe the Bar-Kays? I've been told there were southern blues bands that were racially integrated before Butterfield, just not as successful. I think James Harman may have been in a racially integrated band around 1962 if I remember correctly. When was it that Charlie Musselwhite was playing with Johnny Shines, that was pretty early on wasn't it? I was thinking they played together in Memphis before Charlie moved to Chicago?
Joe, you grew up there, right? Didn't Bloomfield book talent for a club called Big John's and have guy's from the southside bands coming in and playing with him, Gravenites, and Naftilin. This is stuff I read somewhere along the way, may have been Gravenites? But I was thinking Sam Lay and different guys used to go to the north side and play with those guys before Butterfield had formed his first band? I think Big Joe Williams was a regular attraction there, when Bloomfield was booking the talent.
I do know that all accounts say that when Muddy hired Paul Oscher, that was a first. JD
Last Edited by on May 05, 2010 9:15 PM
Applejack is currently living in San Francisco. He plays in a band called Blues Power. If I remember correctly, he played with Big Joe Williams. He also played with Nick Gravenites and Elvin Bishop back in the day. Sometimes, he plays with them now.
I grew up in Chicago, but I would have been a pre-schooler when those guys were running around Chicago. I never really paid much attention when the white players showed up on the scene, because they weren't around. Most of those guys had left Chicago by the time that I started going out in the early 80's.
Since, they weren't around and part of the scene there, I hadn't really heard much about them. I knew about Charlie Musselwhite only because he got periodic airplay on a radio show and because he had played at Chicagofest.
Guys like James Cotton, Junior Wells and Carey Bell were the kings of the harp scene. Billy Branch was playing seven nights a week on the South Side. Louis Myers played a little bit and sounded really bad ass. There were a lot of other guys that were playing in the 50's were still active, too.
Ev630: Blues was a major influence on rock and roll and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band was a major influence on blues-rock groups. There are many blues people in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame such as B.B. King,Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Jimmy Reed, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf and Robert Johnson. Besides not all of the Butterfield Blues Band's music was pure blues. The title track from their second album East-West runs almost 14 minutes. Not many albums other than jazz albums had tracks that long in 1966. The track East-West was an influence on later bands such as The Allman Brothers Band and the Grateful Dead and on down to today's jam bands. Also Butterfield's Better Days band was more rock than blues. And also Butterfield was a guest artist on several rock albums. Paul Butterfield's son ( whose first name I can't think of at the moment) has started an online petition to get his father inducted in the R&R Hall of Fame. So if what you're saying is that Paul Butterfield would be out of place there, I disagree. A very belated edit: The Butterfield Blues Band are now in the R&R Hall of Fame (inducted 2015) and my apologies to ABBA.
Last Edited by DanP on Oct 28, 2018 10:44 PM
No, what I'm saying is that ABBA was a hugely successful, influential POP act on a worldwide scale. Although we think that PB (and JC) should be in the R&R Hall of Fame, asking why ABBA is there is silly.
I was never a fan of ABBA when they were around, but years later having looked at the way they put their stuff together I have to admit, they were very clever pop composers and deserve their accolades.
JDH: Jerry Portnoy was also playing with black bands in Chicago before he played with Muddy.
According to Wiki, 67. But that doesn't place when he played in mixed bands.
Cotton had white guys in his bands. By the mid 60s I don't think it was an innovation and, of course, there were white jazz guys who disguised themselves to play in outfits many, many decades before. Some discussion of that in some of Dave Rubin's guitar books.
Of course, Butter may have been the first to hit the mainstream so that it was noticed by the mainstream.
Oscher was playing in NYC at 15 ('65), the quote is that Paul Oscher was the first white guy to be hired by a blues band "of this stature" in '67.
Cotton was still in Muddy's band in '66, the "Chicago -Blues Today" sessions featured him with Muddy's band, George Smith followed Cotton for a bit, into '67, Mojo Buford too, there is a Spann recording that is mooted to feature Oscher (Testament 6001), earliest sessions featuring Oscher are either "possibly 67/circa 67-68".
Oscher was certainly in the band at the same time as Spann during '68 & onwards. Pinetop took over piano duties some time in '69.
This would also make Oscher's claims of meeting LW feasible too (not that I personally doubt what he says, but such claims are often met with some skepticism).
It's worth noting that even Muddy's touring schedule at this time was typically putting him in very different types of venues to Butter, this has been noted by Jerry/Bob Margolin (?) in the past.
I think one of the best examples of Butterfield playing great stuff is "Levon Helm and the RCO Allstars Live". The other musicians on that record aren't bad either!
Last Edited by on May 07, 2010 7:22 AM
