Mike Bloomfield was one of the top entrants in the battle for blues-rock virtuoso honors in the psychedelic ’60s. Bloomfield drew kudos for his guitar prowess with the Butterfield Blues Band and played an important role in introducing rock audiences to blues. His guitar work inspired many listeners and musicians, and it was in turn through his recommendation that the bluesmen who inspired him, like B.B. King, Albert King, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Otis Rush, got their first bookings at the legendary Fillmore in San Francisco and broke through to a new white audience. Bloomfield was born in Chicago on July 28, 1943, and grew up on Chicago’s Gold Coast and in the wealthy suburb of Glencoe. He and his friends credited their black maids with turning them on to the blues, and a teenaged Bloomfield started venturing down to the Chicago ghetto clubs. He not only played with as many bluesmen as he could, but interviewed them, wrote articles about them, and helped them get bookings in white venues in the hip Old Town district. A Bloomfield interview with slide guitarist Robert Nighthawk, conducted during the filming of the Maxwell Street documentary And This Is Free, was later issued on CD, and Bloomfield’s experiences with Big Joe Williams were published in a book, Me and Big Joe. Bloomfield also began playing on sessions with Sleepy John Estes, Little Brother Montgomery, Eddie Boyd, Chuck Berry, Yank Rachell, Sunnyland Slim, Muddy Waters (on the Fathers and Sons double LP) and others. He formed a band of his own but left to join forces with Paul Butterfield in an influential band that took the music in new directions, especially on the 1966 album East-West, which fused blues, jazz, and Indian raga roots. Bloomfield was among the band members who provided the controversial electric accompaniment for Bob Dylan’s 1965 Newport Folk Festival appearance, after Dylan had hired Bloomfield to play lead on his historic Highway 61 Revisited LP. Bloomfield went on to form the Electric Flag and then scored his biggest chart hit with the Super Session album which co-starred Al Kooper and Stephen Stills. Further big-name collaborations followed, but rock superstardom was not a comfortable slot for Bloomfield, who never lost his love for the blues. Bloomfield died of a drug overdose in San Francisco on Feb. 15, 1981.
