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Mike Bloomfield

By the time Michael Bloomfield joined the Butterfield Blues Band in 1965 and thus played his way into blues and rock history, he was already an accomplished guitarist in the mold of his heroes Jimmie Rodgers, B.B.King, T-Bone Walker,etc. and could hold his own in the Southside Chicago clubs where he made his bones. He introduced the blues to a whole new generation, and opened the doors for the acknowledged masters to gain respect and recognition for their music. He always gave the original bluesmen their due and though he has slipped into the cracks of musical history, his contribution to the popularity and acceptance blues guitar is immense.

Michael Bernard Bloomfield was born July 28, 1943, in Chicago, Illinois. An indifferent student and self-described social outcast, Bloomfield immersed himself in the multi- cultural music world that existed in Chicago in the 1950s. He got his first guitar at age 13. Initially attracted to the roots-rock sound of Elvis Presley and Scotty Moore, Bloomfield soon discovered the electrified big-city blues music indigenous to Chicago. 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. By this time he was managing a Chicago folk music club, the Fickle Pickle, and often hired older acoustic blues players for the Tuesday night blues sessions. Big Joe Williams memorialized those times in the song “Pick A Pickle” with the line “You know Mike Bloomfield...will always treat you right...come to the Pickle, every Tuesday night.” Bloomfield’s relationship with Big Joe Williams is documented in “Me And Big Joe,” a moving short story detailing Bloomfield’s adventures on the road with Williams.

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Book Review

Guitar King: Michael Bloomfield's Life in the Blues

Read "Guitar King: Michael Bloomfield's Life in the Blues" reviewed by Doug Collette


Guitar King: Michael Bloomfield's Life in the Blues David Dann 776 Pages ISBN: #978-1477318775 University of Texas Press 2019 Through a combination of journalistic objectivity, scholarly attention to detail and the passion of a fan, author David Dann accomplishes exactly what he professes to achieve in his 'Prologue' to Guitar King. That is, his publication will ..."contribute to that worthy eventuality..." [whereby]..."[Michael Bloomfield will] assume his rightful place among those guitar players whose ...

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Book Review

Michael Bloomfield: The Rise and Fall of An American Guitar Hero

Read "Michael Bloomfield: The Rise and Fall of An American Guitar Hero" reviewed by Doug Collette


Michael Bloomfield: The Rise and Fall of An American Guitar Hero Ed Ward 224 Pages ISBN: # 1613733283 Chicago Review Press 2016 Whether he meant to or not, in writing Michael Bloomfield: The Rise and Fall of an American Guitar Hero, Ed Ward mirrors his subject's style of guitar-playing. Flurries of facts precede extended statements of clarification, elongated for the purpose of emphasis, further reaffirmed (and suspense thus created) by the finality of ...

1
Film Review

Michael Bloomfield: From His Head to His Heart to His Hands

Read "Michael Bloomfield: From His Head to His Heart to His Hands" reviewed by Maurizio Comandini


Michael Bloomfield From His Head to His Heart to His Hands Sony Legacy Music 2014 Il ricordo dell'arte chitarristica sopraffina di Mike Bloomfield va adeguatamente tenuto vivo per i molti estimatori, ma anche per le giovani generazioni che non hanno avuto modo di conoscerlo direttamente. Questo è il compito importante che la Sony Legacy ha fatto proprio con questo bellissimo box. Bloomfield non è rimasto a lungo su questo pianeta, purtroppo. Infatti una stupida ...

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Extended Analysis

Mike Bloomfield: From His Head to His Heart to His Hands

Read "Mike Bloomfield: From His Head to His Heart to His Hands" reviewed by John Ephland


Michael Bloomfield was like a shooting star, a rolling stone who catapulted. Sorta like Hendrix, he lasted a little longer than the Purple Haze, until 1981, dying of a drug overdose at age 36. He suffered from insomnia as well as addiction. But for a time, if you were alive then (especially during the 1960s), and you listened to music, if you missed Michael ... sorry, but you were asleep. Okay, his music with Paul Butterfield, Bob Dylan, ...

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Extended Analysis

Mike Bloomfield: From His Head to His Heart to His Hands

Read "Mike Bloomfield: From His Head to His Heart to His Hands" reviewed by John Kelman


While a proliferation of box sets continue to entice with career-spanning retrospectives-- sometimes entire discographies, like Legacy Recordings' recent Paul Simon: The Complete Albums Collection (2013)--few serve as aural biographies with the same degree of success as Mike Bloomfield's aptly titled From His Head to His Heart to His Hands, a three-CD/one-DVD long box produced by the only person who could truly do justice to the late bluesman, Bob Dylan compatriot, member of the seminal Paul Butterfield Blues Band and ...

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Album Review

Mike Bloomfield: If You Love These Blues, Play 'Em As You Please

Read "If You Love These Blues, Play 'Em As You Please" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki


This compilation is a blues purists' dream, packaging If You Love These Blues, Play 'Em As You Please (1976), guitarist Bloomfield's personal tour through the history of acoustic and electric guitar blues, together with Bloomfield/Harris, his 1979 instrumental overview of acoustic country-gospel blues jointly conducted with guitarist Woody Harris. Bloomfield was the American leader in the same first wave of guitarists in which Eric Clapton and Peter Green discovered their blues-rock voices in Europe. Best known for his ...

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guitar, electric

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