Early Years
Bloomfield was born into a wealthy Jewish family on the North Side of Chicago but preferred music to the family catering equipment business, becoming a blues devotee as a teenager and spending time at Chicago's South Side blues clubs, playing guitar with some black bluesmen (Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rachell, Little Brother Montgomery).
The young guitarist's talent "was instantly obvious to his mentors," wrote Al Kooper, Bloomfield's later collaborator and close friend, in a 2001 article. "They knew this was not just another white boy; this was someone who truly understood what the blues were all about." Among his early supporters were B. B. King, Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan and Buddy Guy. Michael used to say, 'It's a natural. Black people suffer externally in this country. Jewish people suffer internally. The suffering's the mutual fulcrum for the blues'."
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