Mike Bloomfield - The Butterfield Band

The Butterfield Band

During those haunts, he met Paul Butterfield and Elvin Bishop, ran his own small blues club, the Fickle Pickle, and was discovered by legendary Columbia Records producer/scout John Hammond, who signed him to the label at a time when the label had had no recent association with blues.

Bloomfield recorded a few sessions for Columbia in 1964 (which weren't released until after his death), but ended up joining the original Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which included Bishop and Howlin' Wolf rhythm section alumni Sam Lay and Jerome Arnold.

Their exuberant, electric Chicago blues inspired a generation of white bluesmen, with Bloomfield's work on the band's self-titled debut, and the subsequent record East-West, bringing wide acclaim to the young guitarist. Especially popular was "East-West's" thirteen-minute title track, an instrumental combining elements of blues, jazz, psychedelic rock, and the classical Indian raga. Bloomfield's innovative solos were at the forefront of the ground-breaking piece. He had been inspired to create "East-West" after an all-night LSD trip according to one legend, but a subsequent anthology of the Butterfield band included a booklet saying Bloomfield had also been influenced by John Coltrane and other blues-friendly free-style jazz musicians, plus traditional Indian and Eastern music in creating the piece. (The original title for the piece was "The Raga.")

Bloomfield was also a session musician, gaining wide recognition for his work with Bob Dylan during his first explorations into electric music. Bloomfield's sound was a major part of Dylan's change of style, especially on Highway 61 Revisited; his guitar style melded the blues influence with rock and folk. Al Kooper has since revealed – in the booklet accompanying the posthumous Don't Say That I Ain't Your Man: Essential Blues, 1964-1969 – that Dylan had invited Bloomfield to play with him permanently but that Bloomfield rejected the invitation in order to continue playing the blues with the Butterfield band. But Bloomfield and fellow Butterfield members Jerome Arnold and Sam Lay appeared at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, backing Dylan for his controversial first live electric performance.

Rock critic Dave Marsh, in Rock and Roll Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles of All Time, claimed Bloomfield to have been the lead guitarist for Mitch Ryder's hit "Devil With The Blue Dress." However, Marsh's claim is disputed by Bloomfield collaborator Barry Goldberg, who played keyboards on that track. For the online bio, "The Bloomfield Notes" (#6), Barry states that Mike played on the following recording after "Devil", and "Sock it to Me", another track mistakenly credited to Bloomfield.