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East West is the Butterfield Blues Band's masterpiece, but this first and self-titled album is no slouch itself.This is classic Chicago blues--few of the tunes are origonals. But with a guitar cannon like Mike Bloomfield, this is an early example of what blues can sound like when a loud player with rock pepper applies himself to the music. The album gives you both a old style blues nuance and the edgy feel of the rising rock scene of the 1960s.Butterfields band evolved from here all the way to Woodstock, but this is one hell of a starting point.
And even though EAST-WEST was a relatively bold experiment, there's a something to be said for sticking to your roots (but, of course, in those heady times no one was: there was just too much to check out, to explore and to absorb).You know the original liner notes (included here) have all the pretensions of the times (more verbiage spent than even I'm wont to do). I stumbled across that record and its follow up EAST/WEST a few years later, and was the proud owner of both for a while (who knows where they disappeared to, it was the 60s after all).So why didn't I remember the song. I was there as a Tracy fan, I gotta admit, but I had lots and lots of respect for the guys in the band too, most living legends of the "Fathers and Sons" era. avoided the traps and trappings that undercut other white blues singers who were embracing acoustic, country blues.
I figured I must have heard Nick the Greek do it in some earlier incarnation.But actually, of course, it was from the classic 1965 debut album by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. A few years ago, I caught the Chicago Blues Reunion tour with Nick Gravenites, Sam Lay, Barry Goldberg, Tracy Nelson, Corky Siegel and Harvey Mandel. But the gist of Pete Welding's commentary is actually dead-on accurate and true. Yeah, the breezy machismo of the tune can be a bit irritating, but it makes its statement. Well, it's a pretty good blues tune--a bit heavy on the bravado, lyrically, but really OK--but I gotta admit that while I had more than passing interest in urban blues, I was really much more impressed with the more obvious experimentalism of EAST-WEST (which I actually may have heard first, come to think of it).Yeah, I preferred Cream to John Mayall too.But that was then.
By embracing contemporary URBAN blues, Butterfield and co. These guys were from the streets of Chicago. That revue band often opened their shows w/ Nick Graventites "Born In Chicago," which I knew sounded awfully familiar, but I was struggling to place it. They didn't have to deal quite so much with the authenticity question.Urban kids, of whatever race, doing urban blues made sense. Now I find myself listening to this and some of the other earnest efforts by young white bluesmen of the era and hearing it all w/ new ears as it were.
This straightforward Chicago style blues sounds awfully good to me now. The reason "Born In Chicago" SHOULD have stuck in my mind better is that in Butterfield's case, it just happened to be the truth. The grit was real, and the playing was damn good.
Mike's solos are fluid and tasteful. The Butterfield Blues Band lineup on this CD played with authority and conviction. In my opinion, this is one of the greatest blues CDs ever made.There aren't many recordings that sound fresh after forty-some years, but this is one of them. And the same can be said for the other soloists, most specifically Paul Butterfield, master of the blues harp. Mike Bloomfield is at his peak here. I believe he's playing a Fender Telecaster guitar. The songs are all excellent and something new and interesting can be detected in every listening.
Along with Earl Hooker's "The Moon Is Rising", this album is a Chicago Blues masterpiece. I highly recommend this album to anybody interested in Chicago Blues, especially those coming to the Blues from a Classic Rock or Clapton-related background. His admiration for the great Son House was more than obvious.
Guitarist Michael Bloomfield plays some incendiary lead guitar, and was taken from us much too early. He deserves to be ranked up there with Clapton and Allman in terms of white guys who play Blues and/or Blues-Rock. Though the lead singer and harmonica player is white, his singing is more than credible and his harmonica playing is excellent.
Recently, rock guitar magazines have started to talk more about Bloomfield and his wonderful talents, which is a great thing. His death is a tragedy in the truest sense of the world. I recently viewed a video of him at one of the many folk festivals during the 1960s, perhaps Newport, talking about how his father is rich, his family is Jewish, he had a Bar Mitzvah, and how he'll never be able to play or sing like Son House.
Every track on this album is fun, full of energy and masterfully played. My personal favorite on the album is the band's cover of Elmore James' "Shake Your Moneymaker", which is a great deal different than the original, but in a good way.
There is a note on the back of the original album cover advising to play loud for maximum effect. This was an amazing album when it was released in 1965, and it is now. While the vinyl seems superior to the CD [I have 2 copies of the vinyl]they are both amazing and full of energy. That is just as true now as it was then.These are the guys that played with Dylan at times. That is, Sam Lay, Jerome Arnold, Mike Bloofield.
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