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Born in Chicago , Butterfield began performing in the Chicago area as a teen, and he soon formed a band with Jerome Arnold and Sam Lay (both of Howlin' Wolf 's band), and Elvin Bishop . The Paul Butterfield Blues Band was signed to Elektra Records after adding Michael Bloomfield as lead guitarist. Their original debut album was scrapped and re-recorded after adding organist Mark Naftalin , Finally, their self-titled debut, '' The Paul Butterfield Blues Band '' was released in 1965 . It had an immediate impact serving as a wakeup call for a generation of musicians. Soon after the first album, Lay became sick and was replaced by Billy Davenport on drums. The Butterfield Band's second album, '' East-West '' ( 1966 In Music ) reflected the music scene's interest in sitar great Ravi Shankar and other eastern musicians. It was also critically acclaimed. These two albums are essential from a musical history perspective. With the release of "The Paul Butterfield Blues Band," in an instant, the image of blues as "old time music" was gone. Butterfield's band introduced modern "Chicago-style" blues to mainstream white audiences who went wild for it, It alerted the music scene to what was coming, taught American rock the blues and how to play an improvised, extended solo. In addition, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the root of Psychedelic (acid) rock is the genuine fusion of eastern and western music styles in Butterfield's East-West . At the height of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band's success, Mike Bloomfield formed Electric Flag with Nick Gravenites and Bishop began playing lead guitar for '' The Resurrection Of Pigboy Crabshaw '' ( 1967 In Music ). The album showed that Butterfield was moving to another musical direction, what with the horn section and a soulful, R&B-influenced groove. The album included David Sanborn , Bugsy Maugh and Phil Wilson , and proved to be the last of the Butterfield band's commercial success. After 1968 's release '' In My Own Dream '', both Elvin Bishop and Mark Naftalin left at the end of the year. Billy Davenport and new guitarist Buzzy Feiten joined the band on its 1969 release '' Keep On Moving '' but was received coolly by the music press. Though the Butterfield band was floundering commercially, it was still popular enough to play at the Woodstock Festival — a truly exalted moment for attendees. Paul Butterfield also took part in an all-star blues jam with Muddy Waters , Otis Spann , Michael Bloomfield , Sam Lay , Donald "Duck" Dunn and Buddy Miles in 1969 which was recorded and released as '' Fathers And Sons ''. After the releases of ''Live'' and ''Sometimes I Just Feel Like Smiling'' in 1970 , Butterfield broke up the band and returned to Woodstock, NY . He formed a new group including guitarist Amos Garrett , Geoff Muldaur , Maria Muldaur , pianist Ronnie Barron and bassist Billy Rich and named it ''Better Days''. This group released '' Paul Butterfield's Better Days '' and '' It All Comes Back '' in 1972 and 1973 , respectively. Though both were far from commercial successes, both albums were received well by critics. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw Butterfield as a solo act and a session musician doing television appearances every now and then and releasing a couple of albums to a small and devoted cult following. Paul Butterfield died from an overdose of Heroin in 1987 . The dramatic impact on the course of rock & roll by the Butterfield Blues Band with the release of their first album, “The Paul Butterfield Blues Band,” and the song “Born In Chicago,” in particular, cannot be overstated. They introduced young white America to the blues, influenced 100s of bands from the Grateful Dead to the Allman Brothers , and launched the reign of Michael Bloomfield as America’s most influential rock guitarist until the arrival of Eric Clapton . It is hard to imagine today, but prior to the summer of 1965, the Beatles’ music (and the rest of the British Invasion) was the stuff of screaming kids. Serious musical aficionados viewed it as “bubblegum.” The music of the “hip,” “in,” college crowd, along with the trend-setting musical elite, was folk music and acoustic protest songs headed up by folk’s king and queen, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez . And folk music’s Mecca was the annual Newport Folk Festival . Paul Butterfield, a white lawyer’s son, grew up in Chicago, developed a love for the blues harmonica, hooked up with white, blues-loving, University of Chicago physics student Elvin Bishop (later of “Fooled Around and Fell In Love” fame), and the two started hanging with the great black blues players like Muddy Waters , Howlin' Wolf , and Junior Wells on Chicago’s South Side . Along the way, Butterfield started a band made up of both black and white bluesmen. In 1963, a watershed event in introducing blues to white America occurred when Butterfield’s racially mixed band was made the house band at Chicago blues club Big John’s. |
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