With a style honed in the gritty blues bars of Chicago's South Side,
the Butterfield Blues Band were instrumental in bringing the sound of authentic Chicago blues to a young white audience in the mid-'60s, and although they weren't a particularly huge commercial success, their influence has been enduring and pervasive.
The group was formed when singer and harmonica player
Paul Butterfield met guitarist and fellow University of Chicago student
Elvin Bishop in the early '60s. Bonding over a love of the blues, the pair managed to hijack
Howlin' Wolf's rhythm section (bassist
Jerome Arnold and drummer
Sam Lay) and began gigging in the city's blues houses, where they were spotted in 1964 by producer
Paul Rothchild, who quickly had them signed to Elektra Records. Guitar whiz
Mike Bloomfield joined the band just before they entered the studio to record their debut album (and in time to be on-stage with the group when they backed up
Bob Dylan at his infamous electric set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival). Organist and pianist
Mark Naftalin also came on board during the sessions for the self-titled
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which was released by Elektra in late 1965.
Lay became ill around this time, and his drum chair was taken by
Billy Davenport, whose jazz and improvisational background came in handy during the recording of the band's second album, the
Ravi Shankar-influenced
East-West, released in 1966.
Bloomfield departed to form
Electric Flag in 1967, and
Bishop handled all the lead guitar on their more R&B-oriented third album,
The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw, which was released later that year and featured an entirely new rhythm section of
Bugsy Maugh on bass and Phil Wilson on drums.
Bishop and
Naftalin left the group following the recording of 1968's
In My Own Dream, and
Butterfield drafted in 19-year-old guitarist
Buzzy Feiten to help with the recording of 1969's
Keep On Moving, which also featured the return of drummer
Billy Davenport. After a live album in 1970 and the lackluster
Sometimes I Just Feel Like Smilin', released in 1971,
Butterfield put the band to rest.
In retrospect,
the Butterfield Blues Band had pretty much put their cards on the table in their first two albums, both of which are classics of the era, featuring a heady mixture of folk, rock, psychedelia, and even Indian classical music played over an embedded base of good old Chicago blues. Drummer
Sam Lay died in Chicago on January 29, 2022; he was 86 years old. ~ Steve Leggett