(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

Mike Bloomfield was one of the white musicians who changed the Chicago blues scene.

He had cut his teeth at a very young age in the Butterfield Blues Band, founded in 1963 by Paul Butterfield, a white harmonica player born and raised among African Americans on Chicago’s South Side. On that historic album, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (1965), produced by Paul Rothchild and a catalyst for the blues revival, Bloomfield invented a guitar technique never heard before—one that, through its long, insistent solos and raga-like inflections, would exert enormous influence on later guitarists. The band also included young Elvin Bishop and Mark Naftalin, while the rhythm section featured two former members of Howlin’ Wolf’s band: Sam Lay and Jerome Arnold.

At the Newport Festival in July 1965, Bloomfield accompanied Bob Dylan on electric guitar, challenging the dogma of folk music. On the album Butterfield Blues Band (Elektra, 1965), released a few months later, Bloomfield delivered his first great solo: Blues With A Feeling. Meanwhile, he had also played with Dylan on Highway 61 Revisited, another album that taught much of the world how to play folk and blues in a rock idiom. His work on Like a Rolling Stone (recorded in June 1965, one month before Newport and two months before the album’s release) and Tombstone Blues is legendary. By the end of the year, Bloomfield had adopted the Gibson Les Paul Standard guitar, which allowed him to incorporate more unorthodox reverb and vibrato effects into his arsenal.

East West (Elektra, 1966), the second album by the Paul Butterfield Band, again produced by Paul Rothchild, is more experimental and includes the long jam East-West, which aimed to fuse African American music and Indian music through the catalytic force of free-jazz improvisation. The first five minutes remain rooted in the blues, but from there Bloomfield ventures into raga and jazz, eventually engaging in a dialogue with the other guitar (Elvin Bishop’s)—an idea later developed by the Allman Brothers. Bloomfield instead showcases his blues vocabulary on I Got A Mind to Give Up Living.

These two albums by the Paul Butterfield Band established the blues revival in the United States on foundations quite different from those of British bands (such as John Mayall), which had remained anchored in the 1950s. Butterfield and Bloomfield had grown up listening to 1960s blues and took flight from that far more electric and driving style (Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, etc.).

Butterfield recorded another outstanding album without Bloomfield, The Resurrection Of Pigboy Crabshaw (Elektra, 1968), in a pop-jazz style (featuring David Sanborn on sax) similar to that of Electric Flag, which Bloomfield had just formed in San Francisco. (Butterfield would die in 1987.)

Having moved to San Francisco in 1967, at the height of “flower power,” Bloomfield formed Electric Flag with organist Barry Goldberg, drummer Buddy Miles, singer Nick Gravenites, and a horn section. It was one of the first “horn bands” in rock and was often classified alongside the pop-jazz of Blood Sweat & Tears, although their first recording was the soundtrack to the film Trip (Edsel, 1967), which boldly blends electronics, noise, psychedelia, country, ragtime, and blues, and although the best tracks on A Long Time Comin’ (Columbia, 1968), their first official album, were blues classics rather than jazz pieces. Bloomfield turns Howlin’ Wolf’s Killing Floor into a brutal tirade and duets with Miles on Texas.

The band participated in the Grape Jam by Moby Grape, and in 1968 Bloomfield also played on one side of Supersession (CBS, 1968), organized by Al Kooper (the other side featuring Stephen Stills, formerly of Buffalo Springfield). Bloomfield contributed a ferocious Albert’s Shuffle and the nine-minute His Holy Modal Majesty, perhaps his absolute masterpiece, sharing the same raga-jazz spirit as Light My Fire by the Doors. Stop may contain his finest—or at least most authentically blues—solo. The follow-up Live Adventures (1969), shared with Kooper, was already more predictable, though it still includes the passionate solo in I Wonder Who. For a few years, blues-inspired jam sessions were in vogue. Triumvirate (Columbia, 1973) found him collaborating with John Hammond and Dr. John.

Bloomfield’s solo album It’s Not Killing Me (Columbia, 1969) was instead a disappointment, a watered-down, lounge-style blues-rock. He did better on Gravenites’ album My Labors (Columbia, 1969), with Mark Naftalin again on piano. The album opens in traditional fashion with You’re Killing My Love, but its highlight is the nine-minute Moon Tune (composed by Gravenites), another showcase for Bloomfield.

His last great solo appears on Janis Joplin’s album I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama: One Good Man.

Devoted to the blues until his death, Bloomfield spent the rest of the decade squandering his talent on mediocre albums such as Try It Before You Buy It (One Way, 1973), repeatedly attempting to recreate the success of the “supersession”: Mill Valley Session (Polydor, 1976) and KGB (Polydor, 1976), with Ric Grech, Barry Goldberg, and Carmine Appice, were the last of these efforts. Plagued by alcoholism, he was reduced to composing soundtracks for pornographic films.

He partially recovered with Analine (Takoma, 1977), which features several outstanding acoustic instrumental tracks and seemed to herald a new career. Count Talent And The Originals (Clouds, 1977) reunited him with Naftalin and Gravenites and brought him back to the eclectic style of Electric Flag. Bloomfield appeared to regain some dignity with later works such as Michael Bloomfield (Takoma, 1978), though it revisits only traditional material (the sole exception being the instrumental Gospel Truth), Between The Hard Place and The Ground (Takoma, 1979), Living In The Fast Lane (AJK, 1980), Cruisin’ For A Bruisin’ (Takoma, 1981), and Gospel Duets (Kickin’ Mule, 1981).

Bloomfield died in 1981 of an overdose.

Bloomfield (Columbia, 1983) is an anthology spanning his entire career.

Among the many posthumous releases, the best is perhaps Red Hot & Blue (Universe, 2000), which collects previously unreleased recordings from 1975–77.

His buddy Barry Goldberg died in 2025.