Paul Butterfield (
December 17, 1942 –
May 4, 1987) was an
American blues harmonica player and singer, and one of the earliest white exponents of the
Chicago-originated electric blues style.
The son of an affluent lawyer, Paul Butterfield was born and raised in
Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. After studying classical flute as a teen, he developed a love for the blues harmonica, and hooked up with white, blues-loving, University of Chicago physics student
Elvin Bishop (later of “Fooled Around and Fell In Love” fame). The two started hanging around great black blues players like
Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and
Junior Wells. Butterfield and Bishop soon formed a band with
Jerome Arnold and
Sam Lay (both of
Howlin' Wolf's band). In 1963, a watershed event in introducing blues to a white audience in Chicago occurred when this racially mixed ensemble was made the house band at Big John’s, a folk music club in the Old Town district on Chicago's north side. Butterfield was still underage (as was guitarist
Mike Bloomfield, who was already working there in his own band).
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band was signed to
Elektra Records after adding Bloomfield as lead guitarist. Their original debut album was scrapped, then re-recorded after the addition of 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.
Prior to the summer of 1965, the Beatles’ music (and much of the rest of the British Invasion) was considered by many as on a par with the screaming kids who attended their concerts. Serious musical aficionados viewed much of rock and roll as “bubblegum music.” The music of the “hip,” “in,” college crowd, along with the trend-setting musical elite, was folk music and acoustic protest songs, as played by folk’s king and queen,
Bob Dylan and
Joan Baez. And folk music’s Mecca was the annual
Newport Folk Festival. At the Newport Folk Festival of 1965, Dylan closed the event with the help of Butterfield's band (sans Butterfield), a move considered controversial at the time by much of the folk music establishment.
After the release of
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Lay accidentally shot himself (he subsequently recovered and played drums for
Muddy Waters and
James Cotton among others) and
Billy Davenport took over 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. Although only moderately successful commercially, it was also critically acclaimed.
These two albums are essential from a music-history perspective. With the release of
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the image of blues as 'old time music' was gone. Butterfield's band introduced modern 'Chicago-style' blues to mainstream white audiences. It alerted the music scene to what was coming, taught American rockers the blues and how to play an improvised, extended solo. In addition, one of the roots 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
The Electric Flag with
Nick Gravenites and Bishop began playing lead guitar on
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, Brother Gene Dinwiddie,
Bugsy Maugh and
Phil Wilson, and proved to be the last of the Butterfield band's commercial successes.
In the same year, the
Monterey International Pop Festival would showcase The Butterfield Blues Band, along with The Electric Flag, Ravi Shankar, and many others.
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 which 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 — although their performance was not included in the resulting
Woodstock film. In 1969 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, 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. He also toured as a duo with
Rick Danko, formerly of
The Band, with whom he performed for the last time in Pittsburgh. Paul Butterfield died in his home Los Angeles
1987 from a heart attack brought on by years of drug and alcohol use one week after his final performance.
The 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, was pivotal. They, along with British acts
The Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and others, including Butterfield's main competitor in Chicago, singer/harp player
Charlie Musselwhite, helped introduce young white America to the blues, influencing hundreds of bands from the
Grateful Dead to the
Allman Brothers, and launched the brief reign of Michael Bloomfield as America’s most influential rock guitarist. “Born In Chicago” was covered by the
Pixies for the 1990 Elektra compilation
Rubáiyát. 
