The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (album)

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Studio album by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Released October 1965
Recorded September 1965
Genre Electric blues, Blues-rock, Chicago blues
Length 38:15
Label Elektra
Producer Paul Rothchild with Mark Abramson
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band chronology
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
(1965)		 East-West
(1966)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic[1]
Sputnikmusic[2]

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band is the debut album by Paul Butterfield, released in 1965 on Elektra Records, EKS 7294 in stereo, EKL 294 in mono. It peaked at #123 on the Billboard pop albums chart. In 2003, the album was ranked number 476 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, moving up to number 468 in the revised 2012 list, and also is ranked at #11 on Down Beat magazine's list of the top 50 blues albums.[3]

Content

In late 1964, a friend of Elektra house producer Paul Rothchild told him that the "best band in the world was on stage at a blues bar in Chicago." Rothchild took a plane to Chicago to see the Butterfield quartet, and later the same night went to a different club and saw guitarist Mike Bloomfield with a different band.[4] According to Rothchild, it was at his impetus that Paul Butterfield hired Bloomfield as his second guitar alongside Elvin Bishop. The Butterfield rhythm section of Jerome Arnold and Sam Lay had been hired away from Howlin' Wolf.

Sessions were arranged for December, 1964, but these were abandoned for live recordings from the Cafe Au Go Go in New York City after the band's appearance at the Newport Folk Festival. The earlier studio recordings were eventually released on The Original Lost Elektra Sessions in 1995. Upon hearing the live tapes, Rothchild still remained dissatisfied, and the band went into the studio in September 1965 in an attempt to record the album for the third time.[5] The guitar solos were all played by Bloomfield, Bishop relegated to rhythm guitar. Keyboardist Mark Naftalin was drafted in at the September sessions and asked to join the band by Butterfield, expanding it to a sextet.[6]

The album presents band originals and songs in the style of electric Chicago blues. It is one of the first blues albums recorded in America featuring a white singer, trailing a few years behind the British blues movement where white singers and musicians had been performing and recording blues since the 1950s.[7] On October 29, 2001, a reissue of this album remastered by Bob Irwin at Sundazed Studios and coupled with East-West appeared on Rhino WEA UK for the European market.

Track listing

Side one

No. TitleWriter(s) Length
1. "Born in Chicago"  Nick Gravenites 2:55
2. "Shake Your Money-Maker"  Elmore James 2:27
3. "Blues with a Feeling"  Walter Jacobs 4:20
4. "Thank You Mr. Poobah" (instrumental)Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, Mark Naftalin 4:05
5. "Got My Mojo Working"  Muddy Waters 3:30
6. "Mellow Down Easy"  Willie Dixon 2:48

Side two

No. TitleWriter(s) Length
7. "Screamin'" (instrumental)Mike Bloomfield 4:30
8. "Our Love Is Drifting"  Paul Butterfield, Elvin Bishop 3:25
9. "Mystery Train"  Junior Parker, Sam Phillips 2:45
10. "Last Night"  Walter Jacobs 4:15
11. "Look Over Yonders Wall"  James Clark 2:23

Personnel

Charts

Year Chart Position
1966 Billboard Pop Albums 123

References

  1. ↑ The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (album) at AllMusic
  2. ↑ g, manos (20 September 2014). "Review: CD The Paul Butterfield Blues Band - The Paul Butterfield Blues Band Album". Sputnikmusic. Retrieved 2015-01-01.
  3. ↑ Down Beat Top 50 retrieved 28 August 2010
  4. ↑ Doggett, Peter. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band/East West. Warner Strategic Marketing 8122 73571-2, 2001, liner notes, pp.4-5.
  5. ↑ Doggett, liner notes, p. 6.
  6. ↑ Bloomfield biography retrieved 28 August 2010
  7. ↑ R. F. Schwartz, How Britain Got the Blues: the Transmission and Reception of American Blues Style in the United Kingdom (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), ISBN 0-7546-5580-6
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