Mike Bloomfield … Born in Chicago

Sometime back in the late 1960s I came across The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. I reckon that I may have been about 16 and was playing in a band called The Woz. By 1969 I had run into some new musicians who were into Chicago Blues which until then I knew very little about apart from listening to English Blues bands who had been inspired by the real thing and then gave us back their version. Bands like John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack even Jethro Tull. The real thing wasn’t so flashy and took a bit of getting used to. I was yet to even really know who Muddy Waters, Junior Wells and Buddy Guy were but the English bands precipitated a renaissance of interest in The Blues. I never really learned how to play the Blues properly but could pull off a basic version of it and went on to be in The Langford Lever Blues band as well as The Adderley Smith Blues Band. My playing style was somewhat influenced by Mike Bloomfield’s playing o to that extent he was an important musician in my life. I listened to The Butterfield Band, The Electric Flag and The Super Sessions album that he made with Al Kooper and Harvey Brookes which was essentially side 1 of the album and recorded as a jam in 6 hours in 1968.