Musician, born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. A white singerharmonica player, he began as a teenager to master the blues style of his hometown through performances with Muddy Waters and Little Walter. He studied at the University of Chicago (195961), then formed the racially integrated Butterfield Blues Band, which pioneered blues-rock, introduced the electric guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop, and backed Bob Dylan's controversial non-acoustic appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. He recorded and toured extensively as a bandleader (196575), appearing at the Monterey Pop (1967) and Woodstock (1969) Festivals. He was featured with Muddy Waters at The Band's farewell concert in 1976, which was filmed as The Last Waltz, and performed sporadically thereafter until his death at age 44.
Paul Butterfield (December 17, 1942 – May 4, 1987) was an American blues harmonica player and singer, and one of the earliest Caucasian exponents of the Chicago-originated electric blues style.
Paul Butterfield, a lawyer’s son, was born and grew up in Chicago. 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 white America occurred when this racially mixed ensemble was made the house band at the Chicago blues club Big John’s.
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band was signed to Elektra Records after adding Michael Bloomfield as lead guitarist. Finally, their self-titled debut, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, was released in 1965. 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.
Soon after the release of The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Lay became sick 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. With the release of The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, in an instant, the image of blues as 'old time music' was gone. Butterfield's band introduced modern 'Chicago-style' blues to mainstream white audiences. In addition, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a root 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 Electric Flag with Nick Gravenites and Bishop began playing lead guitar for The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw (1967 in music). The album included David Sanborn, Bugsy Maugh and Phil Wilson, and proved to be the last of the Butterfield band's commercial successes. 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. 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. 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 (until the arrival of Eric Clapton).
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