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B/B/B
by Tom Ellis III By the end of 1965 the Butterfield Blues Band had undergone the first of a series of personnel changes that would continue on throughout the next six years, each marking a subtle shift in the band's sound and direction. When Mike Bloomfield joined in early 1965, he probably did so with some trepidation. Butterfield was aware of Bloomfield's playing from his long-standing gig at the Chicago club Big John's, but it wasn't until the band was about to go into the studio to record its first effort with producer Paul Rothchild (recently released as The Lost Elektra Sessions) that Butterfield felt the need for a lead guitarist. Even as accomplished as he was on guitar, Bloomfield viewed Butterfield as a musician at another level. "When I was around 18 years old, I had been sort of messing around, and Paul sort of accepted me," Bloomfield remembered in 1968 for Rolling Stone. "Well, he didn't really accept me at all, he just sort of thought of me as a folkie Jew boy, because Paul was there, and I was just sort of a white kid hanging around and not really playing the shit right, but Paul was there, man." And although their personalities might have been very different, their dedication to the music forged a common bond. "I didn't dig Butter, you know. I didn't like him," Bloomfield said. "He was just too hard a cat for me. But I went to make the record, and the record was groovy, and we made a bunch more records. One thing led to another, and he said, 'Do you want to join the band?' And it was the best band I'd ever been in. Sammy Lay was the best drummer I ever played with. Whatever I didn't like about Paul as a person, his musicianship was more than enough to make up for it. He was just so heavy, he was so much. Everything I dug in and about the blues, Paul was." Bloomfield's brother, Allen, thinks "Paul fascinated and intimidated Michael. Paul was to Michael a pretty threatening guy, because if you screwed with him he would fight back. Mike would use his mouth to try to avoid a problem, but Paul would never buckle under. So Mike acquiesced to that 'potency' that Paul had. But he immediately recognized the virtuosity of his playing -- he was in a league with the best of the Chicago guys. There was just an attitudinal problem between the two -- Paul was the hard ball bearing and Mike the soft marshmallow. It took a certain period of time before Paul recognized that underneath that veneer there was a sincerity and an earnestness. Mike had to be the very best he could be on his ax. And when he finally heard that, he let Michael do whatever he wanted. That was the common denominator. He saw Mike as a player." By the summer of that year, any skepticism Butterfield had about Bloomfield had dissolved, and the musical communication between the two was obvious. "I remember sitting with Paul at a bar, probably the Bitter End, across Bleeker Street from the Cafe au Go-Go," notes Mark Naftalin, "and he told me that there was no guitarist in the country he'd rather have with him than Mike Bloomfield. I thought the band was screaming then. The effect of Paul and Mike mixing and matching was dizzying, and Mike and Elvin Bishop's guitars, when they were working together, made a beautiful section." Naftalin himself became the sixth band member. Although Butterfield and Bishop were familiar with him during his days as a student at the University of Chicago, it was while he was studying theory and composition at the Mannes College of Music in New York City that he was asked to join (initiating a long relationship between Mannes and the Butterfield bands). "The band was in the studio working on the first Elektra album," he remembers, "and I came by one of the sessions, hoping to sit in. Paul and Elvin knew me a little and had heard me play -- I used to pound it out on an unamplified acoustic piano when they played at U. of C. twist parties, and that summer I had sat in, or played along, with the band, once again on unamplified acoustic piano, for a couple of sets at the Cafe au Go-Go in the Village. On this particular day Elvin wasn't around as the session began, so they put the organ on his track and tried one with me playing. This was 'Thank You Mr. Poobah.' The band seemed to like the sound with the organ, and Paul asked me to keep playing. Elvin arrived, and we shared his track. During the course of the session Paul invited me to join the band and to go on the road with them to Philadelphia that weekend. I accepted." Eight of the 11 songs on the first album, including "Thank You Mr. Poobah," were recorded at that session. The band, now six pieces, was soon back in Chicago for gigs at Big John's for six weeks, then returned to the Unicorn Pub in Boston. It was there that the Butterfield Blues Band began working on a new experimental song that would alter the band's performances and radically expand its reputation for years to come. Billy Davenport started playing drums in 1939 at the age of six, when he found a set of drumsticks in his South Side Chicago neighborhood. A child prodigy, he was blessed with parents that were extremely supportive of his talents, and during the next 20 years he pursued life as a jazz drummer in groups in high school and the armed forces, intermixed with straight gigs with small swing combos that played Chicago's active jazz scene. "I grew up on Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa," Davenport says. "In my neighborhood there were all kinds of clubs, so I got to hear Billy Eckstine's big band, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker -- all those people. At the Persian Ballroom -- I think it was 50 cents to get in -- everyone played there." Davenport was also very into Art Blakey and Max Roach. "I saw Gene Ammons and once got into a jam session with Sonny Stitt." But by the mid-1950s a change was underway in Chicago -- jazz was waning. "I realized around then that you couldn't make it in jazz unless you got with a big band. So I fell to the blues. Like a guy told me one time, 'Take what you know and add to it, and it'll come out alright.' " By 1961 he was married and playing with Otis Rush. "I played with Otis for about a year, and then I went with a harmonica player named Little Mack Simmons, and through him I made contact with Little Walter. I used to sit in and play with him at his gig after I finished up with Little Mack Simmons. But Walter never liked me too much. He said I did too many rolls -- the kind of blues he played wasn't it." Other gigs with Junior Wells, Syl Johnson and again with Rush followed. "Then around the end of 1964 I met this young man named Paul Butterfield. I was working at Pepper's Lounge and he'd come down and we'd talk, but he never sat in until one Tuesday night -- jam night." "But it wasn't Butterfield that got me in the band -- it was Mike Bloomfield. He came down one night, and we talked for about an hour. He said some things were going on with the band, and he wanted to know if I was available. I said yes, but I didn't know I wouldn't like the road so much. In early 1965 they were working at Big John's, and I sat in with the band once, but Sam Lay was still with the band. Later that year, after they came back from the Newport Festival, Paul and Elvin came down -- I was working with Jr. Wells -- and talked to me about playing with them. They said they were playing more of a rock groove or swing groove. I said, 'Call me.'" | 
