Conference mr1pst::music

    
    The only thing I've heard from Elvin lately is a big, long, loud belch.
    
    Agree on the Butterfield album, though. It was supreme. Look at the
    horn section, and you'll see a young Dave Sanborn in there...
    
    Peter
    

    Dave Sanborn wasn't on the early albums like "East-West" or the debut
    album "The Paul Butterfield Band". He _was_ on "The Resurrection of
    Pigboy Crabshaw" and "In My Own Dream". I saw Butterfield in the band's
    latter incarnation in '68 but I believe there were only two horn
    players, both black guys, so I think that I didn't see them with
    Sanborn. Gene Dinwiddey maybe.

    --Ron

    
    OK, I stand corrected--thanks. I thought he was in the larger horn
    sections that Butterfield used, however, and that one of them was on
    East-West. Somewhere I have this recollection of a thread that ran
    between the Butterfield Blues Band and the late, great, Electric Flag, 
    apart from Bloomfield. Perhaps a couple of the horn players went from the
    Butterfield Band to EF, but I can't think of their names. Gene
    Dinwiddie sounds familiar, but I can't be sure. This is gonna bug the
    *hell* out of me now. I can even see them, on the back of the 'Long
    Time Comin' album.
    
    Let's See...the EF lineup was Nick Gravenites, Mike Bloomfield, Harvey
    Brooks, Buddy Miles, and....and...WHO ?
    
    "Bring back the Fillmore East". Indeed.
    
    Peter
    
    

    Not sure about the lineage of Butterfield/EF. I have the first EF LP, so
    I'll check it out. But I think the incarnation of the Butterfield Band
    that you're think of ran concurrent with the Buddy Miles Express, which
    I saw in '68/'69 in Boston shortly after I saw Butterfield. I *do* know
    that the Buddy Miles Express was a direct decendent of the Flag. Guitar,
    bass, drums, B-3, and a 5 piece horn section which I'm sure that Sanborn
    was not part of (no white guys). It was one of the best shows I've ever
    seen. They did outstanding, leave-no-survivors covers of Sam and Dave,
    Otis Redding (Cigarettes and Coffee) and Isley Bros (It's Your Thing,
    Wrap It Up). These guys were hot. I unfortunately caught them on the
    west coast a few years later and they had reformed and cooled to a
    cinder.

    BTW, in the early seventies Dinwiddie et al ended up in a band called
    Full Moon, which later evolved into the Larson-Feiten Band.

    Speaking of Paul Butterfield, on my way in to work I caught Mannish Boy
    from The Last Waltz which features Muddy Waters on vocal and Paul
    Butterfield doing about 10 minutes of circular breathing through a
    Hohner Marine Band. Freakin' awsome. Goose bumps.

    --Ron

    
    
        What was the story around the deaths of Butterfield/Bloomfield?
    I guess that one OD'd on heroin and the other OD'd on alcohol, so
    what's the scoop? I just got done reading a pretty good book called
    "Bill Graham Presents". Of course he was a huge west coast promoter
    and I attended many of his shows in San Francisco and Oakland, but
    he was more than a promoter. He was the guy who brought us The
    Fillmore, east and west as well as quite a few tours. The book goes
    into The Butterfield Blues Band a bit and talks about some of the shows
    they did at the Fillmore West. I thought it was pretty good reading.
    
    Tony

    
     A coworker of mine just saw Elvin Bishop play at a blues fest
    in Las Vegas about a month ago.
    
    
    Sean 

    
    THAT'S where I saw Dinwiddie's name last ! I used to be in a band that
    covered a Full Moon tune called 'Malibu', a kind of early-70s-West
    Coast-easy-listening-soft-groove-instrumental. I also remember Gene
    singing a tune called 'To Know' on the same release (had some nice bass
    work in it).
    
    I saw Buddy Miles at Seton Hall University back in 1971, using the same
    lineup with which he recorded 'We Got To Live Together'--it had a 4 or
    5-piece horn section (which smoked), and Andre Lewis on Hammond. I 
    remember some great things, like them doing 'Easy Greasy', 
    'Runaway Child', "Take It Off Him", "Joe Tex" "Them Changes" and "Wrap It 
    Up", but I also remember things like abysmally boring 15-minute
    versions of a couple of ballads like 'Down By the River', with Buddy 
    (all 250 lbs of him) crooning to some stuff in the front row...which I
    suppose could have been funny, had I looked at it that way at the time.
    
    But it was a good horn band, and I suppose it was the closest I'd get 
    to hearing the Flag. (But not as good as the Al Kooper Big
    Band, however.)
    
    All this talk about Butterfield, though, has got my juices flowing. I
    don't have anything in my library by him, yet when I hear his work on
    the radio (public radio out here plays solid blues from 7-12 on Friday
    and Saturday nights), I stop, listen, and more often than not, marvel.
    When he was hot, as the saying goes, he was white-hot. The only person
    I saw live who I could remotely compare with him would be James Cotton.
    
    I think I'll go out today and see what amount of his catalog is on CD
    and pick out one or two.
    
    Peter   

>    covered a Full Moon tune called 'Malibu', a kind of early-70s-West

    Ha! Back in '74 my band covered "Malibu" too. And another, the name of
    which escapes me for now.

    Yes, I seem to recall Buddy doing an unmemorable cover of "Down By the
    River" the second time I saw him. He should have stuck to the Stax-Volt
    stuff.

    --Ron

    re: .4
    >They did outstanding, leave-no-survivors covers of Sam and Dave,
    >Otis Redding (Cigarettes and Coffee) and Isley Bros (It's Your Thing,
    >Wrap It Up).
    
    Just a nitpick, Ron - "Wrap It Up" is a Sam & Dave cover, not the Isley
    Brothers. Great song, I didn't know that the Buddy Miles Express had
    done a version. The only previous cover I'd heard was by the Fabulous
    Thunderbirds.
    
    My own personal favorite Butterfield Blues Band song was "One More
    Heartache", which I think was on one of the later albums (I've got it
    on the "Golden Butter" compilation). A real foot tapper - I challenge
    anyone not to sit up and listen to it after the dynamic bass/handclaps
    intro. The original, FWIW, was by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles.
    
    The Butterfield Blues Band were perhaps the best white blues band of
    the lot (though the rhythm section was black!). I think they were
    probably the first white blues band to win the approval of tough black
    Chicago audiences too.
    
    Dom 

    Getting back to the original post, while "East West" is definitely a
    classic album, it hasn't aged all that well (to my ears).  The
    production is clean but it lacks the ambience of, say, a Chess session
    from the same era.  
    
    The title track helped usher in the "San Francisco Sound" and all sorts
    of overextended rock guitar soloing...in fact, Bloomfield's conception
    is so far ahead of what either Elvin or Butter could muster that
    coupled with the relatively static rhythmic backing (compared to
    something like Cream, for example, where the rhythm section was
    constantly reworking their parts), it just doesn't excite me that much
    anymore.
    
    In one sense, it's more important to me now as history than as an
    album to kick back and listen to.
    
    							Brian

>    Just a nitpick, Ron - "Wrap It Up" is a Sam & Dave cover, not the Isley

    Yeah, Thanks. I realized that after I put in the reply and read it. I
    think Buddy Miles included it on his marginal "Expressway to Your Skull"
    LP.

    "One More Heartache" is a great Butterfield track. Heck, I start tapping
    my feet just thinking the bass line.

    --Ron

    
    I believe there is also a version of it on a live album that was
    recorded around that time--not the one with Carlos Santana in Hawaii,
    but another.
    
    Hey, Brian, how do you define the 'San Francisco' sound in this context
    ? Just curious. (BTW--send me mail if you still want those Amazing 
    Blondel vinyls.)
    
    Peter

    >Getting back to the original post, while "East West" is definitely a
    >classic album, it hasn't aged all that well (to my ears).  The
    >production is clean but it lacks the ambience of, say, a Chess session
    >from the same era.  
    
    I don't totally agree there, Brian. To me, it sounds like real
    hard-driving Chicago blues ("Mellow Down Easy", for example) - probably
    the sort of stuff I'd play to people who insist that whites can't play
    the blues. Maybe the early Stones and the Yardbirds were more exciting
    on stage than the Butterfield Blues Band, and Canned Heat were more 
    inventive (title track to East-West apart), but I don't think any white
    band has ever come up with a more a authentic Chicago South Side sound.
    
    As for the "San Francisco sound" (and I'm more than open to correction
    from Brian and anyone else), I think it was marked by a very loose,
    jamming feel during the instrumental phases (witness the Airplane and,
    especially, the Dead). Also, many of the guitarists (Garcia, Cipollina)
    threw away the book and lumped in strange scales (Indian raga, etc.) to
    "spice up" blues-based jams.
    
    One thing's certain: you can bet that Mike Bloomfield angered a few
    purists with his playing on the title track to East-West! He did a
    similar thing on the famous Kooper/Bloomfield/Stills "Supersession"
    album a few years later: a handful of fairly standard blues jams and
    suddenly he starts experimenting with some weird modal scales on "His
    Holy Modal Majesty".
    
    Worth hearing - great player.
    
    Dom
    

    Re: .12, SF
    
    I meant the long, raga-influenced soloing that became popular there for
    awhile.  I can't think of another extended track that precedes "East
    West" in the rock or blues idiom.  Bloomfield was *huge* in SF for many
    years.  Elvin Bishop also based himself there for awhile.
    
    Re: .13
    
    Well, the band plays well, but the *sound* is kinda gutless.  Too
    antiseptic, I mean you can even hear all the instruments clearly  8^)
    
    The BBB rhythm section is *way* better than the generally stiff Uk
    bands like the Yardbirds.
    
    Canned Heat more inventive?  In what way, they knew what a fuzzbox was
    so they used it?  8^)  8^)  8^)
    
    To repeat: I think it's a great album in most respects, but the title
    tune goes on too long for me to listen to it very often, unlike the old
    days when herbal influences increased my attention span 8^)  8^)
    
    							Brian

    I tend to agree with Brian regarding the _early_ Butterfield recordings
    lacking ambience. The tracks do tend to have a sterile quality to them.
    But that's typical of many of the blues albums that I've heard that were
    recorded in the mid-sixties. Butterfield's "Resurrection of Pigboy
    Crabshaw" and "In My Own Dream" are better sounding to me.
    
    A good example of this is the first Siegel-Schwall Band LP. Having seen
    them live I thought it to be pretty flat sounding (like it was recorded
    at 10 AM), although it contained a lot of good material. Their second
    LP, however, was completely different. For instance, one side contained
    just 2 long smoking cuts. They seemed determined to avoid whatever
    happened on the first album.

    --Ron

    
    OK. I thought you were somehow referring to it as a regional style 
    within the context of blues playing rather than the 'eastern intrigue' 
    school of extended soloism. There were a lot of blues-influenced 
    musicians in SF and the general area in the late 60s, and I was 
    curious if you (or someone else) had defined a particular style that
    characterized their sound.
     
    I have to inject this here. After 24 years, I still love Mike 
    Bloomfield's playing on the Live Super Session album. The perfect
    marriage of talent, a Les Paul, and a Fender Princeton. 
    
    Peter

    
    Re: .14
>Well, the band plays well, but the *sound* is kinda gutless.  Too
>antiseptic, I mean you can even hear all the instruments clearly  8^)
    
I know what you mean by "antiseptic" in this context, it's just that I
personally wouldn't apply it to Butterfield and co.'s first two albums! It's
funny how some blues albums really jump out at you, while others seem totally
lifeless. Great guitarist as he was, I never found that Albert Collins on
record did much for me; his backup band, with Johnny Gaydon on bass and A.C.
Reed on sax always seemed a bit too funky and smooth for me. Give me Hound Dog
Taylor every time!

>The BBB rhythm section is *way* better than the generally stiff Uk
>bands like the Yardbirds.

Actually, I never did say that the Yardbirds rhythm section was the bee's
knees. To be fair though, it's a pretty tough job finding a recording of theirs
where you can hear the drums/bass clearly! It was usually pitter-patter drums
and booming, muffled bass. I originally cited them as being a very *exciting*
band (and I think "Five Live Yardbirds", muddy as it may sound, conveys that
excitement pretty well). Musically, none of the band were a patch on Clapton in
the early days (Keith Relf probably had the "unblackest" blues  voice of all
time!), but I'd give my right arm to have seen them at the Crawdaddy,
c.1964-65. The story goes that every time the band took the stage. people
immediately put their glasses on the floor, because the done thing was to dance
on the tables! Sheer pandemonium.

Re: .16
>I have to inject this here. After 24 years, I still love Mike 
>Bloomfield's playing on the Live Super Session album. The perfect
>marriage of talent, a Les Paul, and a Fender Princeton. 

I *still* haven't heard that album (it's called "The Live Adventures of Al
Kooper and Mike Bloomfield", right?). Did Bloomfield always use a Fender
Princeton or did you read it in the liner notes?

The studio "Supersession" album was one of the first albums I ever bought. It
was certainly my first taste of Mike Bloomfield, although I was already
reasonably familiar with Al Kooper and Steve Stills. Good album overall, a
little patchy on the Steve Stills side (Side 2) maybe. I particularly love 
Bloomfield's playing on Ragavoy/Schuman's "Stop".

One album I never picked up was the Butterfield/Hammond/Dr. John effort
"Triumvirate". Anyone recommend it?

Dom

    
    Yeah, the album was always shortened to 'Live Adventures', and everyone 
    I knew called it 'Live Super Session'.`I believe the full title is "The
    Live Adventures of Kooper and Bloomfield". John Kahn and Skip Prokop
    round out the rhythm section on bass and drums, and there are some
    guest appearances by Elvin Bishop ("Ain't Gonna Spend Another Lonely
    Night"), and Carlos Santana. I remember that Steve Miller and I think
    Paul Brown also played, but were not recorded on the album.
    
    There are some beautiful performances on this thing...like Bloomfield's
    solo and Kooper's vocal on an arrangement of 'The 59th Street Bridge 
    Song' (used as the show opener), and things like 'Together 'Till the
    End of Time', 'That's All Right', 'Green Onions', 'The Weight' and a
    killer version of 'Don't Throw Your Love on Me So Strong'.
    
    The Fender Princeton thing was something I read about, a long time ago.
    I don't have the vinyl anymore, but I do remember the back containing
    some small pictures of the stage, and I think you can see it on there
    as well. And I agree with you about 'Stop'. 'Albert's Shuffle', too. 
    
    I still see this on vinyl on occasion in used record stores, so it's 
    around in one form or another, besides the tape in my car.
         
    Peter
    

     Anyone know if Supersession is out on CD? I checked the Noteworthy
     catalog under every heading I could think of and couldn't find it.

     Neal