VIA PRESS RELEASE | The late Michael Bloomfield was one of the great guitar-slingers to emerge from the fertile Chicago club scene of the mid-sixties.
It was he, alongside Elvin Bishop, who contributed the fiery lead guitars in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Not only that, he was he contributed sizzling Telecaster guitar wails for Bob Dylan the day he went “electric” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Bloomfield played on many of Dylan’s classic mid-sixties recordings, also played on the superb Al Kooper helmed Supersession album. Bloomfield played in The Electric Flag (who made their live debut at the epochal Monterey Pop Festival in 1967), too, as well as making a bunch of well-received solo recordings.
Bloomfield’s career was derailed because of substance abuse problems – which made him both unreliable and ultimately claimed his life in February 1981, at a mere thirty-seven years of age. In recent years, though, Bloomfield’s stock has risen, and this Retrospective is a reissue of one of the first and best collections of Bloomfield’s work, with tracks interlaced with snippets of interviews given by the man himself.
Including tracks such as his smoking instrumental version of the Howard Tate soul stomper, “Stop” the swinging “Albert’s Blues,” and some material from Electric Flag as well as choice solo recordings, this Retrospective distils the purest essence of the late, great Michael Bloomfield.
