Paul Butterfield Blues Band

Paul Vaughn Butterfield (December 17, 1942 – May 4, 1987) was an American blues harmonica player and singer. After early training as a classical flautist, he developed an interest in blues harmonica.... He soon began performing with fellow blues enthusiasts Nick Gravenites and Elvin Bishop.

In 1963, he formed the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which recorded several successful albums and was popular on the late-1960s concert and festival circuit, with performances at the Fillmore West, in San Francisco; the Fillmore East, in New York City; the Monterey Pop Festival; and Woodstock. The band was known for combining electric Chicago blues with a rock urgency and for their pioneering jazz fusion performances and recordings. After the breakup of the group in 1971, Butterfield continued to tour and record with the band Paul Butterfield's Better Days, with his mentor Muddy Waters, and with members of the roots-rock group the Band. While still recording and performing, Butterfield died in 1987 at age 44 of a heroin overdose......In 2006, he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. Butterfield and the early members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. Both panels noted his harmonica skills and his contributions to bringing blues music to a younger and broader audience. (ead more at Wikipedia)

Links to Peel
Peel first became aware of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band (later known as the Butterfield Blues Band) while he was living in California. Their first two albums were issued by Elektra in 1965 and 1966 and JP recalled listening to them "back in Berdoo", in an article written for Oz magazine in 1972. Much later he confessed that he might have seen them live but he couldn't quite remember (see comment below). Butterfield's band were certainly gigging in California at that time, their style being very much to the taste of the hippy audiences of San Francisco, so it's quite possible that the DJ could have seen them at a venue such as the Whiskey A Go Go, Los Angeles.

As for their records, Peel played tracks from most of their albums, but he remained fondest of their first, eponymous LP, especially the band's versions of "Shake Your Moneymaker" and "Look Over Yonders Wall". The latter track appeared on the final Perfumed Garden of 14 August 1967 in the programme's "essential nocturnal rave" slot, and at various other moments in Peel's career, the final play of it being on 18 February 2003. While the Butterfield band soon abandoned the hard Chicago blues style popular with British blues groups of the late 1960s and were criticised for it (in International Times in early 1968, Peel described their third LP, The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw, as "ordinary"), the DJ returned to their music later in his life, while largely ignoring the blues bands who had done sessions for Top Gear in its early years.

tbc

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