Free White Bicycles by Joe Boyd Page B

of mine for writing The Country Blues , about the early days of blues recording. When I told him I was going to Chicago, he said, ‘Well, there’s a band there you have to hear.’
    ‘Come on, Sam, I know all about Magic Sam, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush and Junior Wells,’ naming the then obscure South Side band leaders I assumed he was talking about.
    ‘No, it’s none of those. There’s a band with white kids and black guys, led by a harmonica player called Paul Butterfield. You should make a point to hear them,’ and he named a North Side bar where they appeared a few nights a week.
    I rang Rothchild the next morning and recounted my conversation with Charters. ‘I’ll meet you there,’ he said immediately. Someone in California had told him about a kid named Butterfield who was an amazing harmonica player. By the time I arrived at the club straight from the bus station, it was eleven o’clock and one set was already over. Paul, who had flown, was sitting in a booth with Butterfield and guitarist Elvin Bishop talking contract terms.
    Listening to the second set, it was clear their music was unlike anything in Boston, New York or London. The combination of South Side veterans Sam Lay and Jerome Arnold with Bishop on guitar and Butterfield on harmonica and lead vocals was completely original. It was Chicago blues, hard edged and raw with nothing ‘folk’ or ‘pop’ about it.
    I told Paul I could see only one problem. Elvin Bishop was a good rhythm player, a decent singer, a nice guy, a close friend of Butter’s and a key to the group’s conception and sound. But as a lead guitarist he was just not… heroic . I had been telling Paul about the charismatic role a young guitar player for John Mayall’s Blues Breakers named Eric Clapton had in the mythology of English blues bands. To be perfect , the band needed a guitar hero.
    I mentioned the white kid who had sat in with Muddy Waters: he seemed pretty intense and heroic. I hadn’t been that knocked out with his playing, but in this context… I had first met Mike Bloomfield in the basement of Bob Koester’s Jazz Record Mart during the Dexedrine-propelled summer trip to Chicago. Geoff, Warwick and I were rifling through Koester’s collection of 78s one afternoon, taping the best ones on to my primitive Wollensak recorder, and Bloomfield sat with us for a while, chatting about blues and playing a few things on an acoustic guitar.
    After the show, Paul and I took Butter down the street for a drink. We told him of our concerns about Elvin and the need for a strong lead guitarist as a foil to his harmonica solos. There was no talk of replacing Elvin, just adding another element. I asked whether he knew Bloomfield. ‘Sure, I know Mike,’ he said, ‘he has a regular gig at a bar in Evanston. I think he’s there tomorrow night.’
    We picked Butterfield up the following evening in my rented car and he guided us north along Lake Shore Drive to a rowdy club with a stage behind the bar. Bloomfield was in mid-set, but during a pause Butter motioned to his harmonica and Mike beckoned him on to the stage. As they started jamming on a Freddy King instrumental, Paul and I exchanged looks. This was the magic dialectic, Butterfield and Bloomfield. It sounded like a firm of accountants but we were convinced it was the key to fame and fortune for the band and for us.
    When the set ended, Mike joined us in the booth. He was a cheerful, open-faced, big-boned kid who had devoted his young life to the blues. Rothchild laid out the deal: join the Butterfield Band, sign a contract with Elektra, come to New York, make a record, be a star. Bloomfield hesitated for about ten seconds before nodding his agreement. Paul headed back to New York to draw up the contracts and I went north to try and peddle some Muddy Waters concerts.
    Rothchild swung into action immediately, bringing Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman to Chicago to see the group and planning the recording. Things happened very