East West

Description

Singer/harmonica player Paul Butterfield and his band were from Chicago and well-schooled in that citys urban blues scene. Their first two albums of modernized Chicago blues not only created a critical stir, but led to large-scale interest in electric blues amongst the then-embryonic hippie generation. Members of the Butterfield band (most notably guitar whiz Mike Bloomfield) also played a key role in rock history by helping Bob Dylan along in his transition to electric music. Butterfields 1966 album EAST-WEST was strikingly prescient in its incorporation of Eastern modalities. By the mid-70s he was getting into the post-Woodstock rural vibe with his BETTER DAYS band. Though Butterfields salad days were far behind him when he passed away in the late-80s, he had changed both the blues and rock worlds irrevocably.