“I knew that it was a historical movement,” explains keyboard player Mark Naftalin, who joined the band that September. More importantly, they were the first to introduce black blues to a white American mass market. Before the arrival of Love, The Doors or The Stooges, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band were the first people to go electric on what was, until then, primarily a folk-based label. They became the new darlings of the college circuit in the US. But there’s a fair argument that the Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s performance that weekend was just as influential as Dylan’s.Īlready signed to Elektra Records, their song Born In Chicago became the highlight of the label’s Folksong ’65 compilation released that September, prompting sales of 60,000 in its first month. Irked by Lomax’s disparaging comments, Dylan decided to go electric, even using Butterfield’s band to back him during his headlining set that Sunday – a decision that changed the singer’s career forever. One of the people who chanced upon the group that weekend was Bob Dylan. He’d keep getting more and more intense until he got them going. And if he got in front of a crowd, he wouldn’t take no for an answer. “He gave us high standards to reach for and operate under.
“Paul had a very strong way about him,” recalls Butterfield Blues Band co-founder and rhythm guitarist Elvin Bishop. This was blues spat out loud on electric instruments living blues from the urban sidewalks of Chicago’s South Side. This was blues all right, but not the slow-moan version of the Mississippi Delta.
Afterwards, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band is all people can talk about afterwards.
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