The Paul Butterfield Blues: Fighting Segregation Through Music | Amplified

foreign [Music] [Music] 1941 i was born [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] one of the things that helped me in learning to play the harmonica was that i realized that i could never speak the way any other individual spoke on the harmonica each has their own way of saying things so i just went ahead and got to a point of learning the instrument well enough that i could speak the way i wanted to speak which is really a nice thing about this instrument it's such a personal instrument it's really like a horn from the heart [Music] first day i was in chicago i was walking around the neighborhood you know just trying to chicago was a pretty big town biggest town i'd ever seen and and i saw a guy a white guy sitting on some steps in front of an apartment building playing guitar and drinking a quart of beer and he was playing blues i said wow this got to be my type of guy and i went over and started talking to him and we you know butterfield he wasn't playing much harmonica at that time he played mostly guitar and shortly after that he took up the harmonica and within six months he was a natural genius on the instrument he just got way good in a short amount of time paul seemed to start at full speed he would go for it absolutely and he had tremendous courage i mean you cannot minimize the courage it took to go into a blues club and sit in i'm astonished by it [Music] i'm here at silvio's which was an incredible blues place in the home base of howland wolf obviously it's a field right now and it's been gone so long there's a tree here it's huge and my father paul butterfield barry goldberg charlie muscle white they all cut their teeth here michael bloomfield and the way they cut their teeth here was wolf would call these guys up on stage to play with them and and what an honor that must have been and really if you think standing on the stage with your heroes at that time didn't make you go home and practice your instrument you you got to be crazy this room is definitely a part of my father's [Music] night sounds hyde park illinois the home of the university of chicago is a one and a half square mile neighborhood on chicago's south side until the early 1950s hyde park was an almost exclusively white community surrounded on three sides by african-american communities many of whose residents had migrated from the south beginning in the mid-1950s hyde park became one of chicago's most racially diverse neighborhoods at a time when other parts of the country were struggling with race relations things weren't too cool it was way before before civil rights you know and even though chicago was better than oklahoma was it was rough it was it was hardcore segregated and chicago was a little cooler but hyde park was real cool and in that area surrounding the university were 50 60 70 blues bars all with a band there was blues being played by the best of the players and it was there in hyde park that paul butterfield was born and raised [Music] the folklore society was the biggest organization on campus it was there i met paul butterfield it was there we started to do a few things together i'd play guitar and he'd play harmonica we called ourselves nick and paul butter and i would go and play at the parties nick grabonitis and uh we we didn't have any money we would do stuff like where'd everybody got drunk and then go look in the freezer and throw a bunch of steaks in the alley and pick them up on the way home you know [Music] at a certain point the house band at the twist party became paul and alvin and they had a rhythm section known as the wilson brothers a couple of black guys the band sounded good and it was an atypically integrated scene racially some black young people would come to the neighborhood to dance and nearby there sat a small piano in which i would wheel out and play along this guy named norman dayron he had a tape recorder and i guess he was a school teacher professor at the university or something and one day he told butterfield and cotton and me you guys want to hear what you sound like so he got us to come to this building that was empty it was in the evening at the university of chicago and he set up his walnut sac tape recorder and it was me and cotton and butterfield and billy boy arnold [Music] the good thing about butter was he was one of the few harmonica players you'll ever see who wasn't totally dominated by little walter their style is so attractive that it just stops people in their tracks and they can't think of any other way to go you know and butterfield somehow he he was always himself [Music] i became aware of butterfield one night he showed up at a place i was working with little smoking smothers in a place called the blue flame he was on the white person in the place at the time hanging around wanting to get a chance to sit in with the band after he called the band back off the break we're going to get your white wife and let him play a little bit and everybody got quiet hey what is this white boy gonna to he showed him what he could do you know he really showed him what he could do and he kept showing it [Music] people got so the whites would start to come in and this was hey y'all gonna have that white boy back up you know the following week and it just went on and on and it kept going it never stopped [Music] like all brothers we struggled we competed but we also theme old western movies always had to do with somebody seeking revenge for somebody who killed their brother so anybody messed with paul i was on it and the same if they messed with me he was on it so we were rivals and yet very close i think i probably first met paul i must have been nine perhaps because i can remember him i can remember walking to school and there he was this antic character on the other side of the street never never just walking he was hopping or jumping or laughing and so he decided to throw some stones across the street at me so that was really my my introduction to paul butterfield he was utterly charming gorgeous looking with his blue eyes and his dark hair and who knew that 15 years later i'd become his sister-in-law uh he was for a long time he was just peter's younger brother to me our parents certainly provided both of us with every advantage in a sense not material things but exposure to music yards things that they valued that we valued so we felt we had a very privileged upbringing they grew up without a tv they grew up listening to classical music all the time my grandmother took took my dad to the symphony orchestra in chicago and he picked out a cellist i believe it was that was out of tune and she knew right then that he had a special talent his brother played the clarinet and paul took up flute our parents got him a good teacher from the uh symphony and he played for a while paul and i went to high school together at the university of chicago laboratory school uhi the school was wonderful in that it really tried to engage students to be able to be the ones to initiate the ideas it wasn't a call and response it wasn't a now you do this and the answer is that it was very much conversation based and lucky for paul he was a good talker he could talk his way out of just about anything so it was a good place for him to be he was a not entirely focused student bring raisins to to with his lunch every day me throwing those all around getting a little trouble throw a chair out the window an instigator yeah [Music] his energy came out in his singing as well he was he was a member of the qua of our jimmy shanties which was the name of our high school choir and he also was involved in various shows but again it wasn't that he had such a wonderful voice it was his energy and his personality that always carried it he brought to music an intensity and a passion and he just worked it until he could do it [Music] and he was a leader not a leader in in a standard leader sense when you think of somebody who's you know says i will take charge and i will do it was more they the follow me along because i'm having such a good time that kind of a leader people wanted to be by him after high school my brother who was somewhat of an athletic star first he'd had a scholarship to brown university in track and field and then he suffered an injury and so that was kind of out the window but he did get into university of illinois but in the spring and summer before he would go off to university of illinois he took his deep plunge into the blues into the harmonica the way paul mastered the harmonica was simply to virtually play it 24 7. he used to go out to a peninsula on the lakefront in chicago just north of 57th street beach it was called promontory point i go and see him and i knew not to bother him because he would be totally absorbed in his playing so by the time he was ready to go to college he went to college let's say he went on a monday he stayed through thursday and came back to chicago and hung out with his friends and was on the blue scene then after a while he would go on monday and come back on tuesday and then after a while he wouldn't go at all so and nobody had a clue that he was even in town i remember i took him to his first club smitty's corners 35th street muddy waterspan and we sort of hustled our way in the door we're both just young punks no id and then we would hear things like the police would call and somebody had pulled a car over and there a bunch of unsavory characters including my brother and then my father who you know was a lawyer could go down to the station and get them out [Music] paul takes his plunge into the blues at a time when folk music is enjoying a renaissance among american youth characterized by acoustic instrumentation and themes of social justice and led by artists like bob dylan joan baez pete seeger and many traditional and contemporary folk musicians the folk boom of the early 60s spawns thriving folk music scenes in major metropolitan areas and college towns throughout the us in boston a young folkie soon to make his own musical mark sets out on a journey across the country in search of new musicians and new sounds it was 1961 when i got to chicago and i met paul butterfield and i was 21 and he was 19. he must have liked me because we became friends very quickly and i was glad of it because i didn't know anybody in chicago and here i had this guy who was obviously a good musician taking me around to all these places that i never would have been able to see i never would have seen muddy waters at pepper's lounge or helen wolfe if paul hadn't taken me there and both times we went there we were the only white people in the place yet they all knew paul and they treated him just like a friend i got the feeling like muddy really liked paul a lot and that he was glad to be able to teach him and show him and have somebody a young person and specifically a young white person who could already play great blues harmonica both muddy waters and i think especially howling wolf were very powerful dynamic performers they they were intimidating in a certain way they were very strong and i could see that paul had that kind of quality about him too even at that young age so that later on as he formed the blues band and became well known that same strong quality was in paul [Music] in the early 1960s chicago is arguably the urban blues capital of the world by day it's the home of the renowned chess records whose roster of stars includes chuck berry willie dixon howlin wolf and muddy waters paul was special i'd seen him numerous times at chess sitting in the musician's waiting room he'd go up i don't know i don't know he was playing but they would let him come you know he got to know money he got to know little walter he got to know all the players at night the biggest names in the blues perform at over a hundred clubs in the tough black neighborhoods on the city's south and west sides paul butterfield and nick ravinitis are regulars on this late night circuit listening learning and sometimes sitting in nick carries a pistol for protection live blues doesn't arrive on the mostly white north side of chicago until the summer of 1963 when a bar called big johns contacts paul about putting together a band to perform there four nights a week when barter first started playing big johns it was when he was at the crossroads in his life family pressure get a job you know get serious that's how that ban started paul knew what he wanted he wanted a dynamite rhythm section and they got the best rhythm section in chicago howling wolf's rhythm section with jerome arnold and sam lake [Music] what made me go with butterfield he opened me 20 bucks a night and i was only getting seven a night with the wolf it was just four of us myself jerome arnold butterfield and elvin bishop that's the original band when i left wolf jerome came with me so suddenly paul butterfield had howling wolf's rhythm section instant credibility and the people on the north side went nuts not only on the north side across the country it was an idea whose time had come you know i think it was kind of overdue we're at the right place at the right time the big beautiful body of music the blues the american blues black blues and this huge white audience that never to any extent met and the idea just caught fire there were all sorts of characters people from second city would come in david steinberg robert klein ken nordin the great word jazz hipster would be hustling pool in the back room there would be socialites coming from the near north side lakeshore drive there would be robbers burglars pimps anything you can imagine under one flag the blues [Music] [Applause] [Music] butterfield was a legend in chicago and word about him was spreading and fritz richmond told paul rothschild paul you ought to go see this guy and he goes to chicago and he sees butterfield and says to butterfield i want to record you and butterfield says okay and he said let's go on over to this other place and they go and they see mike bloomfield playing with the mike bloomfield band and paul asked the logical question hey why isn't mike playing with your band he said i've tried a number of times and i can't get him to do it well rothschild could pretty much convince anybody of anything and he got bloomfield to join the butterfield blues band about the time that there was a possibility suddenly of a recording contract which was something that i don't think paul or any of the other members of the band ever envisioned happening paul got his draft notice the draft notice was really a death sentence that's where he reviewed it i think paul just saw this as oh my god here i almost have it and it's being taken away from me entered virginia mcewan who was a barmaid at big johns she knew of paul's plight and she offered to marry paul to keep him out of the draft she could very well have saved his career and saved his life though it wasn't meant as a traditional marriage they did have a son in 1965 and they were close but not family close although later paul became very involved in gabriel's life and it was important to both of them i think another thing about paul rothschild is he introduced my brother to albert grossman who was a well-known manager of bob dylan peter paul and mary and alvin was very taken with paul's band and gave them a lot of exposure here and then nationwide and the band went into the studio we put them in the studio i thought it was pretty good and we pressed up ten thousand copies because the paul butterfield blues band had a track on sampler number six and it was selling well in chicago and it turned out to be uh butterfield blues band track that was making it happen i had become a pilot i started flying when i was 1960 and it's now 1964 and i have my own airplane and we're flying up to visit tom rush's aunt on martha's vineyard on a one beautiful saturday afternoon and paul rothschild says i hate to tell you this but i've listened to the record again and don't think i got it at which point i put the plane into a shallow dive scaring the crap out of rothschild and i said you want to tell me that again and he said i don't think i got it i think we've got to scrap the records i said what do you mean you don't have it he said i it's not as good as it can be well that's all you have to say to me all right i'll scrap them [Music] by 1965 young people are tuning into music played on electric plugged in instruments artists with number one records that year include the beatles the supremes the temptations the beach boys the birds with mr tambourine man a bob dylan song and the rolling stones by the summer of 65 dylan's electrified like a rolling stone is on the radio everywhere many in the folk scene view this electric music as a threat to or even a corruption of the authentic american music they embrace the newport folk festival had been a showcase for traditional folk and blues since its founding in 1959. and bob dylan is slated to be the headliner of newport 1965. joe boyd is the production manager of the festival and attends a meeting where board member peter yarrow makes a last-minute appeal to make room on the schedule for one more act at this meeting peter yarrow got up on his soapbox and he made a speech about the butterfield band that this is what's happening right now this is the most important band in america today and yaro's argument was that with sam and jerome that this was the revival meeting the authentic this is where the folk festival has to be in order to be relevant this is the summer of 1965. we can't live forever in the past this is no longer the province just of the folkiest [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so out on stage on this little flat platform comes paul butterfield on harmonica of course the amazing michael bloomfield on guitar elvin bishop sort of undergirding everything with just killer rhythm guitar sam leon drums and jerome arnold on bass they just blew our little folky minds right right off the charts there's photos somewhere of us experiencing and reacting to this really raw really vital chicago blues sound just full of power and energy and we just loved it [Music] probably eight feet away from butterfield's fender amplifier and he starts in the mellow down easy pop up on it and i'm like the guy from the max elf commercial because i'm in front of butter's app and my scarf is like this and i go oh look at that you know and and uh we went electric the next day our jug bands [Music] in that time in the 60s anyone who was at a folk festival already was for integration and him playing in that integrated band was a statement that we're all in this together and we all love this music and we're all going to hang out together and we're getting rid of segregation and you just better get used to it [Music] the first time i saw paul was at newport 1965 at the workshop where alan lomax introduced the band in some very demeaning way and i know lomax was already muttering and grumbling about that because he he wasn't very positive about them and he had you know robert pete williams and sun house and a really great lineup of acoustic black blues musicians and he did not like the idea a of drums at newport and b of white people playing blues music and finally he says okay you've seen the real thing now here's some kids from chicago going to come and try to play the blues with the help of these amplifiers all this select all these electric amplifiers at which point grossman is so pissed off he jumps on alan lomax and these two like panda bears and personality but grizzly bears and physique start rolling in the dirt together full fisticuffs while the van was playing throwing roundhouse punches at each other and then they were wrestling each other and then they were rolling around in the dirt and you know it was lamentable and it was funny dust flying and these two you know bears were scuffling and that that really felt good because that's what a manager ought to do in the middle of all of this of course was the fact that we've been told by grossman that morning that dylan was going to play with the butterfield rhythm section sam jerome and bloomfield and goldberg and cooper saturday night we rehearsed all night i could only get three songs in that time period and so the plan was that we were gonna go up and play the three songs because that's all we knew [Music] there was a mixed reaction from the audience and a lot of people said they were voos you know but there were also cheers too there were people that did get it but most of the booze came from the uh the folkies you know who felt betrayed you know that bob had betrayed them and and and they sort of had a sense that their movement that the folk movement was on its way out as well the funny thing is that he wasn't booed off stage that was the ridiculous part of it there was maybe two rows of people in this entire concert which is packed that were booing because they didn't want to hear him do electric music they want to hear him do nothing but folk music this whole purist thing that was going on at that time i mean you know nobody got upset when muddy waters plugged in his guitar it's just a false barrier that people who think they know about this stuff feel they have to pontificate about it was the natural evolution of of of of the earlier blues and it was absolutely as valid as anything else [Music] the butterfield band came up to play the club 47 right after newport and at that time we charged a dollar at the door you could squeeze 110 20 people into that place people like tom rusher the question jug man of those people they would fill that place and they would get 75 so i think we were gonna pay paul's band a hundred dollars a night three hundred dollars for three nights this was mike bloomfield elvin bishop the whole band went down of course the volume was pretty loud not by maybe today's standards but by that time standard the butterfield band had a lot of punch this band was hitting on all cylinders and we'd never had anything like it in that room i was a manager and i had a little tiny office and he come back into my office and we had an absolute policy and it was a real policy too no smoking of dope in this place you can't have it there's no alcohol there was no dope if you want to have a drink you could go across the street there was a bar and we just couldn't have it because if we if we get closed down we just couldn't have it paul come back into my office and he closed the door and said hey man i just i just have to have something before i go on i said no paul we can't do it he was just like a cat that wouldn't let you go you know just whining and at you you know and i finally caved in you know i okay a couple of puffs that's it [Music] i played a night with them at the cafe go go on the sidelines as i used to do at the twist parties gazing at the kneecaps of the band were lower and then not long after that i went to this session and then paul inducted me into the band [Music] it was after that first record albert grossman came and gave us each a thousand dollar bill [Music] tremendously impressive paul's band that first album that really took off that opened the market up a lot to a lot of young white kids who hadn't really heard the blues because once you heard paul you wanted to hear the other guys muddy and wolf and you got easily pulled into it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] bloomfield came from a wealthy family and one of his uncles had a pawn shop and i used to not have any money so i'd get my guitar as cheap as i could i go to the pawn shop and i went to one on clark street one time and uh this kind of smart ass looking kid behind the counter you know and i said can i see that guitar he hands it to me and i start playing my little blues licks a few of them you know he said you like blues i said yeah he said give me that thing he starts playing rings around the world you know just playing all these fancy licks and stuff i said oh wow that's great you know he'd get in your face and he'd just be spitting on you while he was talking and stuff you know he was he he was just tremendously active-minded and uh really intense about everything he did not just the playing everything michael was always intimidated by paul his personality was so strong and you really couldn't get you know underneath paul and get to know him well you know he really didn't let people in that much just his presence alone was a tough guy black leather jacket a beer drinker he was like a blues man or the real deal see i never worked with paul for a long time because i never figured we'd get along personality wise you know because paul's a very very hard guy period just a hard individual he's very rock hard inside his body and everything he has completely taken that harmonica and reworked it in my opinion butterfield is the finest the finest blues harmonica player in the world and this is the first gig i've ever worked with paul and i'll tell you man you'll hear this band after this two-month tour there won't be a blues band in the history of the world that's going to come near this band [Music] i met bloomfield on highway 61 sessions for uh dylan and he told me as we got friendly that he was in paul's band and that was one of the reasons why he didn't want a tour with dylan so he could stay in paul's band he said you make all kinds of money and you know be on the cover of newsweek he said but i just want to play the blues she says and i'm having a great time doing it in this band you turned down bob dylan to play with butterfield it's about as good as you can get [Music] whenever paul would appear in new york city usually at a club called the cafe a go-go we would always get there early and we would sit like right in the front row and we'd do that night after night show after show he just played you know that was it i think that that's probably when he was complete you know is when he was up there eyes closed blowing that perfect note [Music] and there's that soul there that is pouring out of everything everything that paul did it's not about how good or how not good or technique or this the thing that to me makes paul different there's always this edge of soul that's always happening no matter whether he's singing or playing and another thing you know paul played the harmonica upside down a lot of people didn't know that you know where instead of the low notes on the left they were on the right paul did it different that band was the most powerful band i've ever heard [Music] we played another extended engagement it was in a place called the unicorn and this was in boston sam got sick and that's when he got billy davenport and he was quite logically as a black man concerned about what he was going to confront as he traveled america and he told me that paul said to him where you can't go we won't go but he was proud of it and he it meant something to him that he got that guarantee and it says something about paul [Music] there was a climate in the band a musical climate that was now opening up musicians were taking on some of the attributes of jazz musicians and playing more extended things and experimenting in 1966 america is a cauldron of social and political change fueled in large part by the music of the times the butterfield blues band's sprawling tapestry of an lp called east west with its combination of electric blues and psychedelic rock puts the band at the forefront of the music scene clocking in at a nearly unprecedented 13 minutes the title track is a pioneering cross-cultural opus near mythical accounts of live performances of east west lasting over 40 minutes and leaving fans transfixed reverberate throughout the international rock music community [Music] they started doing east west and and messing with different modes to play and so that it sounds more middle eastern or something like that you know the fact that he wasn't satisfied just to be one of the world's best blues hard players you know he didn't lock himself in a box he just kept taking it further [Music] bloomfield used to do a fire eating routine he'd do that he get one of these things like looks like the mallet you play the kettle drum with you know he'd squirt lighter fluid on it light it up spread his legs out and that groove would be going you know behind him and he'd lean way back and eat fire and those old stoned out hippies would just lose their minds [Music] so here we are in chicago at the museum of science and industry this is the photo shot of my father's iconic album this is the cover of the second album east west you had jerome arnold alvin bishop mark naftalin billy davenport michael bloomfield and paul butterfield this is a museum this is a really really odd place for a cover of a blues album maybe the fact that they actually got up here and took these photos here uh is expressing that band as someone who means business and saying hey baby we're not what you think we are oh i mean the authenticity was just astonishing and planned through that amplifier and the tonality and the choices that he made were so unconventional and so you know innovative i think that paul was an incredible creative spirit and always kept stretching you know i mean as deep as he would go into the roots he was always pushing the envelope of what blues could be greater ranger put together an incredible band those guys wouldn't play with him if he wasn't that badass i had lots and lots of heart players sitting with me and nobody could blow like butter and i loved his singing as much as i loved his heart playing you know he's cute too as us girls like to call him butterfield was very funny and had a very dry sense of humor and a kind of a smart ass wise-ass sense of humor too i remember remarking on sam lay's shoes which were kind of metallic and they were kind of like had little glass crystals in the shoes and paul said don't get too close to him he uses those to just put his his foot and look up your skirt and i don't know if it was true but i believed paul at the time oh [Laughter] butter could be a little bit of a dirty dog from time to time and rothschild had some kind of legal troubles involving uh weed which is pretty serious in those days you know and we're doing a session in new york city and everybody took off for lunch and went out to get something to eat and rothschild stayed there and he was fooling with the tapes you know and the faders and he was at the console and everything drinking a milkshake and butterfield came back and knocked real loud on the door said police rock child freaked out and spilled his milkshake in the console [Music] [Applause] i will see i'm very proud as the owner of the famous golden bear woke up this morning [Music] in august of 1966 i booked them only for one week but they stayed for two and i enjoyed it very much that was 20 shows 350 people and still the place was packed this is unbelievable george yeah he was cool george a greek guy i used to go fishing at that pier across the street from the golden bear and bring it back and george would cook it in the pizza oven you know with sport battlefield i had [Music] the perfect opening night the comedian steve martin [Music] so i went to stay with my one of my college roommates we were going up the stairs to their apartment and paul was coming down the stairs with a laundry basket and we sort of met on the staircase and then sort of moved back down to the sidewalk and we just started talking and talking and talking and talking and he had a new album he wanted me to hear and so he went and put it on and it was the beatles well he kept playing me the song called got to get you into my life sorry was a hint i just did turn 21 he was only 23. because i was on the road with them for probably three years like people would say how long is your tour and i go i don't know it's been going on for 340 days i mean ways to look at a match box in the drawer of the hotel to see where we were it was like going from box to box to box you're in an airplane you're in a car you're in a hotel you're at the gig you're at the hotel you're in a car you're in an airplane you're in a train and it's just living in a box in a box in a box in a box in a box and you're just so disorienting you don't even know where you are and these guys are just working working hard every single day kathy and paul and the band spent all of 1966 on the road playing at colleges clubs and concert halls the band has a huge following in san francisco thanks to concert promoter and impresario bill graham who books them into multiple venues during each visit and graham's growing friendships with paul and michael bloomfield would bring additional benefits when michael and paul left chicago went to san francisco they had recommended to bill graham to get artists like holly wolf and muddy and little walter james cotton to come to california so that even opened a greater audience for all these artists that gave the blues artists an opportunity to play someplace besides clubs better paying gigs [Music] paul was really heartbroken when michael left the band paul was like no we've got a good thing going let's keep up with this you know this is really a great combo so it was hard i got to play more lead i liked that and i was i was i'd say quite a bit more ready than i would have been you know at the beginning [Music] paul played a great set at monterey that was sort of his big debut of horns and he had good horn players gene dunwoody the tenor player and keith johnson the trumpet player came in and bugsy mom came in [Music] [Applause] yes [Music] [Applause] summer of 67 my wife and i and young baby went out to san francisco never been west of the mississippi i run into philip wilson my friend a drummer totally by accident on the street i go phillip what what are you what are you doing here and he said well i just joined this band the butterfield blues band he said well we're playing at the fillmore he said come on down so i i came down heard the band play met the guys in the band went went the next night and uh philip said hey man we're going down to la we're gonna make a record basically hitchhiked to hollywood got to the sandy kofax's tropicana hotel you know i'm hanging out in the studio and paul says hey man where's your horn i said well it's back at the hotel he said why don't you go get it and maybe you can play a little bit so i'm like holy i sit in paul likes the sound of it i was in show business [Music] baby [Music] in life people move on everybody's band changes that's just part of being in a band new life it was all peaceable no hard feelings between anybody butter didn't want me to leave but i did because you play one or two songs you know the the the dynamics of band getting along is you got to give everybody a little piece of the action you know so you get to do one or two songs a night that are really close to your heart you know and then the idea starts working on you what if i got to do all songs that are real close to my heart you know and it works and it works and it works and after a while the desire to do that overcomes the fear of leaving and there you go [Applause] [Music] wow [Music] bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] wow [Music] and to be on stage with him it was like a hurricane the sound was ferocious i mean i i have never before or after heard a sound like that ever he was a force of nature on that instrument everybody else sounded just kind of timid it's almost like a snarl he had he just went for it you know and i think that was really inspiring to me as a player it was my introduction to the idea that it's better to reach for something and miss it than just to hold back and play it safe [Music] paul butterfield never played the same thing twice nor did the band play the same way twice the whole thing about playing for the moment is that you could do the same song a million times and a million times it's going to be different because you're not being generic about it that's what makes an artist and artist he lived breathed ate and spoke music i mean english was really his second language music was his first language and so that's how he communicated with the world all aboard fathers and sons 1969. we decided to do half of it in the studio three days of studio and then that live concert the concert was great it was in this just restored classical music hall in chicago the chicago auditorium this was a chance to feature the great muddy waters and it was a way to pay them back we thought it was our duty our job to make sure that we paid back what we learned from these guys that's what that fathers and sons was all about paying homage to muddy saying you're the father we're the sons you treated us good dad mary was paul's mentor and guide and he was like a second dad to him musically he brought him up the concert was great it was rocking and jumping it was really that first people from big johns it was all those those thousands of people who over the months and years they've gone to big johns they were at that concert man every single one of them was at that concert you know the blues guys just loved this influx of the white market buying it the white kids playing it the blues was moving on [Music] everybody's radar was up in that band everybody was listening to everybody else it wasn't planned it was like everyone was channeling this creative force and butterfield was the guy you know he was the guy that set the tone you know he was like we're going for it because that's where he came from he came from south side of chicago where it was about i'll kick your ass every time he stepped up the microphone he played like it was the last time he was ever going to play he was a real blues guy you know he meant it every time come on i mean if you listen to his playing it's just pure you know you wonder how does a guy get that out of a little marine band harmonica you know i mean that's special stuff the hard parts were put together by just sitting down and playing that band got to the point when one person played a part that was good all the other parts fell into place immediately it was kind of a magical band it was magical that band was one of the first if not the first mixed band where it was true equality in that band there was no racial anything we ended up in situations that were in parts of the country for instance when we were touring that didn't see it like that you know like blacks were not accepted everywhere and to see a mixed band especially guys with long hair and hanging with black guys we were really a threat they looked at us like communists there were some near physical confrontations with butterfield because he would get in people's face you know they would vibe us or they'd make a comment you know like uh and all that and he would get right in their face and say let's go outside right now come on let's go you know and so you know we had to kind of drag him out of a few places you know where it was like that so he really stood up for what he believed in he had gifts he had brilliant beautiful gifts and and because of those gifts he changed the world for many people helping to bring that blues out to the rest of the world when the african americans weren't able to do that it wasn't a welcoming place i thought i don't give a damn you play right i don't care what color you have a pink stripe running down down back if you want to uh i ain't bragging on that on us but i didn't see nobody else was better and we happened to be black and white [Music] most people don't realize that woodstock started as an artist colony in about 1903 and it was established as a utopian arts and crafts community but around the 1960s is when it kind of came into its own before the actual big woodstock festival that everybody knows about pediaro had a family house here and through him albert grossman came with his stable of artists so of course peter paul and mary and later bob dylan and paul of course was one of those people that came along with albert sometimes it felt like someone just dropped some kind of pill and watered it and you know a different wood stock popped up overnight seemingly you know and it was very exciting especially for someone like myself who's young and loving music and all of a sudden you know there's head shops there's leather shops you know no more electric stores now it's the the leather shop you know the practical kind of went out the window and the magical came in and one of the people riding that artistic and musical way was paul butterfield [Music] bought a house up the road from my folks a little farmhouse and a barn paul was well known as a blues musician but he didn't have any affect about him ever he fit in well with the local people he was our neighbor and it was a true neighbor we had barbecues we had him for brunch and breakfast we went to his place he was a great cook by the way he made a barbecue ribs with a mustard sauce that was out at his world he told me someday he would give me the recipe he never did i worked at night now when he saw my light on he would pull in the driveway and i gave him the nickname the moth because of that and as a result he would come in we had a stand-up upright piano at the time and he'd start playing right away and i'd get some commemorative for him his favorite tequila and we'd have a little midnight not midnight two or three o'clock in the morning session paul came in with his uh a big horn band with dave sanborn gene didwitty phillip wilson i believe on drums and there was a time when paul and that band played at the cafe espresso in woodstock on wednesday nights they sort of like did it like a rehearsal it was just phenomenal [Music] paul had an idyllic life in bearsville in the early 70s he was a successful performer a successful band a successful record and everything was looking up for him he had a beautiful wife kathy and they had a beautiful child lee and he was another happy bouncing blonde baby boy and he had albert he owned bearsville he found paul this property he had a beautiful barn old red barn was painted beautifully where i took those pictures of him mowing along big long took a lot of work you know this is the american dream and i've never seen him happier the whole situation was very nice you know when we lived in woodstock we had horses we had dogs we had cats we had all this stuff we had an organic farm we had we had so many tomatoes we'd stand at the back door and throw them out after i made ketchup and tomato sauce and everything else i could think of we had 11 and a half acres and a stream that ran through our property you know these beautiful horses we had this raccoon she used to like lie in her back and follow and scratch her tummy and play with her and everything was like an art project you know one of the best memories that i have of paul is when he came to do a session with us at the bearsville studios when we put together this group called the woodstock mountains review and he came up it was the middle of a snowstorm and he walked in and he went into the studio at bearsville with john sebastian and the two of them pulled out their harmonicas and did the most beyond belief version of amazing grace with just the two of them as a harmonica duet and i don't know if they had ever played it together before but it was so perfect and we were all sitting there just completely open mouth and silenced by this incredible thing and then it was over paul got in his jeep and went back down the mountain [Music] paul was one of the more what i call generous musicians to play with he would do a solo but he would also set you up it was just like come on let's play you know let's have a conversation together it was paul that first encouraged me to let my blues voice out and he would just tell me don't worry about sounding pretty or like singing fancy blues licks or anything just let your voice out and so that was so encouraging i i to this day i i have him to thank because now many years later i have a blues voice and can that's how i've always wanted to express myself and he was the first person to give me permission and encouragement to do that paul was always a historian as well as just a straight musician he revered the people who came before him and that he learned from paul talked about the harmonica players that he loved on a series of instructional cassettes that we made now on cds hi this is paul butterfield i'd like to help bring some new insights into the harmonica if i could those notes can be used in so many different ways in so many different colors they're just beautiful colors to that instrument [Music] i thought it would be a nice idea to talk about some of the influences on my plane people that i heard in chicago growing up one thing that they all had in common there was a certain urgency to their playing there was a certain tension to the way they played the notes some more than others junior parker was very relaxed in his playing he sort of played like [Music] whereas sunny boy williams had a very stark kind of hard way of saying things on the harmonica [Music] little walter was very fluid kind of lines and [Music] i was thrilled and i am thrilled to this day that we were able to capture that because i think it's unique to have some a record like that of his musical thinking and his musical experience for the learning player [Music] he influenced you know a zillion people on harmonica certainly and that wasn't enough then he was such a great singer every time he sang you could hear it coming out of his soul every song you know i could never tell if he was feeling good one day or feeling bad one day he just played from his soul every time paul had this incredible power in his voice and it was kind of that irish tenor thing you know he had sort of an irish tenor voice but there was some kind of force behind it that came from some other place one of the songs we sang was play on and it rocked it was he's just so great you know it's just a so soulful and he can give you the blues and he can give you a rock and roll he can give you the soul you know really i thought he was black some of the little inflections that he does sounds like jimmy hendrix and then when he when he go that you know long that's that's ray charles you know it's very soulful makes you want to move you know he sounds great and looks great [Music] [Laughter] sometimes i just feel like smiling is paul's seventh and final album on electra with its main focus on the doors and other more commercially successful artists the label drops paul jim rooney now in woodstock managing bearsville studios has a small office upstairs in the bearsville complex so i was up there one day and paul came in and he was on the phone to this guy joe baskin at holiday travel booked all of our travel anybody through albert's groups he was working every weekend with that band i think friday saturday sunday three three dates a week and then they come home and they'd be home during the week which was a nice way to live so he was looking for the ticket hadn't gotten the tickets for the weekend and he says what do you mean they haven't been paid and the bills hadn't been paid for a good long while i believe by this point janice joplin had died and it seems to me that the wind went out of albert sales a bit and the next thing i know the butterfield band is dissolved and it happened really fast and that's a huge blow and i never heard him say any bad word about albert they were good friends in my own mind i just don't think paul ever recovered from that [Music] paul's career is in limbo albert grossman offers him a recording contract with his label bearsville records which has just signed a distribution agreement with warner brothers with no other offers on the table and with bearsville's new state-of-the-art recording studios less than three miles from his house paul accepts 1972 i think it was albert's idea to here's paul you know maybe in between bands wondering what he's going to do he's got this contract albert got a little amos what a gorgeous sound amos had so now you got the three of us then in comes this guy ronnie baron the guy was a character he had this great funky energy which paul made our own hybrid of that kind of sound and it worked perfectly i think we got topher next christopher parker in came bill richard it was over [Music] you know i remember in the beginning when we were looking for drummers and bass players and stuff for better days and he checked bands and sometimes he'd sit in and it wouldn't matter what band was playing whether it be at that joint or anywhere else if he sat in and they were grooving as soon as he played three notes the groove was way better that was his magic he just and you're in [Music] we made one very good album with that band very proud of it two and a half years i think we had a quick burnout i don't know how it happens you know you hear stories about the eagles and stuff and then they they have a meeting and they pull it all together and they all go straight you know and they put somebody in a rehab and then they go on for another 10 years you know it didn't happen to us in general the times were definitely a changing and all the benign pot smoking that we'd done in the in the 60s and early 70s was giving way to harder stuff and people were now getting turned on to coke and using a lot of it and and i remember that jeffrey and paul i just saw them really kind of living out their macho rock star dreams and you know playing the part by doing extra levels of drug taking and drinking and it just escalated and escalated and and then you know started having kind of a darker and darker side after a while [Music] kathy must have been a calming force for paul uh you know we were partying so hard and she was probably extremely uh forgiving of the boogie woogie you know because we we'd roll in from closing all the bars and that that wasn't the end of the night at all you know as many dawns were coming you know [Music] and there was one morning where he burst into tears about how much he loved kathy to me it meant that he felt bad about something you know like he wasn't being as good a man for her as he could have been but i don't think anybody could ever consider thinking about paul sitting there bawling weeping you know and i probably just said hey let's have another drink paul's first two bearsville releases with better days in 1973 sell well and receive favorable reviews the band is constantly on the road but they break up in 1974. paul uses the down time to catch up on requests for his services as a session player and guests on albums by bonnie rate and others he's invited to be a musical guest at the last waltz a concert advertised as the band's farewell appearance held at bill graham's winterland in san francisco on thanksgiving 1976. featuring bob dylan joni mitchell neil young eric clapton ron wood and paul's old friend muddy waters the event is filmed by director martin scorsese and released as a documentary in 1978. i remember how proud he was of that i could have shown you the the old last waltz record and he said to lee love daddy you know and wrote me i remember him just being so proud of that record you know i mean what a great lineup right it's just unreal paul used to appear quite regularly with levon helm and the rco all-stars and that was just a floating party of amazing [Music] musicians more chance to try to save [Music] i'm [Music] the danko butterfield band was really a monster combination and the shows that i saw and the ones that we got to play with you know where there wasn't a musician that wasn't wrapped attention at the side of the stage [Music] i love it [Music] totally unique voices on their instruments and just as people and their personalities they sparked each other really well they just had the stuff you know i know paul as time went on with his contract with barrisville records uh became unhappy with the promotion that bearsville was doing albert was very involved in building his restaurants and the bearsville complex and paul felt that he was affected by that it was difficult for paul because he was all about music there was he didn't have that political instinct his decline took place over a long period of time and it was very difficult to see our relationship had become somewhat distant just because i lived in one place more or less and he lived in lots of places and he would call me um often at two or three o'clock in the morning and in terms of his phone calls how distressed he seemed that was an important part of of my knowing i mean i knew he was having some difficulties but the phone calls would say okay i'm doing better now or okay i'm doing worse now after we had lee we kind of settled down more i mean paul would still go on the road it was even it was harder for him then it was fragmenting that's when he started getting really kind of fragmented it was uh heartbreaking you know they were madly in love with one another i was a young kid people didn't have the same awareness of how dangerous drugs and alcohol can be and how they can completely twist someone's mind and their priorities and you know where to go to get some help with this how do we work it out and there's no question in my mind that she was worried my dad was not an abusive person he didn't hurt people he wasn't that kind of scary but he was surrounded by as many yes men as he felt like being surrounded by at any given time you know there were people wanting to give him things just because they wanted to hang out with him and i was a little kid and that's lonely and hard to deal with especially if you're raising a child and your husband's on the road all the time i mean my heart goes out to her you know and what she must have felt i think it was around 76 that she decided to be she had to leave woodstock packed the car up and we drove out west um not long after that my dad came to you know try to mend things and he would come out and and stay for periods of time it is hard for me to think about that time in my life because when you're asking your parent to be there for you and they're you know in another place altogether that's you know that's tough you know he was still struggling and he'd known nothing but the road since he was young and i think he felt a bit lost and he was still deeply in love and you know he i know he i know how much he loved me and we talked all the time but you know he would make promises that he couldn't keep and that kept breaking my heart and you know to make light of it my mom would say oh yeah you know it's not that your dad you know means to be late it's it's paul butterfield time you know oh okay what you know the tour manager changed it from march now to june and that's being late you know you don't bother to call and say i'm not going to be out there until this time you know but um i learned to really cherish the times that i get to go crash with him at the in a hotel room and get up in the morning and eat cold pizza and hang out at the sound checks and go on small tours with him and you know but it was also really tough in 1980 paul is living in the woodstock house with his girlfriend musician elizabeth barakla and collapses while recording his north south album in memphis he's diagnosed with peritonitis a painful inflammation of the inner lining of the abdomen typically caused by a bacterial infection the condition is aggravated by paul's heavy drinking use of cocaine and heroin and poor diet he receives treatment for the rest of his life including multiple surgeries i have a feeling that jerry lee lewis was diagnosed with peritonitis before paul was anyway he he would seem to be wearing it as a badge of honor he was indomitable he wasn't going to be slowed down by this at all which is why toward the really end of his career and i could begin to see signs that things were taking him down and his lack of awareness i think that was more heartbreaking than anything [Music] christmas it was the early 80s he was in the emergency room at kingston hospital his his insides had dissolved and they all just about died and i made a point of coming up here in january kathy was gone by this point he was with elizabeth barcloff the house was like empty and i went over to see him and by god wasn't he at it again and i said i saw i was so pissed off i said i came up here i thought you were gonna die i said i said i just can't believe this you know i just can't believe it and he did the whole cute thing you know oh hey man it's just i'm not you know it's just a little taste you know it was killed me paul sells the woodstock house the last remaining symbol of his hard-earned success in late 1981 and moves to new york city while he still plays the occasional gig he has no record contract and very little money with the popularity of disco and other musical genres the 80s is a tough time to be a blues musician he spends much of his time hustling money for booze cocaine and heroin he stays with friends when he can but he's running out of friends then opportunity arrives from an unexpected source when new york investment banker ray godfrey offers to finance a new album [Music] [Applause] [Music] it was almost like a dream that there he was in the gramercy hotel where i was living there was paul butterfield and he was checking in and he stayed for a good many months he had a lot of demons as we all know one of them was he couldn't eat at just anything certain items were off his diet but he couldn't help himself he loved and would shovel in the worst fried peppers and he couldn't get enough of them and i said to myself man that is living the blues he he's he lives the blues by totally putting himself through that on purpose you know i think you know whatever money waters would have however he would have written that paul lived it that much we knew he went off into the cosmos and into eastern scales and experimental music but never lost the soul of a chicago blues man [Music] caress me baby [Music] like the wind caress the trees [Music] [Laughter] i want you to love love me baby like a cool soft summer bree [Music] [Laughter] when albert grossman passed away on on super bowl sunday 1986 it was a devastating day for those musicians and i know paul was felt the same way no matter what the music business was like at the time albert had been like a father to those musicians and they were deeply affected in 1986 paul moves to los angeles not far from kathy and lee while in constant pain from his peritonitis he makes serious attempts to conquer his alcohol and drug dependency and regain control of his life rehab stints are only intermittently successful but he continues to perform and on stage he always rises to the occasion it was april 15th 1987 paul went to los angeles to play on a bb king special with eric clapton stevie ray vaughan albert king phil collins and paul was not in good shape and uh his alcoholism was worse and worse and yet he stole the [Music] show my baby don't love me [Music] [Music] my woman don't love [Music] look at the me he was just himself he was a real man he was one of the leaders in the harmonica business but paul was a young man so it's left to you me and a whole lot of others to keep it going we wouldn't be treating him fast we did [Music] after post-production it came out after paul died which was only less than a month later and they posthumously dedicated that show to him he came to woodstock after that because he was going to get together with rick for those shows in woodstock and a little bit of a tour there and rick certainly uh had his own issues and he was on those last shows with paul including the the last show at uh graffiti's a nightclub in pittsburgh [Music] the morning after that show i got a call from rick at the hotel and he told me the ambulance had come and picked up paul and he was unconscious at the hotel room and paul got admitted to the hospital there in pittsburgh they were concerned about him enough to hold him in the state of pennsylvania at the hospital and then he checked out and went to hollywood and he passed away i believe it was may 4th uh only about a week later i mean he was the love of my life and even though i had a lot of trouble with some of the things that were going on i loved him dearly and he loved me and we had a very private and very close bond um yeah i was very very sad to lose him i've done a lot of wrong things in my life [Music] that's all right [Music] i'm not the only one [Music] and i've done a lot of wrong things i was sure that was right [Music] that's all right too [Music] i had fun [Music] every now and then [Music] i find myself a sweet thing [Music] just to come and keep me company [Music] and when i get low [Music] i know right where to go [Music] someone's there to take good care of [Music] he died the same age as i am right now you know and i feel young i feel like my life is just starting i've got such a beautiful family and so much love to give and so much to offer and i can't possibly imagine my life ending now paul didn't happen to fit into some view of where the zeitgeist was at at that particular point you know and sometimes you just gotta lay low you just gotta wait and then the world makes a couple more turns and all of a sudden you're in the rock and roll hall of fame my own experience with blues men is that something some energy inside of them i don't want to use the word pain maybe it's joy something has to come out and they discover blues as their outlet boy paul was definitely one of those guys that he put that harp to his lips man and something from his soul [Music] oh [Music] i had the honor to be one of the speakers at paul's memorial service here in woodstock and among the things i said was this which i think sums up my feeling about paul and i'll read this to you paul used to say that he played only one note but he really knew how to play it maybe that's a little bit of an oversimplification but when he got in front of a microphone with a harmonic in his hand he was transformed everything else was stripped away the walls came down and raw feelings came out underneath it all that's where his true talent was and his ability to play that note with so much heart that it couldn't miss going right to the heart of anyone who listened [Music] and just to come [Music] when i get low [Music] i know right where to go someone's there to take [Music] good care [Music] take care of me [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Amplified - Music & Pop Culture Documentaries

Views: 98,456

Keywords: full documentary, full episode, full length documentary, Amplified, amplified channel, music, documentaries, music documentaries, film documentary, paul butterfield, blues music, paul butterfield blues band documentary, mike bloomfield, blues, butterfield, harmonica, paul, walkin blues (composition), paul butterfield live, documentary, rock and roll hall of fame, rock hall, hall of fame, band, harmonica (musical instrument), blues band, chicago blues (musical genre)

Id: 2T5AAbGWZAo

Length: 91min 51sec (5511 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 27 2022