1. Michael Bernard Bloomfield was an American blues guitarist and composer.
49 Facts About Mike Bloomfield
1. 2.
Mike Bloomfield was ranked No 22 on Rolling Stone's list of "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2003 and No 42 by the same magazine in 2011.
3.
Mike Bloomfield was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2012 and, as a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.
4.
Mike Bloomfield was born in Chicago into a wealthy Jewish family.
5.
Harold's father, Samuel Mike Bloomfield, started Mike Bloomfield Industries in the early 1930s.
6.
Mike Bloomfield's mother, Dorothy Klein, was born in Chicago in 1918 and married Harold in 1940.
7.
Mike Bloomfield came from an artistic, musical family, and worked as an actress and model before marrying.
8.
Mike Bloomfield's family lived in various locations around Chicago before settling at 424 West Melrose Street on the North Side.
9.
Mike Bloomfield attended Cornwall Academy in Massachusetts for one year and then returned to Chicago, where he spent his last year of education at a local Central YMCA High School.
10.
Mike Bloomfield had attended a 1957 Chicago performance by blues singer Josh White, and began spending time in Chicago's South Side blues clubs and playing guitar with such black bluesmen as Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rachell, and Little Brother Montgomery.
11.
Mike Bloomfield first sat in with a black blues band in 1959, when he performed with Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson at a Chicago club called the Place.
12.
Mike Bloomfield performed with Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, and many other Chicago blues performers during the early 1960s.
13.
Mike Bloomfield began friendships and professional associations with fellow Chicagoan Nick Gravenites and Bronx-born record producer Norman Dayron, who was attending the University of Chicago.
14.
Mike Bloomfield developed a friendship with blues singer Big Joe Williams.
15.
Mike Bloomfield subsequently built up his reputation in two Chicago clubs, Big John's and Magoo's.
16.
Mike Bloomfield recorded a few sessions for Columbia in 1964 that remained unreleased until after his death.
17.
In June 1965, Mike Bloomfield had recorded with Bob Dylan, whom he had met in 1963 at a Chicago club called the Bear.
18.
Mike Bloomfield demurred, preferring to continue playing with the Butterfield Band.
19.
The record's title track found the band exploring modal music, and it was based upon a song Gravenites and Mike Bloomfield had been playing since 1965, "It's About Time".
20.
Mike Bloomfield's guitar playing had a huge impact on San Francisco Bay Area musicians after playing with the Butterfield band at Bill Graham's Fillmore in March 1966, San Francisco's Avalon Ballroom and in the Los Angeles area due to the storied two-week run at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach.
21.
Mike Bloomfield became a mentor and inspiration for many guitarists, especially in the SF Bay Area.
22.
Mike Bloomfield did a 1965 date with Peter, Paul and Mary that resulted in a song called "The King of Names", and he recorded in 1966 with pop group Chicago Loop, whose "When She Wants Good Lovin' " made Billboard Magazine's chart that year.
23.
Mike Bloomfield played guitar on recordings by Chuck Berry, Mitch Ryder and James Cotton.
24.
Mike Bloomfield formed the short-lived Electric Flag in 1967, with two longtime Chicago collaborators, Barry Goldberg and vocalist Nick Gravenites.
25.
Shortly after the release of that album, Mike Bloomfield left the band, with Gravenites, Goldberg, and bassist Harvey Brooks following.
26.
Mike Bloomfield made an impact through his work with Al Kooper, who had played with Mike Bloomfield on Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone".
27.
Mike Bloomfield, who suffered from insomnia, left the sessions after the first day.
28.
Mike Bloomfield continued with solo, session and back-up work from 1968 to 1980.
29.
Mike Bloomfield played guitar on Mother Earth's cover of Memphis Slim's "Mother Earth", a track from their 1968 Living with the Animals album, and on two albums by Texas-born soul singer Wayne Talbert.
30.
Mike Bloomfield released his first solo album, It's Not Killing Me, in 1969.
31.
Mike Bloomfield helped Janis Joplin assemble her Kozmic Blues Band in 1969, co-wrote "Work Me, Lord" for the album, and played the guitar solo on Joplin's blues composition "One Good Man".
32.
Mike Bloomfield composed and recorded the soundtrack for the film Medium Cool, directed by his second cousin, Haskell Wexler.
33.
Mike Bloomfield recorded his second solo album, Try It Before You Buy It, in 1973.
34.
In 1977, Mike Bloomfield was selected by Andy Warhol to do the soundtrack for the pop artist's last film, Andy Warhol's Bad.
35.
Mike Bloomfield recorded "Hustlin' Queen", written by John Isabeau and Perkoff in 1979.
36.
Mike Bloomfield toured Italy and Sweden with guitarist Woody Harris and cellist Maggie Edmondson in the summer of 1980.
37.
Mike Bloomfield sat in with Bob Dylan at San Francisco's Warfield Theatre on November 15,1980.
38.
Mike Bloomfield played on Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" and "The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar".
39.
Mike Bloomfield continued to play live dates, with his performance at San Francisco State College on February 7,1981, being his penultimate appearance.
40.
Mike Bloomfield came from a wealthy family, and received annual income from a trust created by his paternal grandfather, which gave him $50,000 each year.
41.
Mike Bloomfield was found seated behind the wheel of his car, with all four doors locked.
42.
Mike Bloomfield's remains are interred in a crypt at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery, in Culver City, near Los Angeles.
43.
Mike Bloomfield originally used a Fender Telecaster, though he had used a Fender Duo-Sonic while recording for Columbia following his 1964 signing to the label.
44.
Mike Bloomfield used the Standard in the Electric Flag and on the Super Session album and concerts.
45.
Mike Bloomfield later switched between the it and the Telecaster, but his use of the Les Paul inspired other guitarists to use the model and spurred Gibson to reintroduce the Standard in 1968.
46.
Mike Bloomfield eventually lost the guitar in Canada when a club owner kept two he had left behind as partial compensation after Mike Bloomfield cut short a round of appearances.
47.
Mike Bloomfield had been booked at the Cave in Vancouver, from Tue.
48.
The band played the first night but the next day Mike Bloomfield boarded a plane and flew home to San Francisco with virtually no notice to the club, hotel, or band members; his friend Mark Naftalin found a note on a torn piece of paper in the hotel room that read, "bye bye, sorry".
49.
Unlike contemporaries such as Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck, Mike Bloomfield rarely experimented with feedback and distortion, preferring a loud yet clean, almost chiming sound, with a healthy amount of reverb and vibrato; this approach would strongly influence Jerry Garcia, who segued from a career in acoustic-based music to electric rock at the height of the Butterfield Band's influence in 1965.