If you’re gonna steal the blues, you may as well steal from the best.

Paul Butterfield already had guitarist Elvin Bishop, and somehow they managed to pull Howlin’ Wolf’s rhythm section away from him, adding drummer Sam Lay and bassist Jerome Arnold into the mix. That made the Butterfield Blues Band one of the first truly integrated units in rock and roll, but that barely tells half of the story. Mike Bloomfield was already legendary around Chicago as one of the most singularly talented blues guitarists to come from the windy city (or anywhere else, for that matter). As the story goes, Paul Rothchild (Elektra Records) was in Chicago to see the band on a friend’s recommendation. After the show, he went around the corner and saw Mike Bloomfield playing with another group. He suggested that if Butterfield would hire Bloomfield, a record deal would ensue. The rest, as they say, is history.

The band would release only two albums with Butterfield, but whoa, what albums they were. Both this record and its follow-up, “East West,” which featured the thirteen-minute title track, redefined the blues here in America; this is the exact point where American blues history shake hands with the new generation. The virtuosity of Howlin’ Wolf’s rhythm section teamed up with two of the country’s hottest guitar slingers made some of the English blues bands look feeble in comparison.

Bloomfield tried to balance his band obligations with outside session work, most notably as the guitarist who helped Dylan go electric on “Highway 61 Revisited” and most notoriously, at the Newport Folk Festival. Still, this debut record by the Butterfield Blues Band features some of Bloomfield’s most exciting playing, with a strong, sympathetic band rendering the competition negligible.

October 1965 - Billboard Charted #123