Paul Butterfield
Paul Vaughn Butterfield (December 17, 1942 – May 4, 1987) was an American blues harmonica player, singer and bandleader. After early training as a classical flautist, he developed an interest in blues harmonica. He explored the blues scene in his native Chicago, where he met Muddy Waters and other blues greats, who provided encouragement and opportunities for him to join in jam sessions. He soon began performing with fellow blues enthusiasts Nick Gravenites and Elvin Bishop.
Paul Butterfield
Paul Vaughn Butterfield
December 17, 1942
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
May 4, 1987 (aged 44)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Musician
- Harmonica
- vocals
1963–1987
In 1963, he formed the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which recorded several successful albums and was popular on the late-1960s concert and festival circuit, with performances at the Fillmore West in San Francisco, the Fillmore East in New York City, the Monterey Pop Festival, and Woodstock. The band was known for combining electric Chicago blues with a rock urgency and for their pioneering jazz fusion performances and recordings. The band was also among the first racially integrated blues groups.[1] After the breakup of the group in 1971, Butterfield continued to tour and record with the band Paul Butterfield's Better Days, with his mentor Muddy Waters, and with members of the roots-rock group the Band. While still recording and performing, Butterfield died in 1987 at age 44 of an accidental drug overdose.
Music critics have acknowledged his development of an original approach that places him among the best-known blues harp players. In 2006, he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. Butterfield and the early members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. Both panels noted his harmonica skills and his contributions to bringing blues music to a younger and broader audience.
Harmonica style[edit]
Like many Chicago blues harp players, Butterfield approached the instrument like a horn, preferring single notes to chords, and used it for soloing.[8] His style has been described as "always intense, understated, concise, and serious",[30] and he was "known for purity and intensity of his tone, his sustained breath control, and his unique ability to bend notes to his will".[37] In his choice of notes he has been compared to Big Walter Horton, but he was never seen as an imitator of any particular harp player.[6][8][c] Rather, he developed "a style original and powerful enough to place him in the pantheon of true blues greats".[3]
Butterfield played Hohner harmonicas (and endorsed them). He preferred the diatonic ten-hole Marine Band model.[38] He wrote a harmonica instruction book, Paul Butterfield Teaches Blues Harmonica Master Class,[d] a few years before his death (it was not published until 1997).[37] In it, he explains various techniques, demonstrated on an accompanying CD.[37] Butterfield played mainly in cross-harp, or second position.[8] Reportedly left-handed, he held the harmonica in a manner opposite that of a right-handed player, i.e., in his right hand, upside down (with the low notes to the right), using his left hand for muting effects.[e]
Also like other electric Chicago blues harp players, Butterfield frequently used amplification to achieve his sound.[8] He has been associated with a Shure 545 Unidyne microphone,[39] although producer Rothchild noted that around the time of a 1965 recording session, Butterfield favored an Altec harp microphone run through an early model Fender tweed amplifier.[11] Beginning with album The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw, he used an acoustic harmonica style, following his shift to a more R&B-based approach.[6]
Death[edit]
Beginning in 1980, Butterfield underwent several surgical procedures to relieve his peritonitis, a serious and painful inflammation of the intestines.[7] Although strongly opposed to heroin as a bandleader, he developed an addiction to it, which, according to Steve Huey in AllMusic's Butterfield biography, led to "speculation that he was trying to ease his peritonitis symptoms". The financial strain of supporting his drug habit was bankrupting him, and the deaths of his friend and one-time musical partner Mike Bloomfield, and manager Albert Grossman had shaken him.[3] On May 4, 1987, at age 44, Butterfield died at his apartment in the North Hollywood district of Los Angeles. An autopsy by the county coroner concluded that he was the victim of an accidental drug overdose, with "significant levels of morphine (heroin), ... codeine, the tranquilizer Librium and a trace of alcohol."[41]
By the time of his death, Butterfield was out of the commercial mainstream. Although for some, he was very much the blues man, Maria Muldaur commented "he had the whole sensibility and musicality and approach down pat ... He just went for it and took it all in, and he embodied the essence of what the blues was all about. Unfortunately, he lived that way a little too much."[12]