The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

Artist: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

LP: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

Song: "I Got My Mojo Working"

[ listen ]

The blues has never been one of my favorite genres, but this 1965 debut album by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band is actually more blue-green, if you ask me. Though it sounds like Paul was likely playing harmonica as he sprang from his mother's womb, his singing voice is a little thin, if you ask me that too. My favorite track on the album is "I Got My Mojo Working," sung by drummer Sam Lay. A native of Birmingham, Alabama who was born in 1935, Lay came down with bad cases of pneumonia and pleurisy shortly after the release of this record and left the group. He went on drumming after he recovered, and has since been inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in Memphis, the Jazz Hall of Fame in Los Angeles and the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. You can read more about Sam Lay on All About Jazz here. Also appearing on this Paul Butterfield record are 23-year-old Elvin Bishop (rhythm guitar) and 22-year-old Mike Bloomfield (slide guitar). Sadly, Bloomfield died of a drug overdose in 1981, and then Paul Butterfield died of the same thing just six years later. You can read more about blues harmonica virtuoso Paul Butterfield on Wikipedia here, and the LP liner notes in which Pete Welding begs listeners to take Paul seriously as a blues performer even though he's young and white are included below.

 [ Paul Butterfield: December 17, 1942 — May 4, 1987 ]