CD/DVD Box Set
Michael Bloomfield
From His Head to His Heart to His Hands
Sony Legacy
By 1981, when Michael Bloomfield was found dead in his ’65 Chevy from a drug overdose in San Francisco, the 37-year-old blues guitarist had been largely forgotten. Popular music had moved far away from the gritty, high-octane sounds Bloomfield helped pioneer in the ’60s as the lead guitarist in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and the screaming Telecaster licks he’d played behind Bob Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival—that infamous event that split the folk-music community into acoustic and electric camps—had faded into history.
But between 1964 and 1970, Bloomfield was one of the most revered electric guitarists of the day—an inspiration to Carlos Santana, Jorma Kaukonen, and Jerry Garcia, who saw Bloomfield as the 6-string master of their generation. In 1966, Eric Clapton said, “Mike Bloomfield is music on two legs.” And Dylan claimed Bloomfield was the “best guitar player I ever heard.”