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The Blues with Bloomfield

A guitarist who reached his zenith, but died tragically

As a teenager, Michael Bernard Bloomfield learnt Chicago blues from Muddy Waters and Albert King. His career bloomed after joining the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1965. The fluidity and feeling he infused into his guitar playing matched that of the black bluesmen. Bloomfield found a place for himself in music history by playing lead electric guitar for Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival.

After parting ways with Butterfield, Bloomfield dabbled briefly with his own outfit, Electric Flag. Over the next decade, the guitarist turned reclusive, his work distributed on small labels and did not getting their due. To sustain a perennial drug habit, he scored music for pornographic movies. An authority on the blues, Bloomfield also taught music at Stanford University. Coaxed into a comeback in 1975, he was included in the supergroup KGB that also featured Carmen Appice, Barry Goldberg and Ric Grech.

The album they produced was a huge letdown and Bloomfield quit to indulge in acoustic music. While on his own, his output grew, as he released eight albums in six years. In 1981, he was found dead in his car, presumably due to a drug overdose.

A. GEORGE ANTONY

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