#71 Why Spread the Butter? Part 6 The Paul Butterfield Legacy

It is the early morning hours of August 18^th 1969, and the Woodstock Music and Art Fair is winding down after a successful three day event. The festival welcomes over 400,000 people making it the largest outdoor music festival ever, and the most important in rock music in history.

It showcases performances by 32 established and rising stars in 60s popular music; almost all of them are white artists who perform blues or blues based rock songs. Most of them owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Paul Butterfield for opening doors to new prospects in black music, and post war urban blues.

His band, the Butterfield Blues Band are just about to finish their set, and will then leave the stage to make room for 50s rock and roll nostalgia band Sha Na Na, and a new blues rock guitar slinger, Jimi Hendrix. Butterfield isn’t the headliner that day, but he will make history – again.

He walks to the front of the stage for the last song of his set, picks up his electric ten hole harmonica, pushes it into his mouth, and then lets out a fierce rallying cry of blues phrases. The audience is transfixed by the sound of his electric harmonica. Then his big horn laden band launches a sortie on Marion Little Walter Jacob’s 1959 Chicago blues standard Everything’s Gonna Be Alright.

Butterfield is doing something no other blues harmonica player before him has done. He has his ten hole harmonica plugged into two Daisy chained Fender Twin reverb amps, making it the loudest in history. However, this is a minor fact in comparison with his most important contributions to the little instrument. It takes him four grueling years working toward just such  day, and finally he has arrived. Paul Butterfield has become the most successful white bluesman who stands in front of a band singing blues, and accompanying himself on the ten hole harmonica in history.

However, the next decade will be both kind but very cruel to the young bluesman, and the music he helps popularize. There are young black harmonica bluesmen like James Cotton, Jr. Wells, and Bill Boy Arnold who are introduced to a whole new lucrative audience because of Butterfield. 

Then there is a collection of white bluesmen like John Mayall, Alan Wilson and Canned Heat, Corky Siegel of the Siegel – Schwal Band who also enjoy the luxury of  being able to perform blues, and be accepted as authentic by audiences because of Butterfield’s efforts.

Probably the two most convincing white blues singers of the crop are actually from Butterfield’s Chicago days. Former south side rival Charlie Mussellwhite sticks close to a post war blues format, but has become an authentic white bluesman. Then there is Steve Miller of the Steve Miller Band. He plays some harmonica in the Butterfield style, but prefers to accompany himself with his guitar. Miller isn’t known as a bluesman or harmonica player, but one listen of his composition Living in the U.S.A. showcases his prowess on the instrument.

However, the authentic harmonica playing bluesman figure is fading into the background of the more popular music created by the mainstream popularity of  blues based rock bands. In many of these bands, blues and the harmonica playing bluesman is just a nod to the genre. There are several whose lead singers attempt to play the role of harmonica playing blues singer:  Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin, Ian Gillan of Deep Purple, and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones to name a few. They all include blues songs which feature them supporting their singing with the ten hole harmonica, but none is very authentic.

Butterfield will enjoy unprecedented popularity as the premier harmonica playing bluesman in the mid 70s, but his
career is in its plateau stage. He will form one of the first Americana music bands of the decade in '72, Better Days, and produce two albums of songs made up of  rural and urban blues, traditional folk, New Orleans funk and gospel. His innovative mind is still active during these days as he tells one interviewer that he plays something he has never before heard on the ten hole harmonica, a rhythm pattern with the root octave of his harmonica, (Louisiana Flood).

Paul Butterfield's Better Days appear in large venues around the country, play on daytime and evening talk shows, but for a variety of reasons,  the band crumbles in late ’74. Unfortunately, the once great bluesman ceases to be a creative force in popular music. His last stand will be in '75 when he makes a memorable appearance in the best rock documentary in the history of the music, The Last Waltz.

There are technical problems while filming his performance though. According to director Martin Scorsese, only one spotlight functions properly, and the performance is almost lost, but in the end, it works in Butterfield favor. He offers up a visceral interpretation of Jr. Parker’s Mystery Train, playing some of the best blues harmonica of his career. It is an iconic image and performance of the authentic bluesman standing in front of a band singing blues and accompanying himself on the ten hole harmonica.

Unfortunately, after Butterfield's performance in the The Last Waltz , his health declines and he relieves himself of the enormous responsibly of being a bandleader. He will spend the rest of his career as a studio musician, a sideman for bands like Levon helm and the RCO Allstars, and during the late 70s into the early 80s he teams up with Rick Danko of the Band for sporadic tours of the bar circuit.  Remember, Butterfield's most important contributions are made between '65 and '75, a longer run than most artists of any genre. 

However, Butterfield's legacy is almost as impressive as his career. The white harmonica playing bluesman figure is not as popular by the 80s, but there are several young white bluesmen trying to make it work for them, and all owe a great debt to what Butterfield accomplishes during his career. Californian bluesman Kim Wilson will front his band The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and by the end of the 80s have a few blues based songs working their way up the mainstream pop charts. 

Another Californian, Rod Piazza will start working the blues circuit playing mostly chromatic harmonica in the post war style of George Smith. Then there is the fine work of William Clarke and Mark Hummel all of whom also acknowledge the influence of Paul Butterfield. 

None of these young white harmonica playing bluesman would not be able to stand up in front of a crowd, and expect to be treated with much credibility if it were not for the doors Butterfield opens in the mid 60s.

Butterfield’s influence as an artist and harmonica player is wide though. One harmonica player inspired by Butterfield’ playing, Mickey Raphael, will take a job with country singer Willie Nelson in the early 70s.  A decade later he will record a duet with Butterfield, call it Hand to Mouth, and submit it as the title track of his first album. Country harmonica virtuoso Charlie McCoy, who is not directly influenced by Paul Butterfield, reaps some residual benefits of the blues craze Butterfield helps to create, and records an album of blues classics in '75 entitled Harpin’ the Blues.

As a compliment to the white harmonica playing bluesman figure that Butterfield helps to create, Canadian comedic actor, Dan Akyroyd will play the role of a white Chicago bluesman in the very successful 1978 movie The Blues Brothers. The film’s success will inspire a live album release with a full band of authentic bluesmen and soul singers in tow, A Briefcase Full of Blues.

Another bluesman who cites Butterfield as an influence is Huey Lewis, but he choses to be a rock star fronting the very successful 80s band, Huey Lewis and The News. He and his band will earn 19 top ten hits on the pop charts, some of them featuring Lewis playing electric blues harmonica. One of the best examples of Lewis' skill as a blues harmonica player is the post war urban blues influenced Workin for Livin’. It will  climb to number 20 on the pop charts in '82.

Butterfield will do one last performance in 1987 as a sideman in a B.B. King television special, B.B. King and Friends. In spite of his declining physical health, he manages to upstage both Stevie Ray Vaughn and Albert King during a performance of Elmore James’ 1959 hit, The Sky is Crying. Butterfield will die a month later, and as a tribute, King will dedicate the special him.

Over in France there is a young white bluesman singer/songwriter who also cites Butterfield as one of his influences, Jean Jacques Milteau. He will record several successful albums using the ten hole harmonica in pop, blues, jazz and French folk music. 

Back in the U.S., a young John Popper will do some of what Curtis, Jacobs and Butterfield did for the ten hole harmonica, and create new phrases for the instrument while fronting his successful rock band Blues Traveller.

Then, multi instrumentalist, jazz musician, and leader of his band Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Howard Levy, who points to Butterfield as his first harmonica hero. He will become the most important exponent of the ten hole harmonica in the late 20^th century when he develops and implements a new technique for the instrument he calls overblows and overdraws. The technique transforms the little diatonic harmonica into a chromatic instrument, opening doors for hundreds of harmonica players in the 21st century.

Levy will teach two more Butterfield influenced harmonica playing bluesmen: Cuban Canadian Carlos Del Junco, and American Jason Ricci. Two more artists who cite Butterfield's playing as an influence on their own work; both will take the ten hole harmonica in explorations of blues, jazz and other forms of music. 

If there was ever a modern white bluesman who stands in front of a band singing blues and accompanying himself on the ten hole harmonica to take over from where Paul Butterfield finishes, it Jason Ricci. He is creative, innovative, a both dynamic on stage and in the studio. Watch out for his work!

It is impossible to overestimate the influence Paul Butterfield has on post war urban blues, the harmonica playing bluesman figure, and the popular music of the latter half of the twentieth century. Consider, if we remove his important contributions to popular music, there may never have been the Electric Flag, Blood Sweat and Tears, Chicago, the authentic white harmonica playing bluesman figure, Carlos Santana, Americana music, Huey Lewis, Howard Levy, or Jason Ricci. One thing is for sure, without Paul Butterfield’s important contributions, popular music would be left with an enormous void. 

In 2016, this writer was invited to act as a consultant for the documentary Horn From the Heart; The Paul Butterfield Story, by award winning director John Anderson and producer Sandy Warren. A debt of gratitude must be be extended to Butterfield fans like these two, and all other people who keep the Paul Butterfield legacy alive.

If you are interested in learning how to play harmonica like Paul Butterfield, start with his early 80s, instructional series available on Homespun tapes. 

There are also many excellent instructional videos devoted to the Butterfield sound on YouTube by excellent teachers, and players such as: Adam Gussow , Rolly Platt, Will Wilde, Ronnie Shellist, Hakan Ehn, and Tomlin Leckie. 

Also, have a look at my Facebook page The Complete Paul Butterfield

Thanks for reading this five part series!