Paul Butterfield's Better Days (CD)

Singer/harmonica player Paul Butterfield and his band were from Chicago and well-schooled in that city's urban blues scene. Their first two albums of modernized Chicago blues not only created a critical stir, but led to large-scale interest in electric blues amongst the then-embryonic hippie generation. Members of the Butterfield band (most notably guitar whiz Mike Bloomfield) also played a key role in rock history by helping Bob Dylan along in his transition to electric music. Butterfield's 1966 album EAST-WEST was strikingly prescient in its incorporation of Eastern modalities. By the mid-'70s he was getting into the post-Woodstock rural vibe with his BETTER DAYS band. Though Butterfield's salad days were far behind him when he passed away in the late-'80s, he had changed both the blues and rock worlds irrevocably.

• Category:  Music  »  Blues  »  Contemporary Blues
• Format: CD   Learn more about the CD format using Tower WIKI.
• Release Date: March 26, 1991
• Label: Rhino Records (USA)
• UPC: 081227087722
• WAPI (Tower ID): 106727145
• Average Customer Review: There are no customer reviews yet. Be the first to write a review!
• Tower.com Sales Rank: #10485 in Music (See Top 100 Music Bestsellers)
• #198 in Blues (See Top 100 Blues Bestsellers)
• #1199 in Contemporary Blues (See Top 100 Contemporary Blues Bestsellers)

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Paul Butterfield's Better Days: Paul Butterfield (vocals, acoustic guitar, electric piano, harp); Geoff Muldaur (vocals, slide guitar, piano, vibraphone); Amos Garrett (guitar, background vocals); Ronnie Barron (piano, organ, background vocals); Billy Rich (bass); Christopher Parker (drums).

Additional personnel: Dave Sanborn (alto saxophone); Gene Dinwiddie, J.D. Parran (tenor saxophone); Howard Johnson (baritone saxophone); Peter Ecklund, Stan Shafran (trumpet); Sam Burtis, Gary Brocks (trombone); Maria Muldaur, Dennis Whited, Bobby Charles (background vocals).

Recorded at Bearsville Sound Studio, Bearsville, New York.

"We're the only band around that's playing rooted American music," Better Days vocalist and former folkie Geoff Muldaur told an interviewer when this album was first released in 1973, and with perhaps just a handful of exceptions he was right. The band's mix of various styles of blues, from rural (Robert Johnson), to cosmopolitan (Percy Mayfield), along with hints of New Orleans R&B, boogie woogie, and early rock and country, was tremendously out of step with the pop trends of its time.

These days, of course, there are many bands doing more or less the same thing (although rarely as well), but the fact that these guys couldn't have cared less about appearing trendy is one of the reasons why BETTER DAYS sounds timeless. Another reason, of course, is world class musicianship; Muldaur, Paul Butterfield, and stupendously stylish guitarist Amos Garrett in particular come across as both relaxed and passionate. Despite their essentially formalistic approach to music making, they never sound academic or sterile. BETTER DAYS is one of the great lost albums of the '70s.

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