Paul Butterfield Albums (13)
'Live at Winterland Ballroom'
Release Date 6/7/1999
Tracks 9
Label Bears
See Album Tracklist and Review
'The Legendary Paul Butterfield Rides Again'
Release Date 1/1/1986
Tracks 9
Label Amherst
See Album Tracklist and Review
'Put It in Your Ear'
Release Date 1/1/1975
Tracks 10
Label Bearsville
See Album Tracklist and Review
'Paul Butterfield's Better Days'
Release Date 1/1/1973
Tracks 9
Label Rhino
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Included is Paul Butterfield with Geoff Muldaur, Howard Johnson, Ronnie Barron, Bobby Charles, and others. ~ All Music Guide, All Music Guide
'Sometimes I Just Feel Like Smilin''
Release Date 1/1/1971
Tracks 9
Label Elektra
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
For the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, this two-LP set proved that it all came down to Butterfield himself and his abilities as a leader in the end. For all of the adulation heaped on Mike Bloomfield, Elvin Bishop, et al., the group was ultimately an extension of Butterfield's abilities as a leader and player, and this set proved that Butterfield and the bandmembers he had assembled in 1971 had more than two LPs' worth of live playing in them that was worth releasing and worth buying. And that wasn't the half of it -- talk about ironies -- at the time the Paul Butterfield Blues Band recorded this live album, they were at their peak as a concert act; they were getting all the bookings they wanted at the best clubs in the biggest cities in the country, and a lot of other places as well, in front of enthusiastic audiences who were devouring their blues-jazz-rock-R&B hybrid sound as fast as they could pump it out on-stage. They just weren't selling many records, which was why few people ever got to hear this album. The four-man horn section and the single guitar are a long way from the band that dazzled audiences six years earlier on East-West, or at Monterey in 1967; this is big-band Chicago blues with a jazz base and a killer sound, ranging all over the musical map without peer. In the midst of all of those seemingly louder instruments blowing away, however, one can still find a great showcase for Butterfield's blues harp on numbers like Big Walter Horton's "Everything's Gonne Be Alright." The sound, recorded on then state-of-the-art equipment at the L.A. Troubadour, is excellent and the performances are as tight as anything ever delivered by the band, in many ways fulfilling the promise of the longer numbers represented on their earlier studio albums. The original double LP is still worth finding for vinyl enthusiasts. [In 2004, an expanded edition of the album was released on CD by Rhino Handmade with an additional 70 minutes of music on it.] ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Released in 1969, Keep on Moving was the fifth Elektra release by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. During a four-year span the group's namesake and leader was the only original member left from their first album in 1965. Morphing in a similar direction as Michael Bloomfield's Electric Flag, this edition of the Butterfield Blues Band prominently fronted the horn section of David Sanborn on alto sax, Gene Dinwiddie on tenor, and Keith Johnson on trumpet. The band's direction was full tilt, horn-dominated soul music, first explored on The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw, which took them farther away from the highly regarded gritty blues experimentation of East-West and the duel guitar attack of Michael Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop. This album also signaled the final appearance of AACM and Art Ensemble of Chicago drummer Phillip Wilson, whose Butterfield swan song was the collaboration with Dinwiddie on the hippie gospel track "Love March," of which an appropriately disjointed live version appeared on the Woodstock soundtrack album. The difference between Butterfield's 1965 street survival ode "Born in Chicago" ("My father told me 'son you'd better get a gun") and "Love March" ("Sing a glad song, sing all the time") left fans wondering if the band had become a bit too democratic. However, on cuts like "Losing Hand," some of the band's original fervor remains. Butterfield's harp intertwining with the horn section sounds like a lost Junior Parker outtake and the Jimmy Rogers' penned "Walking by Myself," is the closest this band comes to the gutsy Windy City blues of its heyday. The remaining tracks aren't horrible, but tend to run out of ideas quickly, unfortunately making what may have been decent material (with a little more effort) sound premature. Butterfield would make a few more personnel changes, release one final disc on Elektra, Sometimes I Just Feel Like Smilin', and then dump the band altogether to embark on a solo career. In 2006, Sundazed released a High-Definition Vinyl LP version of Keep on Moving. ~ Al Campbell, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Sometimes, one has to wonder whether the youth of the 1960s were really as open to new ideas and new sounds as their press would make you believe. Take the album at hand, In My Own Dream by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band -- their fourth official release (though two others have since gone into their discography at earlier points), it marked the point where the band really began to lose its audience, and all for reasons having nothing to do with the quality of their music. They'd gotten past the loss of Michael Bloomfield in early 1967, over which they'd surrendered some of their audience of guitar idolaters, with the engagingly titled (and guitar-focused) Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw. In My Own Dream had its great guitar moments, especially on "Just to Be With You," but throughout the album, Elvin Bishop's electric guitar shared the spotlight with the horn section of Gene Dinwiddle, David Sanborn, and Keith Johnson, who had signed on with the prior album and who were more out in front than ever. More to the point, this album represented a new version of the band being born, with shared lead vocals, with the leader himself only taking three of the seven songs, and bassist Bugsy Maugh singing lead on two songs, Bishop on one, and drummer Phillip Wilson taking one song. What's more, there was a widely shared spotlight for the players, and more of a jazz influence on this record than had ever been heard before from the group. This was a band that could jam quietly for five minutes on "Drunk Again," building ever-so-slowly to a bluesy crescendo where Bishop's guitar and Mark Naftalin's organ surged; and follow it with the title track, a totally surprising acoustic guitar-driven piece featuring Sanborn, Dinwiddle, and Johnson. The playing was impressive, especially for a record aimed at a collegiate audience, but the record had the bad fortune to appear at a point when jazz was culturally suspect among the young, an elitist and not easily accessible brand of music that seemed almost as remote as classical music (i.e. "old people's" music). "Get Yourself Together" was almost too good a piece of Chicago-style blues, a faux Chess Records-style track that might even have been too "black" for the remnants of Butterfield's old audience. It also anticipated the group's final change of direction, its blossoming into a multi-genre blues/jazz/R&B/soul outfit, equally devoted to all four genres and myriad permutations of each. It might not be essential listening for dedicated fans of the original band, but for those who hung on to its glorious end -- the double-live LP (a double-live CD and twice as long, as of late 2004) -- this is the missing link, how they got there. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
