Raven presents for the first time on one CD, the legendary concert by MICHAEL BLOOMFIELD and NICK GRAVENITES recorded at Bill Graham's Fillmore West in 1969. With bonus track, superb quality audio, color booklet and inform... more »ative liner notes. The late, great Bloomfield is recognised as one of the finest and most influential blues guitarists that America has ever produced. Best known for his astonishing technique and the piercing tone of his solos, he was a member of the ground-breaking Paul Butterfield Blues Band, played on Dylan's 'Like a Rolling Stone' and backed him at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when Dylan first went 'electric'. He helped pioneer horn-rock with the Electric Flag and the Super Session concept with Al Kooper as well as recording Triumvirate with John Hammond Jr and Dr. John. Bloomfield and Gravenites - lead singer of the Flag and a respected bluesman in his own right - cut an incendiary performance at the Fillmore West which yielded this phenomenal album. The concert was split across the original Live at Fillmore West vinyl and Gravenites' My Labors album, and the tracks have now been recombined on one stellar CD. Bloomfield positively burns on 'It Takes Time', 'Killing My Love', 'Gypsy Good Time', while his monumental solo on 'Blues on a Westside' is one of the greatest moments in blues rock history. Carlos Santana said Bloomfield "literally changed my life". Dylan said "he played circles around anything I could play". Gravenites called him "a huge giant of a person".« less
Raven presents for the first time on one CD, the legendary concert by MICHAEL BLOOMFIELD and NICK GRAVENITES recorded at Bill Graham's Fillmore West in 1969. With bonus track, superb quality audio, color booklet and informative liner notes. The late, great Bloomfield is recognised as one of the finest and most influential blues guitarists that America has ever produced. Best known for his astonishing technique and the piercing tone of his solos, he was a member of the ground-breaking Paul Butterfield Blues Band, played on Dylan's 'Like a Rolling Stone' and backed him at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when Dylan first went 'electric'. He helped pioneer horn-rock with the Electric Flag and the Super Session concept with Al Kooper as well as recording Triumvirate with John Hammond Jr and Dr. John. Bloomfield and Gravenites - lead singer of the Flag and a respected bluesman in his own right - cut an incendiary performance at the Fillmore West which yielded this phenomenal album. The concert was split across the original Live at Fillmore West vinyl and Gravenites' My Labors album, and the tracks have now been recombined on one stellar CD. Bloomfield positively burns on 'It Takes Time', 'Killing My Love', 'Gypsy Good Time', while his monumental solo on 'Blues on a Westside' is one of the greatest moments in blues rock history. Carlos Santana said Bloomfield "literally changed my life". Dylan said "he played circles around anything I could play". Gravenites called him "a huge giant of a person".
CD Reviews
Stratospheric!
M. Bernocchi | Old Windsor, Berkshire United Kingdom | 05/31/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"You are in front of one of the greatest live blues album ever! I am not scared about making this statement as I believe that this is absolutely true. This live set recorded in 1969 finds Mike at the pick of his carrier and in a fantastic shape. Michael performance in here is so good to leave you speechless. Numbers like Blues On A Westside, Moon Tune, It Takes Time, Killing My Love, Carmelita Skiffle, It's About Time, One More Mile To Go are real gems that are going to remain in the history of blues music. More, they should be played in every music school to teach how electric blues is meant to be played! Surely Mike has been one of the most, if not the most, influential white blues guitarist ever lived. Just listen to the intro of Blues On A West Side and then to Ronnie Earl's Rego Park Blues final solo (live version) and you will see. However in this fantastic album packed from start to finish with excellence also the performances of the great vocalist Nick Gravenites deserves a special mention as it does the guest appearance of Taj Mahal. This is a 1969 recording sounding as fresh as it was recorded yesterday, a real masterpiece that deserves attention not just from blues lovers but also from everyone who love music.
"
Bloomfield at his best !!
Blues_King | Chesapeake, VA USA | 04/22/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This album, along with the Butterfield stuff, is Bloomfield at his best. His playing on this album is fantastic, period!!. Anyone who forgot or never heard of Bloomfield should get this immediatly. A Desrt Island Disc as they say. Bloomers lives !!"
Recycled
D. Perrine | 06/21/2009
(4 out of 5 stars)
"The expanded reissue of "My Labors" on Acadia includes much of this material. It also has one 13 minute live cut not included here, as well as three inferior studio cuts. This compilation has five cuts not on the Acadia release. I'm just going by track lists, so it's possible that some of the duplicates might be alternate takes. While this album is described as being from one "legendary concert," the Acadia notes reference several live sessions at the Filmore from January and February 1969. However all of the Acadia material was taken from the two original releases, and I would assume that the * next to the last title on this one indicates the only previously unreleased track."
Reissued at Last, and Still One of Bloomfield's Most Powerfu
BluesDuke | Las Vegas, Nevada | 04/29/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Let's see if I have this straight---Sony/Columbia Legacy saw fit to let two of these performances ("It Takes Time" and the incandescent "Carmelita Skiffle") turn up to round off their excellent Michael Bloomfield overview ("Don't Say That I Ain't Your Man," in 1998) but not to let the entire original album (released in 1969), plus the performances that were saved for Nick Gravenites' "My Labours," see the light of day once more.
Leaving it to Australia's Raven label to do what should have been done long enough ago. Considering Legacy's diligence in its "Roots 'n' Blues" series and with much of the Bloomfield canon from his Columbia years, that omission should be considered a crime. That said, thank Raven for its own diligence and for producing a set that presents everything Columbia recorded (save "Winter Country Blues," omitted for space reasons but still alive and well on the reissued "My Labours") the 1969 weekend Bloomfield, Nick Gravenites, and a few of their regular musical partners (including Bloomfield's former Butterfield Blues Band teammate Mark Naftalin on piano, his "Live Adventures" bassist John Kahn, his soon-to-be-frequent drummer Bob Jones, and erstwhile Electric Flag baritone saxophonist Snooky Flowers) commandeered the Fillmore West for some freewheeling blues and soul jamming.
Concede the point that this isn't exactly "Super Session Mk III" (and not just because organist Ira Kamin is no Al Kooper, though he's quite tasteful and sinuous in his own right), and you have one of the most powerful documents in the Bloomfield catalog. The horns and the Gravenites voice may deceive you into thinking this was a kind of projection of what Bloomfield ultimately wished the Electric Flag to have been, but this music is far more tightly grounded in blues and soul than the eclectic (and ill-fated) Flag, and these musicians, whatever their individual inclinations, are most at home in those two neighbourhoods. Gravenites has rarely been heard in better or more soulful voice, even when it cracks now and then; Kahn, Jones, and conga player Dino Andino play as though they'd been welded together for years; Naftalin and Kamin are as supple a keyboard team as you could ask without stepping on each other's corns; and the horns---Flowers, Gerald Oshita (baritone sax), Noel Jewkis (tenor sax), and John Wilmeth (trumpet)---sound as buttery and exuberant as the tightest sessions of the Memphis Horns.
And Bloomfield? He gives more than enough evidence of what Al Kooper hoped to isolate with "Super Session" in the first place: catching him when he could just forget everything except playing his heart out, from the kickoff lick to "It Takes Time" (boy, did he never forget what Otis Rush among the other Chicago masters taught him as a teenager hanging around the classic southside blues clubs) to the last notes of "Moon Tune." And just about all points in between. If you missed out hearing it on "Don't Say I Ain't Your Man: Essential Blues, 1964-69" (it's since gone out of print), here's "Carmelita Skiffle"---the original vinyl release closer---and Bloomfield plain rollicking, practically squeezing everything he'd learned about and felt about the blues into one incendiarily melodious solo, before handing it off to Jewkis for a smooth saxophone break and Kamin for a soaring organ solo, before returning with an exclamation point of a coda.
In between? "Oh, Mama" is a Bloomfield composition, the kind of soul he'd begun exploring in the Electric Flag, and while the music is exquisite Bloomfield as a singer was a virtuoso guitarist. With Gravenites extending his breather, Jones takes a surprisingly solid vocal on the Arthur Conley chestnut "Love Got Me" (and you thought all Conley was good for was "Sweet Soul Music"). With Gravenites returning, "Blues on a Westside" lives up to its mini-legend as a wrenching jam, with Bloomfield absolutely soaring. Taj Mahal joins up for a throbbing "One More Mile," and Gravenites' "It's About Time" could be said to live up to its title, working blues into a James Brown-like groove in a more freewheeling style, guitar and piano wrestling each other's chords deftly and riding the rhythm smoothly, Bloomfield firing off a few horn-like bursts to set up his solo statement.
And the "My Labours" additions? All of them Gravenites compositions, the one that's most likely to stick in your head is "Gypsy Good Time," what they used to call funky blues, punctuated sweatily by Willmeth's trumpet phrases and Andino's rolling secondary rhythm, with the full band cutting a deep and wide groove over which Gravenites sings exuberantly and Bloomfield peels off a fiery, melodious solo.
It's a shame the compilers found no room for "Winter Country Blues" but chose to fill out the available space with "Mary Ann," a quartet performance (and a good one) from "The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper," which is actually a good introduction to that set if you don't have it yet. Just why the new compilers saw fit to include that as a bonus track isn't made clear. But it shouldn't distract you from the power of the main attraction."
Track Listings (12) - Disc #1