Guitar King: Michael Bloomfield's Life in the Blues

by David Dann Narrated by Michael Butler Murray

Overview

Named one of the world's great blues-rock guitarists by Rolling Stone, Mike Bloomfield (1943-1981) remains beloved by fans nearly forty years after his untimely death. Taking listeners backstage, onstage, and into the recording studio with this legendary virtuoso, David Dann tells the riveting stories behind Bloomfield's work in the seminal Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the mesmerizing Electric Flag, as well as the Super Session album with Al Kooper and Stephen Stills, Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, and soundtrack work with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson.



In vivid chapters drawn from meticulous research, including more than seventy interviews with the musician's friends, relatives, and band members, music historian David Dann brings to life Bloomfield's worlds, from his comfortable upbringing in a Jewish family on Chicago's North Shore to the gritty taverns and raucous nightclubs where this self-taught guitarist helped transform the sound of contemporary blues and rock music. With scenes that are as electrifying as Bloomfield's music, this is the story of a life lived at full volume.

Editorial Reviews

"Best Music Books of 2019" Rolling Stone

Bloomfield hated stardom, and what unfolds is the story of a genius ‘relegated to footnote status’ by a self-sabotaging streak Dann lays out in tragic, vivid detail.

Chairman Ralph

Breathtaking…Monumental and massive, Guitar King gives its subject a suitably epic feel, even as it moves at a brisk pace through the peaks and valleys of Bloomfield's life.

Booklist

Dann makes a persuasive case for how this white kid from Glencoe, Illinois, played a central role in introducing white audiences to urban blues.

Rolling Stone

Thanks to new interviews with associates and animated descriptions of Bloomfield's playing, motor-mouth way of talking and scholarly music knowledge, [Bloomfield's] tug of war between the commercial and the uncompromised makes for an absorbing read. Guitar King isn't the first book on Bloomfield but is most fleshed out, and it also feels like one of the last great untold classic-rock tales, right up through Bloomfield's mysterious passing...Even as the book will make you reach for or stream A Long Time Comin’, Super Session, East-West or even Triumvirate (his overlooked 1973 album with John Hammond and Dr. John, another failed supergroup plan) Guitar King gives you its own version of the blues.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

[Guitar King] goes beyond previous Bloomfield books to examine his music and turbulent life at a near-molecular level…[Dann] reveals the depths of Bloomfield's musical passions, genius and personal despair…Guitar King establishes his pivotal role in American music history.

Houston Press

In this exhaustive, detailed doorstopper of a tome, Dann...explores seemingly every nook and cranny of [Bloomfield's] music…with Guitar King, the spotlight is absolutely on the subject, a wealthy, Jewish kid who just wanted to play the blues.

MOJO

[Dann] restores Bloomfield to the prominence he once enjoyed, careful to avoid hagiography as he documents the musician's rise to glory and swift, heartbreaking (but seemingly inevitable) demise.

PolitiChicks

This is the definitive book on Michael Bloomfield…Guitar King reads like a novel with stunning points of new information and a great compassion for the vagaries of Bloomfield's life…[Guitar King is] one of the greatest books written about any musician, of any genre.

Blues Matters

Bringing Bloomfield's worlds alive, with sections drawn from his meticulous (you can feel this is more than thorough) research…the author deserves a medal for this work.

The Oakland Press

[Guitar King is] a rich and definitive presentation that will enhance the converted and convert the unfamiliar.

Blues Blast Magazine

Holding a reader's interest through hundreds of pages is a daunting task in a work of non-fiction, but Dann keeps the story flowing in a way that steadily helps readers develop a truer sense of Bloomfield the artist, and the person…No matter how much knowledge you may already have about Michael Bloomfield, reading Dann's biography will certainly add multiple layers of understanding about his life and the extent of his influence on the lineage of blues guitar playing...[Guitar King is a] magnificent tribute to a man who undoubtedly was a 'Guitar King,' making this book a highly recommended addition to any musical library!

Goldmine Magazine

Essential reading for serious rock and blues fans.

CounterPunch

Guitar King is voluminous in size—as befits a man whose contribution to modern music is greater than history has ever acknowledged. Drawing from his deep research and numerous interviews, it is clear that Dann put tremendous effort into this book. It is a biography that puts Bloomfield back into his rightful place on the roster of rock and blues greats. The result is a tremendous and magnificent work.

Shepherd Express

Bloomfield's emblematic life is tirelessly documented in Guitar King.

Americana Highways

Without doubt, author David Dann has the goods on who could well be the most exciting electric guitarist to come out of all the 60s’ musical machinations. And though the ’70s were pretty much a bust for Bloomfield, the decline and eventual sad demise of this nonpareil bluesman holds so many intriguing what-could-have-beens that for anyone who is super-interested in how the modern musical landscape was born and why it went so far south during the ’70s for such a pivotal original, this is the tome that tells the tale.

Wall Street Journal

Encyclopedic…packed with enough info to make a blues nerd giddy with joy…[a] rich, resonant, detailed account…this book draws you in the way a novel does, one by Dostoyevsky, say, in which the hero is part genius, part stumblebum, a flawed artist making his way half-aware through a world of joys and pitfalls—someone very much like most of us, in other words, if a lot more talented and a little more careless.

American Book Review

Michael Bloomfield’s life was a great story waiting to be told, and David Dann has done it considerable justice. His passion for his subject and the depth of his research are extraordinary...Dann has done Michael Bloomfield’s fans a great service with this book...we should be happy that Dann scrutinized this American icon with such insight.

The Current

[Dann] adds detail and nuance to our understanding of the life and career of a guitarist who was one of the most respected performers of his generation.

All About Jazz

Dann offers close to eight-hundred pages virtually all of which are worth equally careful reading. Even the play-by-plays of studio and stage performances, including the ill-conceived super-group KGB, conjure a palpable sense of suspense…there's a sense of purpose in Dann's writing mirroring that of Bloomfield's and that makes Guitar King hard to put down once the reading starts and delivers a dual sense of melancholy and accomplishment when it's complete...Compelling reading from start to finish...only this prolific artist's music itself could be a more vivid act of advocacy.

Largehearted Boy

Exhaustive and engaging.

Music Connection

[A] monumental examination.

Punk Globe

Dann gives accounts of episodes in Bloomfield's life like he was there, even describing Bloom's fill and solos on any given night like a guitar player telling another guitar player all about it. Fans of Bloomfield will find it hard to put the book down and music history buffs will respect the fales involved...Dann's writing puts you there next to Bloomfield as he encounters the legends in his orbit like Dylan, Butterfield and Bloom's competitors like Eric Clapton...and Jimi Hendrix.

"Top Two Dozen Rock Books of 2019" Folkrocks

A volume that's both extremely detailed and a very enjoyable read from beginning to end…[Guitar King] is worth the considerable investment of time you'll need to digest the whole tome, and a significant addition to blues-rock scholarship.

Ultimate Classic Rock

Readers of Guitar King will be both impressed and frustrated as they read the fascinating tales of Bloomfield's life. The rocker always seemed at the precipice of stardom, but whether it was turning down Bob Dylan or getting deep into the world of drugs, he continually found ways to be his own worst enemy.

Booklist

"Dann makes a persuasive case for how this white kid from Glencoe, Illinois, played a central role in introducing white audiences to urban blues."

Wall Street Journal

"Encyclopedic…packed with enough info to make a blues nerd giddy with joy…[a] rich, resonant, detailed account…this book draws you in the way a novel does, one by Dostoyevsky, say, in which the hero is part genius, part stumblebum, a flawed artist making his way half-aware through a world of joys and pitfalls—someone very much like most of us, in other words, if a lot more talented and a little more careless."

Kirkus Reviews

2019-06-23
An exhaustive biography gives the legendary Chicago blues-rock guitarist his due—and then some.

More than a half-century ago, Mike Bloomfield (1943-1981) was routinely ranked with the likes of Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. His was the guitar that electrified Bob Dylan's watershed performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and that stung its way through his breakthrough "Like a Rolling Stone." As the lead guitarist for the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Bloomfield brought extended, jazzlike improvisation to the form and performed with a flamboyance that charged his every gesture. In 1967, he formed a band called the Electric Flag, which added horns to the blues-rock-soul-jazz mix and would attempt to transcend musical genres. But by the early 1970s, Bloomfield walked away from the spotlight—or stumbled and staggered away, a victim of substance abuse, insomnia, insecurity, and an inability to deal with the pressures of the spotlight and the demands of touring and performance. By the time he suffered a fatal overdose in 1981, he had been all but forgotten, a footnote in rock's progression. "The obscurity Bloomfield longed for in his last decade he achieved posthumously with stunning success," writes Dann, who has approached his task with an archivist's expansiveness rather than the selection of detail and stylistic grace that distinguish a biographer's craft. The author includes every club owner, performance booker, and long-forgotten sideman as well as every recording session in Bloomfield's slide toward obscurity. Amid the dross, there is a compelling narrative of a young blues fanatic whose problems with drugs and mental instability predated his fame—and who continued to perform in projects for which he had indifference or even contempt because he was so deeply in debt to the manager he had once shared with Dylan.

Those with a passion for the music will enjoy revisiting a time when Bloomfield's influence exceeded even Stevie Ray Vaughan's.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176148176
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	10/20/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

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