My review of the Mike Bloomfield box set, From His Head to His Heart to His Hands, today at All About Jazz.
While a proliferation of box sets continue to entice with career-spanning retrospectives—sometimes entire discographies, like Legacy Recordings' recent Paul Simon: The Complete Albums Collection (2013)—few serve as aural biographies with the same degree of success as Mike Bloomfield's aptly titled From His Head to His Heart to His Hands, a three-CD/one-DVD long box produced by the only person who could truly do justice to the late bluesman, Bob Dylan compatriot, member of the seminal Paul Butterfield Blues Band and founder of the equally essential horn-heavy Electric Flag. Thirty-three years may have passed, but keyboardist/producer Al Kooper is still around to make From His Head a thoroughly revealing three-plus hour journey, from Bloomfield's previous unreleased—and staggeringly impressive—audition for Columbia Records' John Hammond Sr., through to the last concert in which Bloomfield ever participated, playing two songs with Dylan at the singer/songwriter's Warfield Theater on November 15, 1980, exactly three months before he was found dead in his car on February 15, 1981, of a drug overdose that remains unexplained to this day.
"Let me do, just for my own self-satisfaction...just to show...I'll play...you know who Merle Travis is, Mr. Hammond?," asks a 21 year-old Bloomfield, after already impressing Hammond Sr. with the traditional "I'm a Country Boy," and Bessie Smith's "Judge, Judge," already proving that this young, Chicago-born Jew was not just capable of playing the blues with absolute credibility, he played it with the kind of truth rare amongst white blues players—then and now. "I know him well," says Hammond. "Alright, I'll play a Merle Travis piece for ya, a nice ragtime guitar piece...let me tune up again." "'16 Tons,'" asks Hammond, "referring to Travis' 1946 song made into a huge hit in 1955 by Tennessee Ernie Ford. "Not that," replies Bloomfield, "something a little cheekier than that." And with that he heads into "Hammond's Rag," taken at a bright clip and suggesting that Bloomfield's main passion might be the blues, but he was far broader in scope—and already a remarkable virtuoso, as he demonstrates a mastery of Travis' picking style so complete that, when it comes to an end, Hammond simply says, "That was great; I think we've exploited you enough. I just want you to know I'm signing you."
Continue reading here....
Bookmarks