Film shows bluesman Paul Butterfield as powerful pioneer

Bill Knight column for 3-28, 29 or 30, 2019

Enshrined in both the Blues and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Halls of Fame, blues harmonica player and bandleader Paul Butterfield played 1970’s Kickapoo Creek Music Festival in Central Illinois, 1969’s Woodstock Music Festival, 1967’s Monterey Festival, and 1965’s Newport Folk Festival.

Then, besides being a touchstone of the explosive emergence of blues in a rock/pop period, Butterfield also pioneered the modern racial integration of contemporary bands – and audiences.

Now, the 104-minute documentary “Horn from the Heart: The Paul Butterfield Story” is scheduled for a free screening at 7 p.m. Friday, April 5 at the University of Illinois/Springfield’s Brookens Auditorium, about 60 miles from where Butterfield’s band played the Kickapoo gathering.

A sensitive, sometimes surly working-class guy from Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood on the city’s South Side, Butterfield didn’t back away from controversy. In fact, at Newport – where Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary pleaded for their booking – he wasn’t bothered by the few boos that greeted his electrified, amplified band backing headliner Bob Dylan.

The feature-length movie tracing Butterfield’s life and career was produced and directed by award-winning filmmaker John Anderson, whose work has ranged from music videos and concert films of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys to documentary journalism with Bill Kurtis. He skillfully blends interviews with friends and family with performance clips that offer a glimpse of Butterfield’s power and zeal.

Archival footage of Butterfield on stage is occasionally slick and often raw, comparable at times to his riveting “Mystery Train” from the Band’s “Last Waltz” live-concert video (and far better than the Rockpalast video of his first show in Europe, in 1978). Interspersed comments come from bandmates Elvin Bishop, Barry Goldberg, Sam Lay and David Sanborn, plus Chicago harmonica artists Corky Siegel and Charlie Musselwhite, musicians Bonnie Raitt and Al Kooper, producer Marshall Chess, and other recording artists including Maria Muldaur and Todd Rundgren.

            Each shares a reverence, even awe, about Butterfield, who learned the blues and the harmonica from talents at Chicago clubs like Muddy Waters and Little Walter, as well as countless hours practicing by Lake Michigan. But the youngster created his own style, one faithful to blues’ roots while also unconventional and innovative, a sound his son Lee describes as “a revival meeting the authentic.”

Butterfield’s group was “the edge of soul,” Siegel remarks, “the most powerful band I’ve ever heard,” and Chess adds, “once you heard Paul, you got easily pulled into it.”

Formed in 1963, when Butterfield lured drummer Lay and bassist Jerome Arnold from Howlin’ Wolf’s outfit, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band featured the rhythm section of Lay and Arnold, guitarists Bishop and Mike Bloomfield, and the keyboards of Mark Naftalin. Adding a hard-rock energy to Chicago blues, they helped launch a global appreciation of the blues to newer (whiter) audiences.

Also, integrated band were uncommon then, though in hindsight Lay says, “We happened to be black and white.” However, some venues were resistant. But with his abiding respect for the music and an irreverent brashness for much, Butterfield famously – even ferociously – stood up for what he believed in.

“We were an interracial band where everybody was equal, but there were parts of the country that didn’t see it that way,” remembers guitarist Buzz Feiten. “People would say something to us and there were some near-confrontations with Butterfield because he would get in their face.”

Butterfield explained to a black band member, “Where you can’t go, we won’t go.”

Such attitudes created shared enthusiasm, even loyalty, by musicians (Bloomfield declined to tour with Dylan to stay with Butterfield), and Butterfield’s groups produced an impressive discography, from his seminal 1965 debut record through his “Better Days” period in upstate New York and his 1980s career revival to extraordinary live sets highlighted by “Fathers and Sons,” a double-LP featuring Butterfield bandmate plus Muddy Waters, Otis Spann and other older bluesmen.

Suffering from peritonitis, a chronic abdominal disorder, Butterfield also abused drugs and alcohol, and often performed “like it was the last time,” it’s said. He stole the show at an April 1987 concert in Las Vegas alongside B.B. King, Albert King, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn and others, and died a few weeks later at the age of 44.

In his life, Butterfield was “a force of Nature,” says Sanborn, his sax player for five years. “It was my introduction to the idea that it’s better to reach for something and miss it than just to hold back and play it safe.”

A big-screen viewing is recommended, and digital and home-video releases aren’t scheduled, so try not to reach for this memorable movie.