Me and Bloomfield...

JofZ

Now this is weird.
Mike is one of my guitar heros and for numerous reasons. As such, I am always looking for new material, books, bootlegs, anything I can get on him. I began reading a book last night entitled If you love these Blues, an oral history of Michael Bloomfield. It is an interesting bio made from interviews of family, friends, and some pretty famous players.
For those who don't know, Mike was from Chicago, the near north side. The same part of town I grew up in. I had always recognized the places he played at back in the 50's, as some of them are still around. Anyway, I turn to page 1 of this book and it states that he was born and raised for the first 12 years in a builing located at 424 Melrose. I almost shit on myself as I also was born and raised in this same building. It is an old 14 story apartment building on Lakeshore Drive, home to some famous people, but none nearly as famous as Mike. So I am on a hunt now with the owner of the building to find out which apartment he lived in.
As if this weren't weird enough, Mike also attended a progressive education school until 6th grade, there is only one school like that in the area and it happens to be where I went for 14 years. There were only 400 kids in the entire school, and the Alumni Association is pulling records to see if his name comes up.
So some time after the family relocated to Glencoe a very posh north shore suburb, Mike took up guitar. Around the age of 12-13, he took some lessons from Mike's mom's hairdresser. He also took lessons at a folk school in Lincoln Park called Old Town, guess who also takes lessons there? LOL
OK enough.
I just think the entire thing is bizzare.
He is the reason along with the other Mike that I picked up a guitar.

Pacomc79

JofZ wrote:

Now this is weird.
Mike is one of my guitar heros and for numerous reasons. As such, I am always looking for new material, books, bootlegs, anything I can get on him. I began reading a book last night entitled If you love these Blues, an oral history of Michael Bloomfield. It is an interesting bio made from interviews of family, friends, and some pretty famous players.
For those who don't know, Mike was from Chicago, the near north side. The same part of town I grew up in. I had always recognized the places he played at back in the 50's, as some of them are still around. Anyway, I turn to page 1 of this book and it states that he was born and raised for the first 12 years in a builing located at 424 Melrose. I almost shit on myself as I also was born and raised in this same building. It is an old 14 story apartment building on Lakeshore Drive, home to some famous people, but none nearly as famous as Mike. So I am on a hunt now with the owner of the building to find out which apartment he lived in.
As if this weren't weird enough, Mike also attended a progressive education school until 6th grade, there is only one school like that in the area and it happens to be where I went for 14 years. There were only 400 kids in the entire school, and the Alumni Association is pulling records to see if his name comes up.
So some time after the family relocated to Glencoe a very posh north shore suburb, Mike took up guitar. Around the age of 12-13, he took some lessons from Mike's mom's hairdresser. He also took lessons at a folk school in Lincoln Park called Old Town, guess who also takes lessons there? LOL
OK enough.
I just think the entire thing is bizzare.
He is the reason along with the other Mike that I picked up a guitar.

excellent, great minds......

who's_pearljam?

That's totally cool! It's great to find something like that out of nowhere!

I was born in '53, and my uncle introduced me to the more offbeat side of music and that's the path I took. Some of the first record albums I ever bought were The Mothers of Invention (Zappa) Freak Out,,,Captain Beefheart, (Who I ended up playing with for a little while), and the Paul Butterfield blues band! Bloomfield was GREAT on that, then Super Sessions was one of my favorite albums for a long time.
Electric Flag was a great great band, too. He could sure play the blues and I think he was one of the greats of all time! It's really sad that such great music came out of such passionate times, but those times, coupled with all the drugs and booze, also became the downfall of so many great musicians!
I still have all those old albums. I should put them on CD.

Did you ever see him playing in the movie Monterey Pop? (Ok, I'll answer that,,,,Of course you have!! ) That was a great performance! :cool:


Good luck on your quest! Good story!


On the opposite side of a quest, I moved into the city a year ago, but when I lived more in the country in Delaware, one day someone knocked on my door. I answered and this dude was standing there. He said he grew up next door and he used to practice with his band in my house, in the lower level. He was checking out his old neighborhood. It was George Thorogood!
So I led him down to the room he used to play in,, and lo and behold.
It was my music studio with full drum kit, 30 plus or minus guitars and amps all over the place. He was like: Cool! The rock lives on!

I guess you won't be running into Mike Bloomfield, though. :(

House53

his playing on Highway 61 Revisited with Bob Dylan is great stuff.

I want to go play some guitar and sing some Dylan...

JofZ

who's_pearljam? wrote:

That's totally cool! It's great to find something like that out of nowhere!

I was born in '53, and my uncle introduced me to the more offbeat side of music and that's the path I took. Some of the first record albums I ever bought were The Mothers of Invention (Zappa) Freak Out,,,Captain Beefheart, (Who I ended up playing with for a little while), and the Paul Butterfield blues band! Bloomfield was GREAT on that, then Super Sessions was one of my favorite albums for a long time.
Electric Flag was a great great band, too. He could sure play the blues and I think he was one of the greats of all time! It's really sad that such great music came out of such passionate times, but those times, coupled with all the drugs and booze, also became the downfall of so many great musicians!
I still have all those old albums. I should put them on CD.

Did you ever see him playing in the movie Monterey Pop? (Ok, I'll answer that,,,,Of course you have!! ) That was a great performance! :cool:


Good luck on your quest! Good story!


On the opposite side of a quest, I moved into the city a year ago, but when I lived more in the country in Delaware, one day someone knocked on my door. I answered and this dude was standing there. He said he grew up next door and he used to practice with his band in my house, in the lower level. He was checking out his old neighborhood. It was George Thorogood!
So I led him down to the room he used to play in,, and lo and behold.
It was my music studio with full drum kit, 30 plus or minus guitars and amps all over the place. He was like: Cool! The rock lives on!

I guess you won't be running into Mike Bloomfield, though. :(

That is pretty cool!
I bet you were pretty floored when you opened the door

It is sad that Michael died so young, but his music lives on and with the pressure from his fans there seems to be some hope for boots and video that has never been released.
The more I research this guy the more I find our families paths have crossed. His Grandfather was Bloomfield Industries, they make salt and pepper shakers and sugar containers that you see in every diner and restauraunt in the free world. My mom as it turns out was friends with Allen, his brother. It is a very small world once you reduce things to Jewish nieghborhoods in the 60s in Chicago.
I'll see what else I can find out.

who's_pearljam?

That's GREAT! It's like 1 degree of separation in a city of 57 million people,,,ok, maybe not THAT many! (I forget what the population is in Chicago!)

HA ha!! I have my vinyl Super Sessions on now! It's great!, except for
Skip,,,,,,,,,,,,Skip,,,,,,,,,,,,Skip,,,,,,,,,,,,Skip,,,,,,,,,,,,
Who says vinyl sounds better! Especially when its nearly 40 years old!




It was pretty funny when good ol' George knocked on my door. What was funnier was the expression on his face when he saw a complete band set up in his old practice room from 25 years earlier!

JofZ

I got some more info from my quest.After contacting my former landlord they said they only had records going back 7 years. I sent an email off to the Mike Bloomfield fan club in hopes they could fill in some blanks. I got a response the next day from Allen Bloomfield, Mike's brother. He said they lived on the 9th floor, but he didn't recall which side of the building. He gave me some other info on his early years of school and asked me to send him some photos of my old apartment and parents. So now it is down to a 50-50 shot LOL, crazy I tell you.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Lovely thread. I love Mike's playing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Bloomfield

Just sharing the Wikipedia page.