Mike Bloomfield — Dark Road Blues: Santa Cruz 1981
History does not always announce its presence at the time. Such was the case on a Santa Cruz Saturday in the winter of 1981.
January was winding down to its final hours inside The Catalyst, a renowned California venue across whose stage have passed everyone from Steppenwolf and New Riders of the Purple Sage to Buzzcocks and Ambrosia.
This night, however, respected string-bender Michael Bloomfield was in town sharing a double bill with the Sir Douglas Quintet (who, 10 days earlier, were seen cutting loose on Austin City Limits). But compared to the wild assortment of onstage and in-studio scenarios that marked his career, this gig kept the music in its purest form: just Mike plus an acoustic guitar, a piano, and 40 intimate minutes spent handily switching between both. He was live, solo and freely roaming from Leroy Carr and J.B. Lenoir to one of his favorite slow blues. (Hint: It’s a Robert Johnson tune.) Simply put: He was quite contentedly in the zone.
Fifteen days later, Mike Bloomfield was found in his car, parked on a street in San Francisco, dead—the apparent victim of a drug overdose. Here and gone, by age 37.
By that point in his career, Bloomfield’s ticket to immortality had long been punched by an impressive trail of accomplishments and recordings. For starters:
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1964: Meshed within the country blues of Sleepy John Estes’ Broke and Hungry
1965: Joined the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and promptly burned his name into their self- titled first record using his guitar; kept right on burning into Bob Dylan mythology via the landmark Highway 61 Revisited and then encored at the infamously electrified Newport Folk Festival (that’s Bloomers and his Telecaster spied stage right, alongside Bob)
1966: Scorched East-West, the Butterfield Band’s second record and kept right on scorching the top hotspots along the band’s tour route: San Francisco’s Fillmore and L.A.’s Whisky A Go Go to New York’s Cafe Au Go Go and London’s Marquee Club
1967: Debuted his new band, Electric Flag, at the Monterey Pop Festival
1968: Jammed the daylights out of Super Session with keyboardist Al Kooper; jammed some more—except, on piano—for Moby Grape’s Grape Jam
1969: Released his solo debut album, It’s Not Killing Me; swam his sharklike lead through albums of Muddy Waters, Brewer & Shipley, and Janis Joplin
That said, the never-before-released Dark Road Blues: Santa Cruz 1981 distinguishes itself. Its ten tracks, which come cleanly from the soundboard, serve as last call: Bloomfield’s final known recorded performance. The uncommon setting doubly separates this deep-blue set from the pack, since solo and acoustic—and, especially, seated at a piano—were not his typical formats.
Bloomfield learned his trade at the finest of blues schools, where he had the finest of instructors. Namely, the South and West Sides of his hometown Chicago.
There, he began beating a path to the neighborhood clubs at an early age. Among the destinations was the holy trinity of blues joints: Pepper’s, Theresa’s and Silvio’s. These were home turf of Muddy Waters, Junior Wells and Howlin Wolf, respectively. In addition, Michael also learned—face-to-face, elbow-to-elbow—from the likes of Big Joe Williams, Albert King, B.B. King, Sunnyland Slim, Otis Rush, Washboard Sam, and, enviably, on and on.
So when the Santa Cruz show lurches into action by way of “Dark Road Blues,” a variant of Tommy Johnson’s “Big Road Blues” translated from Delta guitar into backroom piano, Bloomfield comes off not as an outsider who academically studied the genre alongside a turntable—but as an insider who drank in the music’s nuances, atmosphere and attitude by hanging in those clubs: the blues’ natural habitat. Accordingly, his approach to the keys is robust, burly and highly rhythmic. The arrangement stomps; his voice stays loose and bawling. And his off-color intro suitably reeks of barside humor. Rather than pound, “Mean Mistreater Mama” drags. Kickstarted with grunts and groans, the song’s load is lightened by the right hand’s filigree countering that granite left hand.
Noxious “goofer dust” still gets sprinkled all around and the pacing keeps with its stop-and-go stutter. Yet “I Don’t Know” takes on a coarser roll, even scuffing up Bloomfield’s voice all the more, than originally supplied by Willie Mabon’s horn-boosted combo in 1952. Nonetheless, the bluest conditions get saved for “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” Its delivery embodies the creeping sorrow and crippling dejection intended when Jimmy Cox composed the pre-Depression dirge over 100 years ago. Doing so entails streaming down teardrop treble notes amid the thunderclap bass ones; choking the heartbreaker lyrics with the purposeful quiver in Michael’s throat; then, inching along the whole thing at a crawl to ensure every drop of misery gets wrung out.
For being widely recognized as a premier fretsman, Bloomfield’s piano skills are fully convincing on those four pieces. He’s not a peacocking boogieman whose fingers flash speed or foster frivolity. No, like Little Brother Montgomery or Eddie Boyd with whom he had worked, Michael opts for maximum melancholy.
Then, on to the guitar—Bloomers’ wheelhouse—for the remainder of the show.
Although very plugged-in two months earlier when reuniting with Dylan at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater in November ’80, Bloomfield unplugged here. That old-school step-back, in turn, opens the door to the age before amplifiers. Accordingly, the 1920s and ’30s donate the majority of material. “Kansas City Blues,” snagged from Jim Jackson, dances the strings with a brisk skip and a hop. “T.B. Blues” doesn’t have as bubbly a mood, understandably. Aside from isolated pockets of acceleration, the pace slinks to afford time for the vocals to sporadically tease up into the kind of spiking falsetto that helped earn composer Jimmie Rodgers’ title as the ‘blue yodeler.’ Then there is “Frankie & Johnny,” a pleasant enough song about homicide that would sneak onto records spanning pop (Les Paul) and R&B (Stevie Wonder) to rockabilly (Charlie Feathers) and jazz (King Oliver). Bloomfield’s fast and fancy fingerwork instead aligns closest with the 78-rpm magnificence of bluesman Mississippi John Hurt.
“Country Mechanic,” in comparison, is a youngster. Nick Gravenites, who sang lead in Electric Flag, wrote it about doing you know what, but veiled it slightly behind automotive references. Bloomfield whips it along in a hard gallop by percussively snapping the strings.
Ultimately, the bottleneck busts out.
Bloomfield, somewhere along the way, must have run into Ry Cooder’s 1974 LP Paradise and Lunch. Because that’s the originating source of sewing “Fool For a Cigarette” together with “Feelin’ Good” into a medley. Michael, however, Delta-fies his version by making that slide’s steely whine vocalize lines on its own in addition to shadowing the actual singing. For utmost Delta, however, Robert Johnson’s “Come On In My Kitchen” serves as the forlorn finale. Delicate, ghostly sweeps of the slide up and down the guitar neck only magnify the lyrics’ sense of crushing loss.
Then, a small handful of days later, crushing loss would strike for real on February 15, 1981. Dark Road Blues: Santa Cruz 1981 now gives back uniquely personal one-on-one time with Michael Bloomfield.
Label: Liberation Hall
Release date: 10/23/26
Artist website: Mike Bloomfield American Music.com
Label website: Liberation Hall.com
Reviewed by Dennis Rozanski
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