While most guitarists of his generation learned the elements of blues guitar playing from records,
Michael Bloomfield
, who grew up in North Chicago, learned them firsthand by playing with the likes of
B.B. King
,
Albert King
Freddie King
Buddy Guy
Muddy Waters
Howlin' Wolf
Big Joe Williams
, and others in Chicago's gritty blues clubs. His first bands,
the Paul Butterfield Blues Band
and
Electric Flag
, were racially mixed blues powerhouses, fusing the blues with jazz, R&B, psychedelia, and seemingly everything else under the sun, and like
Bloomfield
, both of those bands are woefully underappreciated. His four solo albums, the last two of which, 1979's
Between the Hard Place & the Ground
and the darker
Cruisin' for a Bruisin'
from 1981, are combined here, were strange, eccentric, occasionally brilliant, and never sold well. An erratic, manic, and groundbreaking guitarist,
may well have been at his best as a session player or as a member of a touring band, but even as uneven as these two albums are with him front and center,
is never less than fascinating. ~ Steve Leggett