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Page 1 • Page 2 • Printable version with graphic Beyond the Blues: A Critical Look at 'East-West'
The Studio Version of “East-West” This is the version of “East-West” that most Butterfield fans are familiar with. It was recorded in New York, most likely in July of 1966. The Butterfield Band by this time was having a profound effect on the West Coast rock scene, particularly on bands in the San Francisco area where it had taken up residency. The band’s performances at the Fillmore Auditorium in that city had become legendary, setting the standard for musicianship and making the blues a required part of any serious group’s repertoire. Bloomfield had also encountered Jimi Hendrix in New York in July and was undoubtedly influenced and inspired by the flamboyant guitarist’s extraordinary technique. “East-West” retains the three-section structure and overall form of “East-West” 2, and opens as 2 does with the rhythm section comping on the bossa beat and Bloomfield offering octave accents. The tempo is a bit quicker and brighter than it was in the second live version of the piece. Elvin Bishop jumps right in, opening his solo with a two-bar unison on what sounds like the open D-string and a fretted D on the A-string. He then casts a series of angular lines, his Gibson ES-345 cranked up for maximum volume and sustain (Elektra by this time had learned how to record loud electric music in the studio). Bloomfield drops out thirty seconds into the piece, giving Bishop more rhythmic freedom, and then, after a minute or so, Mark Naftalin’s electric piano emerges from the mix, briefly creating a gentle melodic aura. At 01:24, Butterfield enters under Bishop with a sustained D for a few bars; Bishop hits a two-note chord on the downbeat and then trails off. Butterfield launches into a short solo at 01:31.
The studio version
of “East-West” was supposedly edited, no doubt due to its unusual length for a
pop recording of the period. If there were indeed edits, it sounds as if there
might be one here as Butterfield begins his solo. Bishop seems to continue his
solo as it fades, blending into Naftalin’s chords before reappearing, now
comping with Bloomfield behind Butterfield. In any case, Bishop’s solo is
considerably shorter at a minute-and-a-half than the three minutes of version 2. Bloomfield then leaps into his modal solo, opening the Eastern section with a brief tremolo between D and D-flat, accompanied only by bass and drums. Jerome Arnold’s part throughout each version of “East-West” has been that of the anchor, providing a harmonic underpinning and an unvarying rhythm. His bass pattern has consisted of a single repeated scaler run, beginning and ending on D an octave apart and starting between the second and third beat of each measure and ending on the downbeat of the next. Now, with the start of Bloomfield’s solo, Arnold changes to a line that begins on the downbeat and consists of what sounds like A, C and D, with D accenting the third beat. Coltrane fans will recognize this pattern as very close to the one used in the saxophonist’s 1964 composition, “A Love Supreme.” Bloomfield acknowledged Coltrane as a source of inspiration for “East-West,” and Arnold certainly was familiar with Coltrane’s piece, so the similarity may be more than just coincidence. As the band moves into Section (2), the “exotic” quality of “East-West” becomes evident. Bloomfield spins out line after line, accenting his phrases with flatted fifths and seconds, occasionally allowing a plucked open E to drone behind his D-based improvisations. Naftalin’s noodlings begin to emerge from the mix at 03:15, giving Bloomfield’s slippery melodies a harmonic grounding. Bishop comes in with sustained chords on every other downbeat, then varies his accents randomly to the second, third and fourth beats. At 04:45, Butterfield begins to play pedal tones behind Bloomfield’s increasingly urgent improvisations, and Michael creates a series of phrases using octaves over open-string drones. The piece assumes a raga-like sonority as he and Bishop merge in a wash of D-based overtones and Bloomfield’s solo line climbs toward that D two octaves above middle C. At 06:45 Butterfield pushes to the front with a full-blown D-flat-to-D warble, signaling the start of the Eastern section’s crescendo. At 06:56, Jerome Arnold switches to a repeated D played in eighth note-rhythm and the rest of the band follows, building to an intense climax at 07:13. Now Bloomfield moves into the piece’s Melodic section, and the stage is set for one of the great musical passages of progressive rock. Instead of the D-E-F# phrase that he opened with in version 2, Bloomfield reduces the line to a simple E to F# glissando. He moves easily up to A, to B, hanging back on the beat, and then gracefully drops down to F#. His phrasing gives the section an open, jazzy feel and stands it in stark contrast to the musical firestorm which preceded it. Bloomfield then masterfully varies this eight-bar line until 07:44 when briefly he introduces a second theme and variations, and though he ascends to the high D, the volume of his playing diminishes almost to the point of inaudibility. Mark Naftalin’s electric piano weaves in and out of the passage, but it is the rhythm section that quietly carries this opening portion of Section (3). Arnold has returned to the original bass line from Section (1), the Blues-rock section, and Billy Davenport supports him with high-hat and sticks, and what, at moments, sounds like open palms on the drum heads. At 08:32 Bloomfield introduces the now-familiar Motive A, a four-note scaler run consisting of D-E-F-F#, and creates from it a marvelous compound phrase that twists and turns for a full 60 seconds, only resolving back to D some 40 bars later at 09:38. It’s no overstatement to assert that the coherence, clarity and Bach-like motion of this passage, “the 40-bar phrase,” establish Michael Bloomfield as one of rock’s greatest soloists. Certainly no one else before him had exhibited such musical virtuosity. Bloomfield then plays a quiet series of descending and ascending chords on the downbeat to introduce Motive E at 10:02, a phrase that moves from D to F# and back on the first beat of each measure. Motive E will form a prominent part of the Melodic section of “East-West” 3, but here it passes in an instant as Bloomfield is joined by Butterfield at 10:18 for Motive B. This theme, F#-G-A, with the A repeated in triplet rhythm, is more clearly stated here than it was in “East-West” 2. The phrase, with a slightly different rhythm, is one that is commonly used in traditional blues, heard for example as the opening melody in Muddy Water’s “Forty Days” (1956), and given full melody status in jazz organist Jimmy Smith’s 1961 “Back at the Chicken Shack” (often known simply as “Chicken Shack"). Bloomfield treats it here not as the driving 2-bar motive for a 12-bar blues shuffle but as the extended 4-bar opening theme in what emerges as an AABB-patterned call-and-response in the less conventional 16-bar blues form. In “East-West” 3, Motive B becomes the glorious melodic/harmonic hook which brings the piece to completion. But it would take six more months for “East-West” – and the band – to reach that degree of focus. Here Motive B is primarily a vehicle for Bloomfield to set up the duet portion of Section (3).
At 10:49, Bloomfield
plays Motive C for 8 bars with Butterfield blowing pedal tones behind him. Then
it’s Bloomfield and Bishop in a joyous counterpoint at 11:01, Michael primarily
taking the higher line and Elvin working the middle register. Naftalin shadows,
as is his role in “East-West,” mingling here and there with the soloists to add
a third melody to the guitars. The momentum builds for a minute and then at
12:23 the band punctuates the rhythm as a unit. The final crescendo kicks in at
12:49 and runs for 12 bars before ending with a glorious flurry on a final
concluding chord, Butterfield’s harp having the last say. This is the first time
we hear “East-West” with its ending intact. We come now to the version of “East-West” which is easily the most musically advanced of the four examples discussed here. It was recorded at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, CA, and, regrettably, has the poorest sound quality of the three live versions. Bloomfield, who once again is the primary soloist, is unfortunately under recorded. But by early February of 1967 the piece had largely evolved into an ensemble work, and the sound of “East-West” 3 is sufficient enough to convey the band’s remarkable interplay. Michael Bloomfield left the Butterfield Band shortly after this performance took place, so it is likely that this was one of the last times the “East-West” was played. The tempo is nearly that of the studio version of “East-West,” and the form remains three sections: Blues-rock, Eastern and Melodic. At nearly thirty minutes in length, this is by far the longest version of “East-West” that we have, though Mark Naftalin recalls performances that went on for nearly an hour. “East-West” 3 opens, as has become the convention, with Elvin Bishop’s solo. Persistent hints of feedback indicate that volume levels are way up, and although Bishop and the rhythm section start out with restraint, the sound soon becomes enormous. Elvin by now appears to be quite comfortable soloing within the open-ended context of “East-West.” He creates melodies and variations, plucks open strings as drone accompaniments to his lines and switches handily between pickups to sharpen his attack. Bloomfield can be heard comping occasionally in the background, and Butterfield wafts in and out of the mélange, contributing unearthly-sounding pedal tones. By “East-West” 3, Bishop has clearly taken on Bloomfield’s aggressiveness and ardor for clusters of notes; indeed, the latter’s influence is so pervasive that Elvin’s soloing is at times difficult to distinguish from Michael’s. At 05:51, Butterfield begins to assert himself, interjecting an insistent triplet fill, but Bishop does not give ground just yet. He picks up Butterfield’s pattern and tosses it back, charging ahead with his solo. Butterfield responds with a series of held notes, beginning at 06:15, and then launches into his own brief solo. The guitars play sustained tones behind him beginning at about 06:30, creating a most unusual moment. While Arnold and Davenport are churning ahead, a juggernaut of rhythmic intensity, and Butterfield is improvising a line full of gutsy, drawn-out phrases, Bishop and Bloomfield layer notes suggesting G and C chords – the fourth and flatted seventh chords in the key of D – behind Paul’s D-scale assertions. The effect is extraordinary and disorienting all in the same moment – it’s as though “East-West” has come unglued and everyone is playing a different tune. What we have in this brief segment is undoubtedly the first example of an atonal passage played in a pop music environment (and there haven’t been many others since). Butterfield momentarily rallies the players at 07:31 with a repeated staccato figure and the band focuses while he fires off an intense 45 seconds of blues harmonica playing, punctuated by Davenport’s crashing accents. But then at 08:32, Naftalin (or perhaps Bishop) recreates the atonality with a few off-kilter arpeggios and Butterfield reverts to D-based pedal tones. What follows is a passage more startling than the previous: by 09:10, “East-West” 3 seems to have dissolved into complete musical anarchy. That a pop group – albeit one as progressive as the Paul Butterfield Blues Band – would venture into such uncharted territory in a public performance shows just how willing to push the limits these young musicians were. At 09:22, Butterfield calls a halt to the experimentation with a throaty “Yeah!” shouted over his harp mic. The band moves into “East-West” 3’s first crescendo at 10:18 and, after building furiously for 12 bars, comes to complete halt at 10:38. Before the audience has a chance to catch their breath, Michael Bloomfield roars out of the gate. His opening volley comes so close on the heels of the crescendo that it borders on violence. He opens the Turkish bazaar that is Section (2), the Eastern portion of “East-West,” with a wild modal run, and Bishops punches a descending E-string glissando in support. A listener can be heard to utter a stunned “Wow!,” and Bloomfield is off. He improvises around a series of rhythmic motives, worrying the notes, repeating staccato runs and building tension as Davenport and Arnold – Jerome’s booming bass notes frequently overwhelming the sound mix – forge ahead. At 12:22, Bloomfield plays a D, holds it for a bar, stretches it to an E and then back again several times, accentuating the semi-tones between the two notes with a nervous tremolo. The effect is almost sitar-like, except that the volume by this point is almost certainly ear-splitting. Bishop begins to play in 3/4 time, plucking a single note for every downbeat in the pattern and creating a secondary pulse counter to the steady 4/4 being laid down by Billy Davenport. Bloomfield unleashes a fusillade of notes for another three minutes before triggering a second crescendo beginning at about 14:48 and concluding abruptly at 15:23. To open Section (3), the Melodic section, Bloomfield starts with the fifth note in the D-scale, a resounding A. He then outlines the section’s major tonality by playing a variation on the now-familiar E-F#-A-B-and-back run. Mark Naftalin is once again right there, shadowing Bloomfield’s lines with sympathetic phrases of his own, and Butterfield quietly lends support like some ghostly blue zephyr. The band’s performance has gone from exceedingly loud to nearly inaudible (except for Billy Davenport’s insistent symbol-and-tom-tom accenting of the third beat of each measure) in the blink of an eye. A few audience members offer faint applause, but most seem to be waiting for what comes next. At 15:55, Bloomfield uses a technique that he would employ to good effect in the Electric Flag, the band he would form in the spring of 1967 after leaving Butterfield. He strikes a note with the volume on his Les Paul turned down and then gradually turns the volume up, making the note audible. The result produces a vocal-like sound, and when done well with a series of notes, can make the guitarist’s lines seem to sing. Guitarist Jeff Beck would later turn this technique into a fine art, but here Bloomfield simply plays a single note over every other measure, eliciting an approving “Hey!” from a band member. After a minute during which he begins to combine a wide tremolo with the volume technique giving his guitar a decidedly unearthly sound, he holds a note to the point of feedback and then launches a solo based on the D-major scale. Butterfield, Bishop and Naftalin have all but dropped out at this point, allowing Bloomfield room to freely improvise over the bass and drums. At 19:26 he plays a series of octaves evoking the 12-string sound associated with the Byrds (a group the Butterfield band had shared a stage with numerous times) and then goads Davenport into building to a false crescendo at 19:42, similar to that heard in the final section of “East-West” 1. At 19:51, Bloomfield introduces Motive E, the phrase that uses whole notes to move from D to F# and back. Bishop picks up the line and Butterfield follows, playing off the mic to create an acoustic sound. Michael begins quietly to solo again while Billy Davenport switches to mallets and, after a few minutes, “East-West” 3 has become an ensemble effort. The virtuoso display and excess of the early versions of the piece have been put aside in favor of a collective effort to make music. The effect is stunning. Out of this collaboration emerges Motive B at 24:34. What was a standard blues riff – the familiar “Chicken Shack” phrase – now becomes something transcendent as Bloomfield, Bishop and Naftalin softly play the F#-G-A call-and-response melody and Butterfield feels his way with the harmony. They play through the 16-bar line twice, and the last two bars of the second 16 stand as some of the prettiest in all pop music. Pretty – and pretty profound. But there’s no time to savor the moment. The band moves immediately on to Motive C at 25:28 and into the Bloomfield/Bishop duet which is, at this point in “East-West’s” evolution, a wild, ranging affair. And then without pause the two guitars begin Motive D, firing up the final crescendo. Mark Naftalin, ever the quiet, supportive accompanist, asserts himself for the first time with a full-blown rendition of the Christmas hymn, “Joy to the World,” while the band creates an absolute torrent of sound.
The final crescendo
then builds interminably, stretching for 16 intense bars before crashing to a
halt. The players then tag their efforts with a final D-chord and the audience
erupts in boisterous applause. A winded Butterfield can be heard over the uproar
bidding the crowd good night: “On behalf of the band, we’d like to thank you
very much. We’re going home, baby!" And so, after detailed examination, it becomes clear that “East-West” is a richly complex and fluid composition constructed loosely around recurring themes and motives – figures that refer not only to the American blues idiom but to jazz and eastern traditions as well. “East-West” stands in stark contrast to the popular music of its time for this fact alone. But “East-West” also set the standard for musicianship in 1966. Butterfield and company played their sets with precision and professionalism, and demonstrated what a pop band comprised of serious players could sound like. It also established the benchmark for rock improvisation and technical skill, and did so before any of its soloists had reached his 25th year. It might be a stretch to argue that “East-West” is first evidence of a hybrid musical form that would grow and develop in the seventies and eighties, but it may well be true. Miles Davis was largely responsible for the creation of electric jazz in 1968, and Miles was an admirer of Michael Bloomfield. He knew Bloomfield’s work with Electric Flag and had probably heard “East-West” prior to forming his own ground-breaking electric band. The resulting genre, known as “fusion,” combined elements of jazz and rock in a fashion first pioneered by “East-West.” Fusion would drift into excess and superficiality in later years, but its basic esthetic was established by the Butterfield Band in 1966. Today “East-West” is known primarily to music historians, aging boomer blues fans and the occasional young guitar wiz. But it deserves a better fate. I assert that “East-West” should be widely acknowledged as one of the seminal works of American popular music. It’s true that the piece is an artifact, a fond memory of the heady days of the ’60s, but it is also true that “East-West” has also served as inspiration for countless musicians to learn their instruments. It established a standard for rock virtuosity, and it showed that experimentation could be an end in itself. A thirteen-minute pop tune with no words? Inconceivable to anyone except maybe the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, the Allman Brothers and countless other groups. After 1966, that is. David Dann is a commercial artist, amateur musician and host of “Crosscurrents” on NPR-affiliate WJFF 90.5 FM in upstate New York. He maintains a collection of 7,000 blues and jazz recordings and writes occasionally about music for web publication. Page 1 • Page 2 • Printable version with graphic © 2008 David Dann |
Michael Bloomfield Discography & Performance History • Sources
A selection of remembrances of Michael Bloomfield from contributors to this site
A detailed look at the studio and live versions of the Butterfield Blues Band's "East-West"
An interview with producer Norman Dayron by Ralph Heibutzki
A check list of currently available recordings by Michael Bloomfield © 2007 David Dann |
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