Follow the Music by Jac Holzman and Gavan Daws
Unedited. Uncensored. The Complete Text of the Book "Follow the Music" by Jac Holzman and Gavan Daws
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Chapter 8
Buttering up the blues ... Power dives and re-recordings ... From the south side of Chicago to the Newport electric blowout of 1965
JAC: Paul Rothchild was doing everything I had hoped for, and more. He wasn't just complementing me, he was greatly extending my reach,
and was doing it with the same kind of manic energy I saw in myself.
We were talking one day about what was happening on "the street," and I said, "Paul, you don't have to go to the street. You're in a
position where you can make the street."
What I meant was put Elektra out front. Paul could and did. He could gossip, schmooze, cajole, wheedle, beg, and orate—plus that most
critical ability: he could "close." It was fine to romance artists. Getting them signed to Elektra, and for a modest advance, was an
order of magnitude more difficult. Paul could do that.
PAUL WILLIAMS: Paul was a hanging-out guy. He almost invented something we totally take for granted now, which is that the secret of
being a successful producer in the rock and roll world, especially in the drug-soaked Sixties, was the ability to hang out with the
musicians and have them feel that you were one of them and that you were part of this incredible campaign that we were all on to turn
the world upside down with our music and the great ideas we had when we were stoned last night and so forth. Well, Paul could run with
you as fast as you were running, and talk with you as fast as you were talking, and he was just as into it as anybody.
JAC: One of Rothchild's first independent signings was the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. This was yet another beginning, and where it
would take us we could never have imagined at the time.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: I'm at a party in Cambridge, Massachusetts, New Year's Eve of 1965. Fritz Richmond is just in off the road with the
Jim Kweskin Jug Band. He says, "Hey, Paul, you remember that harmonica player, Paul Butterfield? Well, I've got to tell you, I've
just heard the best music I've ever heard in my entire life. He's got a full-on electric blues band, and he's playing in a bar in
Chicago. You should go there right away."
I got on a flight to Chicago, got off the plane, walked into Big John's about three in the morning, in time for the last set.
And I heard the most amazing music. It was thrilling, chilling—changed my entire genetic code.
At the end of the set I talked to Butter and told him I wanted them to make a record with Elektra. Paul always had to have an argument.
This one lasted about ten minutes over pizza. Then he said, "OK."
Then Butter said, “Are you tired yet?” I said, “No, I'm on fire, I'm ready.” He says, “Great. I've got this buddy playing at
an after-hours club over on the South Side. Pepper's Lounge.” I walk in and it's Muddy Waters. Those guys were playing at the clubs
every day then. So Paul showed me the last of the great era on the Chicago South Side.
Towards dawn he says, “One more stop.” We walk into a luncheonette kind of place, and there's another band playing, and it's like a pale
reflection of Paul's band. But there was a guitar player that just tore my mind apart. About four tunes in I turn to Paul and say,
“Who is that?” He says, “Oh, that's Mike Bloomfield. That's his band.” I say, “Wow, how come he's not in your band?” He says,
“Nah, he's got his own.” I say, “How would you feel if he was in your band?” He says, “Wow, it would be great. Two guitars. Amazing.
Nah, it'll never happen.” I say, “Do you mind if I give it a shot?” He says, “No, but I've tried it twenty times.”
Michael comes and sits down at our table. We shake hands. We then do a half hour of intense intellectual Jew at each other.
He found a kindred soul, I found a kindred soul, it was wonderful. Finally I said, “Michael, how would you like to leave your band
and join Paul's band? We're going to New York to make a record.” He said, “Sure.” Butterfield is sitting there with his jaw on the table.
MARK ABRAMSON: It was the first electric music Rothchild had ever recorded. I was helping him in the studio, and I didn't know any more
than he did. They were loud. Nobody on Elektra had ever been that loud before. We were a folk music label. If there were drums it was
somebody going tchk, tchk, tchk, and we would do it in Judson Hall and it didn't make any difference if it bled all over the place.
The Butterfield Band, though, with Sam Lay—big black man, huge arms—the way he laid into the drums, it scared the daylights out of us
technically. We had to figure out how to record loud, by trial and error.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: I recorded, edited for five weeks, put the album together, sequenced it, lacquered it. Then I waited.
And an important thing happened. Jac had discovered long ago that if he put out these little promotional records, his samplers, he could
introduce the hungry folk world to new talent and new albums. He did one in the spring of 1965 that was called “Folk Song 65.”
Tom Rush was on it. Dick Rosmini. Judy Collins. And one of the cuts was from the Butterfield sessions, ‘Born in Chicago.'
JAC: Normally we would expect a sampler to sell twenty-five thousand copies.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: By the third or fourth week, sales had skyrocketed past a hundred thousand!
JAC: Actually sixty thousand—which was still an amazing number.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: Jac got on the phone and called the stores to ask what the hell was going on. He finds out that people have been asking
for the record with ‘Born In Chicago' on it. Big sales for Elektra. Especially for something that was not standard rock and roll and not
standard rhythm and blues. It was white people performing black music. Butterfield was the first electric person besides Elvis to do
this successfully.
Bells go off in Jac's head. He realizes that this is a hit act. For the album, he goes for an initial pressing of ten thousand.
He had never done an initial press of anything like that—
JAC:—Not of a new artist.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: So the album is jacketed and boxed, ten thousand copies, ready to go out into the world—
JAC:—Paid for—
Paul Rothchild (center) rehearsing the Paul Butterfield Band
Paul Rothchild (center) rehearsing the Paul Butterfield Band
PAUL ROTHCHILD:—And I'm going through hell. Because from a producer's point of view, after listening to the record I realize,
“Rothchild, you didn't get it. You did not get that act on tape.”
In the middle of this anxiety I get a call from Jac. “How would you like to fly up to Martha's Vineyard and visit Tom Rush at his aunt's
house and eat some fresh zucchini?” So we're up in the little Elektra plane—and somewhere over Long Island Sound I say,
“Jac, I got a problem.” He says, “What is it?” I say, “I want to re-record the Butterfield album.”
I thought he was going to have a coronary. The plane goes into a power dive. I thought we were headed all the way into the drink.
He says, ”You want to do what?” I say, “We should junk it.” He says, “Paul, it's packed, ready to ship! It's going out on Monday!!
You're insane!!!” I say, “Jac, there's all those people out there waiting for a great album, and I didn't get it.”
He says, “‘What about "Born in Chicago?"” I say, “That's the only track we can salvage.” He says, “Oh my God, what do you want to do?”
I say, “I want to recapture that first moment I felt when I walked into Big John's in Chicago. We don't have that on tape.
We have a pale facsimile. I want to record them live for a week.” He thinks for a moment, then he says, “Not a bad idea.”
And he brings us out of the power dive.
JAC: We ate zucchini on the Vineyard, and never discussed it on the way home.
MARK ABRAMSON: That shows the persuasive power of Paul Rothchild, to get Jac to dump thousands and thousands of those first pressings.
JAC: The voice of reason told me I was crazy, but Rothchild had my artistic sensibility convinced. There was much more than a single
album at stake, there was everything else Paul could do in the future. To say “No“ would have been to neuter Paul as an Elektra producer.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: So—we essentially four-walled the Café Au Go Go, across from the Bitter End, one of the major high-tone folk clubs,
and brought in the recording trucks. And that's when the union showed up, and that's when our costs quadrupled over our budget projections.
JAC: We had already paid the band their advance, gone to the expense of scrapping the first album, and now the union was asking for more.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: We thought we were just going to be paying recording costs, but all of a sudden there's the union threatening to fine us
for not reporting sessions, and a guy in the club every night clocking it—huge dollars.
JAC: They recorded over several nights.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: I started going through the tapes, carefully, and about three weeks later I went into Jac's office and said,
“Jac, you're going to love this. It sucks beyond your wildest expectations. We have nothing.” He said, “Oh my God!!! What are you going
to do now????” I said, “I'm going to go back into the studio and get it right.”
JAC: And I said, “OK.” For all the same reasons.
First Butterfield album ... on the third try EKS-7294 (Photo: David Gahr, Elektra)
First Butterfield album ... on the third try EKS-7294
PAUL ROTHCHILD: The band came back to New York. I put them in a musician's hotel, the Albert, in the Village. They drove up in a truck
and unloaded the equipment out front. I said, “One of you stay here, I'm going to go in and register you all.”
I'm at the desk about five minutes and I turn around and they're all standing there behind me. I say, “Who's watching the equipment?”
They say, “It's just right outside.” We run out and it's all gone, down to the last drumstick.
JAC: So we rented equipment, and Paul took them to Mastertone and recorded for a week.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: Three productions for the release of a first album! Our costs got up to fifty thousand dollars, which in those days was
enormous. But that album is golden.
FRITZ RICHMOND: It was the sort of an album you could take to a party and the mood of the party picked up when you put that record on,
just as well as if you brought in a keg of beer or a bottle of whiskey.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: It still sells. Far more than that, certainly all through the Sixties and Seventies, I didn't meet a guitar player who
wasn't influenced by that album. Most of them have one comment: “The first two Butterfield albums taught me how to play guitar and
changed my life.”
Butterfield was the genuine article. He was blessed with really being a blues musician, feeling the blues.
And his instincts about musicians—I believe he was one of the greatest band leaders this country has ever had. He's right up there with
Benny Goodman or Nelson Riddle. He had the ability to pick personnel who are great players, and who you know will join with your concept.
Some of the greatest musicians in the world up through the mid-Eighties were ex-members of one version or the other of
the Butterfield Blues Band.
MARK ABRAMSON: The original band were a very intelligent group of fellows. Butterfield was very laid back, very quiet. The dynamo in
the group was Mike Bloomfield. He was hilarious. We would go on a trip, he would have us rolling on the floor. We never knew what exactly
he was saying. He was in the genius category. And I think he couldn't handle the world. He was on everything. How somebody that nervous
can be on speed without destroying himself in five minutes, I don't know.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: Bottom line, the Butterfield Band opened another door to American musicianship. It made the electric blues a viable form
for popular music, made it possible for hundreds of American performers to play electric music.