By Lou Marinoff

The second half of the 1960s marked the transition from the electric blues – still epicentered on Chicago’s South Side – to the eclectic blues, which, as we shall see, exploded into a worldwide panoramic musical phenomenon.

The late 60s witnessed the intensification of the Cold War, the escalation of the Vietnam War, the psychedelic revolution of the hippie counterculture, the emergence of more militant forms of protest, and the cumulative tragedy of political assassinations of historic leaders.

Against this unprecedented backdrop, three main factors combined to give rise to the eclectic blues. First, there was a growing ambivalence among the new generation of African Americans who began to distance themselves from the blues and pursue alternative forms.

Dom Flemons, musician: “First, you had the Civil Rights Movement, but afterward, the Black Power Movement came in, and there was a big generational shift. While ultimately the blues has been respected within the black community, it came off a little bit old hat, and it was a little bit different in terms of the way that the protest was being articulated and disseminated within the music community. So I think that that led to a lot of younger African American people drifting away from the blues.”

Jamey Hatley, writer: “The blues was all around me. It was always… Always in the background. Me hating the blues is kind of like a fish hating water. I felt a little embarrassed, a little twinge of something there that I didn’t even understand. So, you know, I told myself that I hated it, because I thought the blues was sad. It was poor. So, these things in the blues, they were not abstract to me. Right? I was not separate from them. Right. But I felt like I needed to be.”

Second, white audiences – already captivated by rock and roll – began to discover the early blues and the electric blues alike. As white American youth realized that the blues was the parent of that prodigious child called “rock”, they eagerly embraced it.

As though a switch had been flipped, audiences and venues suddenly shifted from predominantly black blues clubs to predominantly white rock clubs.

B.B. King reflects on his 1967 appearance at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West in San Francisco. It was the summer of love, and a breakthrough event for him and for the Blues.

B.B. King: “I sent my road manager in there and told him to go and tell Bill I was there, but I thought it was the wrong place, so we was gonna leave. So Bill came back out with the road manager, came on the bus, sat down. He said, “No, you’re at the right place!”

Carlos Santana: “I happened to be there. The opening act was Otis Rush and Steve Miller. And B.B. King.”

B.B. King: “And he said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen’ …  Now, would you believe that when he said that, you could hear a pin drop? He said, “I bring you the Chairman of the Board, B.B. King.” Nobody has ever introduced me that, before or since. When he mentioned my name, they all stood up. And for about 3 or 4 tunes after that, they would stand up after every tune. And I was so touched ‘til I cried standing up there.”

Carlos Santana: “You know, it’s like watching a chandelier. All I could see was his tears. And the diamond ring he had. Used it to wipe his tears. And I was still washing dishes at the time. I was living with my mom. And when I saw B.B. receive that kind of adulation, that kind of honor. I said, ‘This is what I want’.”

B.B. King: “And after that, I cried back up the stairway.”

Sid Seidenberg, artist manager: “It’s like when Nat King Cole broke through. And they accepted them, so we kept doing that. After the initial ’68 period, working the Fillmore, working colleges, and then all of a sudden, we were able to book B.B. into these rock and roll clubs. And other venues that never had black entertainers before.”

Dr. John The Night-Tripper, musician: “He shifted a gear from… playing in black clubs, all of a sudden he was playing for white audiences. And it shifted a couple of gears there, right there. And then B.B. could do whatever the hell he wanted to do.”

Third, the late 60s saw a blossoming of a new generation of blues-rock guitarists, black and white alike, who elevated the form to hitherto unimagined heights. Three guitarists in particular bear further mention here: Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Michael Bloomfield.

Jimi Hendrix was a force of nature. Born John Allen Hendrix in Seattle in 1942, he gravitated to the electric guitar at a young age. He enlisted in the 101st Airborne in 1961 to avoid jail time for riding around in stolen cars.

After being honorably discharged, he developed his original guitar style, making mid-1960s breakthroughs in London and the USA. Here are some of the indelible impressions Jimi Hendrix made on a galaxy of stars:

Eric Clapton: “His tastes were exactly what I would want in another musician, you know, like the blues and where it came from, and also, he had this fantastic imagination for what you could do with it.”

Carlos Santana: “Jimi Hendrix to me is that his vision is so strong, aside from being a masterful guitar player. The vision of what he heard. The guitar became incidental.”

John Lee Hooker: “He was a genius in his own world. He made the world come to him.”

Paul McCartney: “I remember one night, me, Townsend and Eric were all there in the audience kind of going, ‘This is good!’ Friday, they’d released Sergeant Pepper. The record company had released it on the Friday night. Now, Jimmy had listened to it Friday, Saturday, it was that weekend, and on the Sunday night, he opened with Sergeant Pepper. He’d learned it!”

A power trio outputs more acoustic energy than any array of instruments on a concert stage, including a full symphony orchestra: around 120 decibels, equivalent to a jet engine.

Neil Young: “This is Johnny B. Goode. I mean, this guy is completely out there. I mean, I’ve never heard anybody play electric guitar like that. There’s no one. There’s no one even in the same building with a guy at that same level. There’s no one!”

At Woodstock in August 1969, Hendrix played a psychedelic version of The Star-Spangled Banner. Mirroring not only its majesty, but also the social chaos, civil conflicts, peaceful protests, and utopian aspirations of the times.

Carlos Santana: “That’s what I hear when I hear the Woodstock performance of it, you know, you hear, again, you hear babies crying, you hear bombs, you hear… You know, babies being born, eagles flying, clouds moving, you know, you hear things that people don’t normally hear nowadays.”

Dick Cavett: “What was the controversy about the national anthem and the way you played it?”

Jimi Hendrix: “I don’t know. All I did was play it. I’m American, so I played it. I used to have to sing it in school. They made me sing it in school, so… it’s a flashback, you know.”

Dick Cavett: “This man was in the 101st Airborne, so when you write your nasty letters in…Well, when you mention the national anthem and talk about playing it in an unorthodox way, you immediately get a guaranteed percentage of hate mail from people who say, ‘’How dare anyone!’.. “

Jimi Hendrix: “That’s not unorthodox, that’s not unorthodox.”

Dick Cavett: “It isn’t unorthodox?”

Jimi Hendrix: “No, no. I thought it was beautiful, but there you go.”

Hendrix blew everybody away, and then he was gone. He sadly overdosed on barbiturates and alcohol, dying in 1970 at only 27 years of age.

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The next immortal of this guitar triumvirate is Eric Clapton. After starring with two British blues rock bands, the Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Blues Breakers, Clapton was inspired by a Buddy Guy blues trio, and decided to join the power trio, Cream.

Buddy Guy: “We was out at Stanford University one night, and they was out at Fillmore West. And we got a chance to get together then, and what a group! Oh, Jesus Christ, you know, I knew I had a lot to learn when I saw them play there. In regards to what Eric said about me, I still think they’re one of the greatest 3-piece groups that you’ve ever seen.”

From the Cream Farewell Concert documentary: “The Albert Hall is the spiritual home of many of London’s finest symphony orchestras, and particularly of the world-famous Promenade concerts. Tonight, it is host to one of England’s finest rock groups, Cream. Cream have played together for only two years, but during that time have almost single-handedly given rock a musical authority which only the deaf cannot acknowledge. Jack Bruce, lead singer, bass guitarist, and harmonica player, a 25-year-old Scot who once played with Manfred Mann. Eric Clapton, a 23-year-old ex-stained glass window designer, rated by most as the finest instrumentalist of his kind in the world. And Ginger Baker, a 29-year-old Cockney, a legend, even amongst other drummers.”

Clapton even became a fifth Beatle in 1969 when he played the solo on George Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps.  And as we saw in Part 2, Clapton and the Rolling Stones backed up Howlin’ Wolf in the London sessions. Clapton was able to kick the drug habit that dogged this high-energy lifestyle. In 1993, he joined B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, and Jeff Beck on stage at the Apollo Theater in Harlem for an all-star blues guitar extravaganza. At age 81 this year, he is still going strong.

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The third immortal of this late 60s triumvirate is Michael Bernard Bloomfield, a Jewish kid from an affluent Chicago suburb. He idolized Son House, and recounts that he became possessed by the blues.

“It’s very strange, because I’m not born… born to blues, you know? It’s not in my blood, it’s not in my roots, in my family. Man, I’m Jewish, you know? I’ve been Jewish for years.”

Son House: “But this old-time stuff… That was out before he come here, and so then when he sees it, then that’s new to him.”

Michael Bloomfield: “It’s a transformation. It is like a mystic thing. It’s mystic. I will swear to God it’s some kind of mystic thing. Son House… turns into the blues, he turns into a demon of some sort, and he doesn’t hear, he doesn’t feel, his whole… every nerve and fiber of his body is taken up in that music. You see, Son House is… is… is stone blue. He’s where it’s at, you know?”

Michael Bloomfield: “Like all the great blues singers live in Chicago and they play there, you know, and since I was very young, I’ve been going down to hear them, you know. I would sneak down to the bars and see if I could get in and listen to hear what they’re playing. It flipped me out!”

“And hell, man, I’m not, I’m not Son House. I haven’t been pissed on and stepped on and shitted on, you know, like he has, I haven’t gone through that, man, I had a big bar mitzvah. You know… I’m not Sun House, I can play blues, you know, and I can feel it in a way. Man, those guys are a different story. That’s a different thing altogether. But you can quote me on this, man. Paul Butterfield’s something else. He feels it just… he’s in there all the way. Butterfield is a blue singer. There’s no white, white bullshit with Butterfield. White-colored thing with him. I mean, he’s there. And if he was green… It wouldn’t make any difference. If he was a planaria, a tuna fish sandwich, Butterfield would be into the blues.”

Like Hendrix and Clapton, Mike Bloomfield was humble and self-effacing. Yet when Bob Dylan went electric and sought a lead guitarist, Bloomfield was his first choice.

Bob Dylan: “Mike Bloomfield said he’d heard my first record. And he said he wanted to show me how the blues were played. And I, I didn’t feel much competition… I didn’t feel much competitiveness with him. I mean, he could outplay anybody, even at that… at that point, you know, but when it was time to bring in a guitar player on my record, I couldn’t think of anybody but him. I mean, he just was the best guitar player I ever heard.”

Tragically, Mike Bloomfield died of a heroin overdose in San Francisco in 1981, at 37 years of age.

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Now you may wonder: did women perform on this high-energy late 60s roller coaster riding its relentless cycle of sex, drugs, blues and rock and roll? Yes, they did, but not many could sustain the brutal pace and unforgiving lifestyle of an industry that milked them like cash cows on endless tours and recording sessions.

The greatest and most tragic female vocalist of that period was undoubtedly Janis Joplin. Big Mama Thornton credited Janice with making her song Ball and Chain so famous. Janis’ 1967 rendition at the Monterey Festival catapulted her to international renown.

Big Mama Thornton: “This is a song I wrote, made famous by me and Janice Joplin. I wrote this tune called Ball and Chain. I hope you like it.”

Sadly, Janice succumbed to a heroin overdose in 1970 at the Landmark Hotel in Hollywood. Thus, she joined the growing roster of what came to be called the 27 Club, famous blues and rock artists who died at age 27. That same period saw the emergence of yet more white blues artists who didn’t sound white, because their souls were likewise solid blue.

Meet John Henry Hammond Jr., a legendary producer and talent scout for Columbia Records, and a civil rights activist. He discovered and signed Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, and later, Bruce Springsteen. Protestant by upbringing, he said he always felt Jewish in his heart. He had a son, John P. Hammond, who became a Grammy-winning blues artist. The cover track of John’s signature 1969 album, Southern Fried, is his rendition of a classic Willie Dixon song, Shake for Me.

The slide guitarist on that track was none other than Duane Allman, celebrated lead guitarist and co-founder of the Allman Brothers Band out of Nashville. They went stratospheric in 1972 with the release of Eat a Peach. The cover track, One Way Out, written in the early 60s by Elmore James, Marshall Seahorn, and Sonny Boy Williamson, was performed by the Allman Brothers at the Fillmore East in June, 1971.

A truly great band. But tragically, Duane Allman didn’t even make it to the 27 Club. He was killed in a motorcycle accident in Macon, Georgia in October 1971. Stone dead at 24. But stone blue forever.

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Now it’s time to get more eclectic.

The story goes that when Muddy Waters first heard a recording by Johnny Winter, he initially assumed that the artist was a man of color. But upon meeting him, Waters remarked that he was not only white, but the whitest guy you ever saw, a reference to Winter’s congenital albinism. B.B. King recollects seeing him for the first time, too.

B.B. King: “We were playing. And I saw these four white people come in, and one was extra white. Johnny Winter. I’ll tell you, he was good. Well, I tried him. I went through 3 or 4 different keys that… a lot of guys were not too familiar with, and I was enjoying it. But he was a genuine guy.”

“Extra white” Johnny Winter and his brother Edgar were both albinos, born with no skin pigmentation, bright white hair, and legally blind. But in their case, “extra white” meant “extra blue”. Mike Bloomfield had jammed with him in Chicago, and invited him onto the stage at New York City’s Fillmore East in 1968. Columbia Records executives were in the house, and they signed Johnny Winter then and there.

His 1969 studio rendition of Be Careful With a Fool was written by B.B. King, and first recorded in the 1950s. Winter’s elongated and articulated phrasings on guitar, combined with his East Texas vocal style, made him an extra-blue sensation.

Johnny Winter and Muddy Waters enjoyed a long and fruitful collaboration, and Johnny even produced two Grammy-winning records by Muddy.

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As we used to say back in the day, “Dig this!” All the music we have heard so far represents only some of the highest peaks in the vast mountain ranges of the eclectic blues, and all of it, believe it or not, erupted during a few short years in the late 1960s. All the top bands of that day, UK and US-based alike, were grounded in the blues, and they are too numerous to name.

Likewise, constraints of time do not permit an exposition of all the great guitarists who form part of that revival, including Albert Collins, Freddie King, Matt Murphy, and Stevie Ray Vaughan in the USA, and Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Peter Green, and Alvin Lee in the UK. Suffice to say that the late blues revival became a worldwide inundation.

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Now, fast forward to 1977, to Jerusalem Avenue in Hicksville on Long Island. If you like all things eclectic, here’s Ram Jam’s video of Black Betty. John and Alan Lomax made the first field recording of that song in 1933. Ram Jam’s 1977 video was a homemade backyard affair, flung together because they had allegedly blown their sponsor’s promotional budget on beer and weed. But drunk or not, stoned or not, Ram Jam went viral with it.

Now check out the Cartier family watching that video for the first time in 2022. By this point, they were so far removed from blues and its roots that they didn’t recognize the song or its origin, but they loved it anyway. Why? Because it rocks!

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From Long Island, let’s head north to Canada. Meet Norman Jeffrey (“Jeff”) Healy, born in Toronto in 1966. Afflicted by retinoblastoma, a rare cancer of the eyes, he became blind in childhood. But that didn’t stop him from playing the blues, and may even have propelled him. Jeff Healy developed an unrivaled technique, laying the guitar mostly flat on his lap, for example in his remarkable 1988 rendition of his song, See the Light, performed live on the TV show, Night Music.

Jeff Healy was only 20 at that time. He passed away in 2008, at age 42, after the cancer metastasized to his lungs. But he saw and emitted the light, sure enough, and it was radiant blue!

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Now back to the realm of the living and the eclectic blues rock country folk artist, Bonnie Raitt. A Grammy Award winner, Bonnie Raitt was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.

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The omnipresent Buddy Guy performed at the renowned Montreux Jazz Festival in 1992, with a stirring performance of Robert Johnson’s classic, Sweet Home Chicago, which Johnson first recorded in 1936. This audience of thousands, massed on the shores of Lake Geneva, eagerly responded to Buddy Guy’s calls, which further delighted and inspired him.

The original Delta Blues remains alive and well into this 21st century, and here in the capable hands of the Rolling Stones. The hard drugs that killed so many blues and rock artists apparently conferred longevity on the Stones. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, in 2015, they played Mississippi Fred McDowell’s You Gotta Move to perfection, getting the whole audience to join in an encore. Even Fred might have approved, as they were not playing rock and roll.

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Now, let’s get really eclectic. Most people don’t normally associate Japan with the blues. That is, until they hear Takeharu Kunimoto play his tsugaru-jamisen, a three-string Japanese lute. In 1995, he jammed with the ubiquitous Buddy Guy on Tokyo television, improvising on a Kenny Burrell tune, Chitlins Con Carne. Kunimoto also imitated Buddy Guy’s singing style in Japanese to Buddy’s amused delight.

So the Blues, a seasoned traveler, made it all the way to Japan. And as we know, the Blues is also a time traveler. Chuck Berry now sails through interstellar space on Voyager 1, awaiting further future discovery. And just as eclectically, the blues can also travel backwards in time.

As contemporary American virtuoso, John Batiste, convincingly demonstrated on his album, Black Mozart, Mozart and Beethoven likewise composed and played the blues.

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While we’re at it, let’s not leave out the Baroque, whose suites were intended to include improvisation, not only in ornamentation, but also in melody, particularly in their slow and melancholy Sarabande movements, such as Bach’s Sarabande in A Minor, from his 2nd Lute Suite, circa 1740. Its structure is a straight-up minor blues, which, as Jean Batiste pointed out with Mozart, hadn’t been invented yet.

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As we’ve seen throughout this three-part series, Robert Johnson and the Blues form an eternal bond. By now, his classic walking blues has walked worldwide. And in a video that proves it conclusively, and released in 2019 on Johnson’s birth date, May 8th, Keb Moe and an array of eclectic artists paid homage to Johnson’s global spirit.

The Walking Blues is still walking: There’s the blues in its most eclectic form of all, a form that came to be known as Americana. In musical terms, Americana blends elements of country, folk, bluegrass, blues, rhythm and blues, soul, gospel, and rock.

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Meet The Band, a Canadian-American ensemble that backed Bob Dylan. They gained independent recognition in 1969 with the release of their album, Music from the Big Pink, so named after their rented house in West Saugerties in upstate New York. Their greatest international hit was The Weight, written by Canadian-born Robbie Robertson. He says he was heavily influenced by the surrealist Mexican filmmaker, Luis Buñuel. Be that as it may, The Weight is vintage Americana: A road trip to Nazareth, Pennsylvania, replete with biblical and literary allusions, far-flung friends, and a girl named Fanny.

Another video, anchored by Robbie Robertson and Ringo Starr, represents a pinnacle of Americana. It was released in 2019 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 release of The Weight. It demonstrates that Americana, and the blues so deeply woven within and throughout it, has become a priceless gift to the entire musical world.