I saw guitarist Robben Ford play with Joni Mitchell during the Miles Of Aisles Tour at Woolsey Hall in New Haven in the mid-1970s. I’ve followed his career since, but not until the late ’80s did I start to take a closer look.
Even then, I wasn’t familiar with everything he released. In the past few years I’ve become more acquainted with his various projects and finally had a chance to see him live at the Infinity Music Hall in Norfolk, Connecticut, in August.
Still, it wasn’t until relatively recently I found that along with his major label releases he also put out a couple of tributes to one of my favorite musicians, Paul Butterfield, on an independent label in the early 2000s with the Ford Blues Band, which includes two of his brothers, Patrick and Mark.
Ford like many other young players who started playing in the mid-1960s was influenced greatly by seeing the Butterfield Band when they played on the West Coast, including at the Fillmore West. It was the same here in the East with musicians I knew and worked with. Butterfield was one of the major influences on my band Pulse in the late ’60s.
Tributes are sometimes a hit-and-miss proposition. When I finally had a chance to listen to A Tribute To Paul Butterfield (2001), though, I was pleased that Robben and The Ford Blues Band had stayed faithful to the material they had chosen but also brought something new to it that makes it as fresh, vital and relevant as it was in the mid-to-late 1960s. It’s our fifth Hidden Treasure.
One of the things that makes this tribute work so well is the choice of material, which hits all of the various phases and the evolution of the Butterfield Band, with tracks from Butter’s six best albums. Continue reading From The Vaults: Hidden Treasure No. 5
I’ve been to quite a few concerts over the years, many influential, some inspiring. The earliest big venue shows were in the fall of 1965, both at the New Haven Arena. In early November, it was the Rolling Stones with Brian Jones on second guitar in the wake of their summer mega-hit Satisfaction. The Stones sounded and looked great, but it was a relatively sedate performance compared with ones for which the band became infamous. A side note on the Stones show is that the first time they were booked for the Arena, the summer of ’64, the show was actually canceled because of insufficient ticket sales. Amazing. The second show, the Beach Boys with Brian Wilson on bass, on Thanksgiving Day. The Boys wore yellow short-sleeved oxford shirts with gray slacks, not their customary black-and-white and white khakis (I guess because it was a holiday) and with Brian in the fold sounded like angels. Two rather different groups but both rode the singles charts and that’s what drove the music industry at the time.