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The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

THE PAUL BUTTERFIELD BLUES BAND

YEAR

2015

INDUCTED BY

Peter Wolf

CATEGORY

Performers

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band rocketed the blues straight into the stratosphere.

One of the first integrated blues bands with mass appeal, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band inspired people of all kinds to sing the blues. They pounced on the music and took no prisoners.

Billy Davenport

Billy Davenport

Elvin Bishop

Elvin Bishop

Jerome Arnold

Jerome Arnold

Mark Naftalin

Mark Naftalin

Michael Bloomfield

Michael Bloomfield

Paul Butterfield

Paul Butterfield

Sam Lay

Sam Lay

HALL OF FAME
ESSAY

By Bill Bentley

They came roaring out of Chicago, playing electric blues that seemed plugged into the cosmos.

Grounded by the music of their South Side heroes – Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Elmore James, and others – the Paul Butterfield Blues Band changed rock & roll as surely as any band in mid-sixties America. They did it with a combination of street-smart swagger, an endless well of feeling, and, maybe most strikingly, an impossibly energetic attack on the soul.

The group, originally composed of Paul Butterfield, Michael Bloom- field, Elvin Bishop, Sam Lay (later replaced by Billy Davenport), Mark Naftalin, and Jerome Arnold, made true blues accessible to the growing youth counterculture, and in the process opened up the possibilities for what rock & roll could really be.

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Class of 2015
you can hear the South Side Chicago sound inside them.
Peter Wolf
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