Mike Bloomfield

Mike Bloomfield (July 28, 1943 – February 15, 1981) was an American musician, guitarist and composer. Born in Chicago, Illinois, into a well-off Jewish family on Chicago's North Side. A shy, awkward loner as a child, he became i

Mike Bloomfield (July 28, 1943 – February 15, 1981) was an American musician, guitarist and composer. Born in Chicago, Illinois, into a well-off Jewish family on Chicago's North Side. A shy, awkward loner as a child, he became interested in music through the Southern radio stations he was able to pick up at night, which gave him a regular source for rockabilly, R&B, and blues. He received his first guitar at his bar mitzvah and he and his friends began sneaking out to hear electric blues on the South Side's fertile club scene (with the help of their families' maids). The young Bloomfield sometimes jumped on-stage to jam with the musicians and the novelty of such a spectacle soon made him a prominent scenester. Dismayed with the turn his education was taking, his parents sent him to a private boarding school on the East Coast in 1958 and he eventually graduated from a Chicago school for troubled youth. By this time, he'd embraced the beatnik subculture, frequenting hangout spots near the University of Chicago. He got a job managing a folk club and frequently booked veteran acoustic bluesmen; in the meantime, he was also playing guitar as a session man and around the Chicago club scene with several different bands.

He was a session musician who became famous through his work with Bob Dylan during his first explorations into the "electric Dylan" phase. Bloomfield's sound was a major part of Dylan's sound, as featured especially on Highway 61 Revisited. His guitar style bridged blues influence with rock and folk.