The Importance of Being: Michael Bloomfield

Today was a rough day, a roller coaster of emotions. I had to venture back to the bathroom at the shop a couple of times to get myself together. A friend of mine at the shop asked me if I was ok? I told them I was okay, just having some big feelings. You see, someone named Michael Bloomfield died. He died way too young many years ago and to this day, I haven’t been able to get over it. I wasn’t prepared to realize I still had more grieving to do.

Michael Bloomfield was important. Don’t take my word for it though. Here’s a couple of quotes from some people you may have heard of.

Muddy Waters: “When I first heard Michael, I knew he was gonna be a great guitar player. I let him play with me all the time, sit in with my band. Every time he and Paul (harp player/singer/band leader, Paul Butterfield) would come in, I’d let ‘em sit in and do couple of numbers. That’s the way kids learn, you know, sittin’ in and getting the feeling, getting the smoke of it. I like to take kids tryin’ to get across and give ‘em a helping hand, you know. I didn’t get so many helping hands, and that’s why I’m so nice to people.”

Bob Dylan: “When it came time to hire a guitar player, I didn’t even think about it. Mike Bloomfield was the best guitar player I ever heard.”

So, why was I all torn up today? Michael Bloomfield’s black 1963 Fender Stratocaster is in the store for sale. It arrived yesterday and I think some of Michael’s insomnia rubbed off on me. I couldn’t sleep at all last night knowing I’d get to spend the day with that guitar. I didn’t think about the fact I’d have feelings about Michael, or this guitar, when I came into work today. Man, I had some big-time feelings.

Michael was the first guitar player that, “Got me.” I bought a copy of Al Kooper’s “Super Session” in 1968 when the record came out. I had no idea who Al Kooper was and I’d certainly never heard of Michael Bloomfield. My ten year old self bought the record purely on the hunch that anything called, “Super…” well, it just had to be good!

I took the record home, dropped the needle on it and sat there rather perplexed, maybe a little puzzled? The first two songs, instrumentals, were interesting but I didn’t quite get it. By the time I was about halfway through, “His Holy Modal Majesty” I was having some regrets as to my purchase. I shelved the record. Oh well, you can’t hit ‘em all out of the park. What I didn’t know was that I had to get my heart broken to “get” Mr. Michael Bloomfield.

Fast forward to a couple of years later. It was 1970 and I was in eighth grade at B. D. Billinghurst Junior High in Reno Nevada. I was really excited to go to my first dance. There was going to be a live band and most importantly my, “Girlfriend” (more like a serious crush that I tried to make time with as often as possible without actually being a pest) was going to go. She told me she couldn’t wait to see me and was looking forward to us dancing together. My feet were barely touching the ground.

My mom took me downtown shopping for some new clothes and… I remember this like it happened yesterday… we picked up a bottle of “Hai Karate” at the Rexall Drug Store so I’d be super fresh and smelling as good as I looked. Man, I was jazzed for this night!

It was about ten minutes into the dance that I noticed my crush in the corner of the gym making out with a guy. And that guy wasn’t me.

I panicked and literally ran out of the building to the back of the gym where there was a dark stairwell I could hide in. I had never felt these feelings before. I was raving mad, I had never felt so betrayed and hurt. I was crying and embarrassed as hell about crying but I couldn’t stop crying, and to top it off I couldn’t catch my breath. I had been hurt bad. Lo and behold… I caught the news and the news was the blues. A big ol’ mess of the blues. I felt like I’d been hit by a very large truck.

I sat there until my dad came to get me after the dance. I lied and told him I had a blast and it was real fun. We got home, I went straight to my room and started listening to records. Nothing was really resonating, and I don’t know why I reached for it, it was totally intuitive, but I put on “Super Session.” “Albert’s Shuffle” and “Stop” went straight to my heart. I felt what Michael Bloomfield was playing. His blues helped me get over mine. I heard his playing for the first time that night. I really heard it and it was a like a warm blanket on a shivering cold night. I just felt this comfort in knowing someone else felt like I did.

I got over the girl pretty fast. Luckily, I never got over that record. A few years later when I decided to quit dabbling in guitar and really learn how to play I literally wore the grooves off of side one of, “Super Session”; the side Michael’s on.

Years later I saw Michael play in a club in the Bay Area. He was playing the very guitar that was on my bench. Today, I kept pinching myself all day to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

Right now, that Strat’s at the shop and all I wanna do it play it. It’s all I can think about. I’m a total Strat-a-holic. I LOVE Stratocasters. I can live without Les Pauls, Teles, 335s and other ES guitars; except for an ES-5. Something about three pickup guitars and me. They just resonate with my soul. If I could’t play a Strat I’d give up guitar. Thank you Leo.

A Stratocaster is not an easy guitar to love. They’re a commitment. If you want to play a Strat well, you gotta be all in. Fender’s have a longer scale length than Gibson guitars so automatically the guitar’s gonna fight you to play it. The same gauge strings on a Fender vs. a Gibson feel tighter and less forgiving. Guitar players call it, “Tension” and Strats have a lot of it.

About that tension that Strats have. Other guitars have the strings anchored to the guitar. There’s the stop bar tailpiece to solidly anchor the strings on a Les Paul. The Telecaster’s strings sit in ferrules glued to the body of the guitar. No such anchors with a Strat. The strings pass through a metal block that’s attached to a hinge-like bridge plate. The other end of the block is attached to the guitar with springs. When you bend a string on a Les Paul, or Tele, the strings don’t move. They stretch, while still being anchored solidly to the guitar. Not so with a Strat. When you bend the strings on one of those guitars the springs give and flex with the amount of tension you apply to the string to bend it. The more you bend the string, the more the springs in the back of the guitar flex; making it harder to bend the string to the note you want. The guitar literally fights you to play it! Strat’s aren’t easy.

And speaking of unforgiving, there’s the sound of a Strat. Single coil pickups with rather low output and a very bright sound. You’re not gonna really drive an amp real hard with a Strat. It’s not going to send the amp into any sort of torn up frenzy the way a Les Paul, or a 335, will. What this all means is you have to play well because every single nuance in your playing technique will come out with a Strat. The good, the bad, and in my case early on, the ugly. If you can sound good on a Strat, everything else is a breeze.

With great care, attention and love I removed the strings on Michael’s guitar today. I sealed them up and put them in the case. I installed a fresh set, tuned the guitar, stretched the strings and re-tuned a few times. I tuned it low, down a half step because the original owner of the guitar was well known to play a half step down.

I plugged the guitar into a little 1 x 12” amp that I share back in CVG Authentication World with my buddy Miclain. Someone nearby noted the irony of plugging such an iconic instrument into an amp with a “Line 6” logo on it. We had a good laugh over that. To be fair to the amp, it’s not a modeler, it does have tubes, and it has a decent clean sound to it.

Sometimes, playing guitars owned by icons of the music world will shock you. They can be so much of… nothing special at all. It’s in those moments, playing that not so special iconic guitar, when you realize that it’s the person playing the guitar that’s so special. The mojo’s in the player, not the instrument.

Sometimes guitars owned by icons of the music world will shock you… by how absolutely stunningly good they are. That happened today.

Best Strat I’ve ever played or heard. By a mile. Second place was limping around the last turn when this Strat was cooling in the clubhouse giving an interview.

And like my buddy Dave told me years ago, and I’ve mentioned before, “You have to be careful with what you put in your ears because you can’t un-hear things.” Dave’s right. I am now forever haunted for Strats…

This thing is magic.

Gary Bohannon is Senior Authenticator and Acquisitions for Carter Vintage. If you have a vintage instrument you'd like to sell through CVG, reach out to [email protected]