Guitar King: Michael Bloomfield’s Life In The Blues

★★★★ David Dann UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS. £34

Comprehensive bio of the late American blues-rock guitarist.

News of this exhaustively researched 650-page biography (plus another 90 of notes) of the late Chicagoborn blues-rock guitarist will have many jumping with joy, and a few left wondering: who’s Michael Bloomfield? For a relatively brief time, Bloomfield – best known for his work with Dylan (that’s him on Like A Rolling Stone), The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the Electric Flag and the Super Session album with Al Kooper – was often ranked alongside Clapton, Hendrix, et al, as one of rock’s greatest. His star faded in the ’70s and he was found dead in his car in 1981, aged 37, another drug casualty. Dunn restores Bloomfield to the prominence he once enjoyed, careful to avoid hagiography as he documents the musician’s rise to glory and swift, heartbreaking (but seemingly inevitable) demise. Bloomfield wasn’t a saint – he could be cantankerous and troubled – but the music, which always takes the front seat here, never failed him.