Buddy Miles was born on this day in 1947. He was a founding member of The Electric Flag, a legendary American Music Band, that played at Holy Cross in Worcester in the fall on 1967. The group was a newly minted project organized by Michael Bloomfield, the Chicago-born guitarist who rose to prominence with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The Worcester gig was part of the Electric Flag’s first East Coast road trip. They had just recorded tracks for their first single, “Groovin’ is Easy” with Nick Gravenities on vocals. The flip of the 45 rpm was a tune called “Over Lovin’ You,” featuring Buddy Miles on vocals. See: https://youtube/watch?v=KRWgtYtrrj8 According to David Dann, who manages the website, mikebloomfieldamericanmusic, New York City was the Electric Flag’s eventual stop on the tour. They were booked to record more material for the first album at Columbia studios, but “the band first detoured to Boston for an extended stay at the Psychedelic Supermarket near Kenmore Square. On the way they played a one-nighter at a club called The Factory in Madison, WI, and then performed at Holy Cross College in Worcester, MA. A small Catholic school known for its fine football team, the place put Bloomfield ill at ease. He later told Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner, “… there was nothing there but goyim. That really put me uptight. It was wrong, I didn’t see any Jews.” In addition to guitarist Bloomfield, the band that came east consisted of vocalist/guitarist Nick Gravenites, keyboardist Barry Goldberg, bassist Harvey Brooks, vocalist/drummer Buddy Miles, trumpeter Marcus Doubleday and saxophonist Peter Strazza. It’s been reported that the Flag had played the Holy Cross Fieldhouse. However, they are not listed in the school’s record of concerts for 1967. The “official” concert that year consisted of headliner Chuck Berry, the Ronnettes, Wilson Pickett, and the Barbarians. The specific date of the Flag show is hard to nail down. It was somewhere between October 28th and the 31st because they played the Electric Flag appeared at the Factory on October 27th and began a lengthy stint at the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston on November 1st. The Worcester connections are more or less six degrees to the Flag – depending on how you look at it. Dann also reports that while in Worcester, “the band met a sympathetic soul who advised them to look up some friends living near Kenmore Square in Boston. Those friends were blues musicians too, he said. After they arrived in Boston on November 1, Bloomfield and Gravenites paid those musicians a visit one evening following their show at the Supermarket. The friends turned out to be John Geils, Richard Salwitz and Danny Klein, soon to be better known nationally as members of the J. Geils Band. Michael, Nick and their hosts got on so well that eventually there was a noise complaint from neighbors. Geils told Jan Wolkin and Bill Keenom in “If You Love These Blues,” “Mike was completely freaked out because he’d been busted not long before, in California …” Before leaving, Bloomfield characteristically invited Geils and company to sit in with the Flag during a set on the following evening.” More from Geils on Bloomfield from the book, If You Love These Blues: Oral History “The contact we had with Mike was great,” Geils said. “It was early on in the first Electric Flag tour. I think they had done a gig in Worcester and had run into a guy who knew us. He said, ‘When you get to Boston, some friends that are great blues musicians live right round the corner from where you’re going to play.’ “Dick and I and Danny [Klein], the bass player from the J. Geils Blues Band, all lived together in the same apartment. So on Friday night, about ten or eleven o’clock, there’s a knock on the door. It was Bloomfield and Nick Gravenities. They came in, and Bloomfield was great. He said, ‘This is just like being at home’ – because Dick was playing Little Walter in his room, I was listening to B.B. King in my room, and Danny was playing bass to some Otis Redding cut. “We said, ‘Hey, come on in. Have a drink.’ We were, like, wow, this is great. Because Bloomfield was a big star, a big hero. We had a piano in the front room, and we wound up jamming. Bloomfield played piano. He loved Dick’s harp playing – he went completely nuts for that. I played guitar some. He liked what I was doing. And we talked about equipment. This was before they packaged different gauges of guitar strings – well, Fender was just starting to get into that—he was telling me, ‘What you should do is: you buy the lightest set of strings you can buy and throw away the heavy one, move them all down one, and buy a tenor banjo string for the top one.’ We just had a great time. Finally, about two or three o’clock in the morning, there was a noise complaint. Mike was completely freaked because he had been busted not long before, in California, or he’d had some run-in with the law somewhere. At the end of this wonderful night of carrying on and talking about equipment and music and blues and harp players, Mike said, ‘You guys are great. Come down and sit in with band tomorrow. I’ll call you up.’ And we said, ‘Oh, okay, cool.’ “They were playing at a club called the Psychedelic Supermarket. It was an underground thing in Boston, right outside of Kenmore Square. It was a parking garage, really. A guy put a stage and PA in it and called it a club. It was walking distance from our apartment right down to where this place was. We went down there and, I don’t know, two-thirds of the way through their set Mike had everybody get off the stage except the rhythm section. Barry Goldberg was on keyboards; Harvey Brooks, bass; and Buddy Miles, drums. We went up and did two tunes. The place loved it, he loved it, and we had a great time. We stayed, watched the rest of the show, and said goodbye to him. I never saw him again. I don’t think we ever ran into him again. But it was a great 24 hours with Bloomfield.” Here’s a clip of the Electric Flag live at the Psychedelic Supermarket -- Youtube Clip … https://youtube/watch?v=TWC8-VYc1E4 The Worcester stories of the Electric Flag Here’s a great one: One longtime city resident and Electric Flag fan recalls a girl from the neighborhood who went to the show on a date. When asked about it, she told him that, “We went to a frathouse at Holy Cross. The band was called the ‘American Flag’ (sic). They had this big fat black guy playing drums.” Sound like Worcester? There are rumors that the band stayed at the Worcester City Hotel on Rte. 9. A couple of local musicians caught Goldberg and Miles outside having a cigarette. Bloomfield was said to still be asleep. Before leaving on the 1967 tour that would bring the Electric Flag through Worcester, the band recorded the soundtrack to The Trip, an experimental film starring Peter Fonda with a script written by Jack Nicholson. According to All Music Guide to the Blues: The Definitive Guide to the Blues, The Trip is “one of the greatest exploitation movies of all time.” Bloomfield wrote all the music. “It contains the first studio recordings of the Electric Flag,” wrote Matthew Greenwald. “Writing and performing trippy music was a bit removed from this fine ensemble’s area (they were, in fact, a serious and funky band), but they succeeded admirably.” The recording was released by Sidewalk Records. The Trip was an American International film. Here’s a clip from the film featuring “Fine Jung Thing” -- https://youtube/watch?v=rGtcFxlamS0 Resources mikebloomfield/ mikebloomfieldamericanmusic/1966-1967.htm rockprosopography101.blogspot/2009/11/psychedelic-supermarket-boston-ma-1967.html
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 14:15:02 +0000
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