When Bob Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, it was a watershed moment for the trajectory of popular music – and the Telecaster that his foil, Mike Bloomfield, played on that day was instrumental in ‘killing folk.’

Now, Eastwood Guitars has recreated the guitar for the masses – including its rather garish cutaway – in the form of the Mad Cat MB63.

Bloomfield’s early ‘60s Tele – its neck is stamped August ’63 – was later used across Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album. It can reportedly be heard on seminal tracks, including Like A Rolling Stone and Tombstone Blues, but it was still in one piece at the time.

It was only later, after Bloomfield swapped it for a ’54 Gibson Les Paul in 1965, that the cruder-than-crude cutaway was made by its new owner for better access to the upper frets, with no concern for the instrument's history.

So, while the guitar never looked like it does now while in Bloomfield’s hands, Eastwood’s recreation of the electric guitar is being used as a way of honoring its most famous player.

“The Eastwood Mad Cat MB63 tips its hat to one of the great troublemakers in guitar history,” it says. “The original wasn’t precious. It had that famously rough upper horn cutaway and a straight-to-the-point, workmanlike feel. It looked like someone simply decided it needed to be different and made it so. That’s the spirit we wanted to keep.”

It pairs a swamp ash body with a maple neck and rosewood fingerboard, and is kitted out with Eastwood-branded single-coil pickups, a T-Style Chrome bridge, and vintage-style tuners.

Crafted to a 25.5" scale length, it also has a 12" fretboard radius, 20 Jumbo frets, and aged white inlays. It has been designed to look worn and pre-loved – complete with that gruesome cutaway.

“Taking inspiration from the vintage car world, we decided to add a clear coat over the distressed body finish to seamlessly blend the old with the new,” Eastwood explains.

“At its core, this is still a no-nonsense single-cut with all the snap, bite, and clarity you’d hope for. It’s for players who like their guitars a little rough around the edges and a lot big on personality.”

Priced at a not-too-shabby $1,399, it certainly saves players the job of taking a hacksaw to their own beloved Teles, and stands as one of 2026's most unique guitar tributes. The original guitar sold for $275,000 in January 2025, so Eastwood’s version is also a damn sight cheaper.

See Eastwood Guitars for more.

Warren Haynes will play a trio of electric guitars tied to three bona fide guitar legends at Gov’t Mule’s celebratory show at New York’s Beacon Theatre on New Year’s Eve.

The show will be the band’s 50th at the iconic venue and will be a celebration of all things 1971. It's been described by Haynes as “arguably the greatest year in rock music history,” and he’ll play three guitars that Jerry Garcia, Dickey Betts, and Bob Dylan made history with for a special set.

The first of those is Jerry Garcia’s 1976 Travis Bean TB500 #11. It featured extensively on the Grateful Dead’s ninth album, Terrapin Station, and was played at over 90 shows before it was auctioned off in 2013. The late great is said to have retired the guitar once the Tiger came into his life.

Dickey Betts' main guitar between 1969-71 – a 1958 Gibson Les Paul Gold Top Dark Back – will also play a key role. The guitar starred in their iconic Fillmore East shows and was used to track the Allman Brothers Band’s first three albums – The Allman Brothers Band (1969), Idlewild South (1970), and Eat a Peach (1972).

Rounding out the trio of history-makers is “the guitar that killed folk”: the 1963 Fender Telecaster that Mike Bloomfield played during Bob Dylan’s 1965 Newport Folk Festival set, the first time he went electric.

It was later used to record Highway 61 Revisited, a record that saw Dylan further establish his rockier, more electrified sound. The Tele, which went up for sale for $275,000 in January, received a crude left-handed modification sometime after Bloomfield opted to swap it for a ’54 Les Paul in late 1965.

John Nuese, who took the hacksaw to the instrument, was the guitarist during Gram Parsons' early career.

Haynes will use the guitars to perform songs from a barmstorming year in rock. Albums released that year include Led Zeppelin’s IV, the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality, and John Lennon’s Imagine, which should give you an idea of the evening’s setlist.

After years of trying to convince him, Haynes and Gibson finally worked on a signature Les Paul earlier this year. It's loaded up, in a shock twist, with P-90s – and the hybrid pups might just be having a renaissance.

Less than a week after Mike Bloomfield's extravagantly painted 1966 Fender Telecaster made its way to the second-hand market, the Tele he played during Bob Dylan's infamous Newport Folk Festival set in 1965 has now come up for sale.

However, some rather choice and stomach-turning mods have been made to the heavily butchered electric guitar.

Listed on the Retro Fret website for $275,000, the instrument was present for a change-making moment in rock ‘n’ roll history, as, with Bloomfield by his side, Bob Dylan ditched his acoustic guitar to go full electric for the first time during the Newport Folk Festival.

As the gear seller says, “Dylan’s take-no-prisoners plugged-in performance with Michael Bloomfield loudly ripping away at his side on this Telecaster was a seminal moment in pop culture.”

Vintage Guitar Magazine’s October 2015 cover story called it “the guitar that killed folk”, but that set isn’t the only story it has to tell.

As for the instrument’s build date, its neck is stamped August ’63 while the body is hand-dated to October. Bloomfield called it his first “good” electric, and he first recorded with it on a 1965 demo session with Columbia producer John Hammond Sr.

Soon after, Bloomfield was brought into Dylan’s camp and used the guitar during the recording of Highway 61 Revisited. This particular Tele can reportedly be heard on Like A Rolling Stone and Tombstone Blues.

Bloomfield also favored this Telecaster when he helped record the self-titled debut album by The Paul Butterfield Band.

As the story goes, the electric guitar was still in one piece when Bloomfield decided to swap it in late 1965 for a ’54 Gibson Les Paul. John Nuese, its left-handed new owner, then made the crude cutaway to make it easier to play. He was the guitarist for Gram Parsons during the singer’s early career.

At the same time as the cutaway was made the entire electronics were updated, but its last owner – who bought the Tele at a 2015 auction – has changed the pickups to hand-wound 1963-style Seymour Duncan Custom Shop single-coils, with modern reproduction 250k pots and wiring to help restore the guitar’s original character.

The strap button on the tail end is original, but several old holes on the treble side show a history of moving button locations. Retro Fret promises a “superb playing instrument”, despite its scars and modifications.

Head to Retro Fret to learn more.

A unique 1966 Fender Telecaster once owned and played by blues rock pioneer Mike Bloomfield has been listed for sale at Carter Vintage.

The vintage gear emporium in Nashville, TN, is no stranger to standout signature models – its current stock includes a Gibson Collector's Edition version of Kirk Hammett's "Greeny" 1959 Les Paul Standard for $65K – and this six-string is no different.

As the story goes, Bloomfield owned two of these models, one of which kept its original blonde finish but was famously cut down and converted to a left-handed model.

The second, and the one now looking for a new home, was given a swirling custom blue paint job reportedly composed by the sister of Bloomfield’s then-girlfriend.

Both guitars were used across the late ’60s and early ’70s as Bloomfield forged a reputation with his psychedelia-tinged blues rock.

Away from his solo work, he was Bob Dylan’s right-hand man for a time, and featured during his iconic 1965 Newport Folk Festival performance.

Bloomfield also played a key role in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s early success thanks to his fizzing chemistry with their guitar and harp-playing main man. He left the outfit in 1967 to form The Electric Flag, before reprising his partnership with producer Al Kooper, whom he had worked with on Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone.

As for this unique-looking electric guitar, it notably starred during The Electric Flag’s performance on the Don Kirshner's Rock Concert variety show in 1974.

Later that year, Bloomfield was booked for a gig at the Cave Club in Vancouver but disappeared before it ended. The understandably-furious club owner’s rage was later tamed by Bloomfield, who offered up the two guitars he’d left behind as compensation. One had been his blue-painted ’66 Tele, the other a ’59 Les Paul.

The Tele was then sold to Bruce Lopez – the bass player in the cover band Butch Whacks and the Glass Packs, which regularly played at the venue – for a mere $125 in cash. After that exchange, it is said to have been “hidden in a closet for decades”, before being discovered after Lopez’s recent passing.

The guitar features an alder body, maple neck, and a Brazilian rosewood fretboard. As part of its restoration, the bridge pickup has been rewound to its original specs because it had rusted from years in the shadows. Otherwise, the guitar remains the way Bloomfield had it.

The instrument can be yours for $235,000 – and it comes complete with a hard case in which the original bridge pickup coil can be found.

Head to Carter Vintage to learn more.

Though he's not a household name per se, guitarist Les Dudek has enough stories to fill a book.

He played on two Allman Brothers Band classics, Ramblin' Man and Jessica, recorded and toured with Cher (who he also dated for a time), and jammed with the supergroup that would become Journey just as they were forming. On top of all that, Dudek also once jammed onstage with Mike Bloomfield – though the latter hadn't actually invited him to do so.

A native of Florida, Dudek explained in a recent interview with Guitar World that when rock's cream of the crop came through his home state, they'd often stick around after their shows to jam informally with some of its many crack musicians.

“There were big concerts going on everywhere, and all the parks in Florida had these jams,” Dudek recounted to Guitar World. “They’d have some big-name groups come in, and the next day they’d jam with the local bands. It was pretty cool.”

“I was at a Mike Bloomfield concert, and during one blues song Mike started playing keyboards,” he continued. “Mike’s ’59 Les Paul was sitting on a stand, and I thought, ‘What are the chances of this happening again?’ I went up and got the guitar and started playing rhythm behind him.

“Mike had his eyes closed, so when it came time for a solo, I went for it. After the song, Mike turned around and goes, ‘What are you doing?’ I introduced myself and said, ‘I just had to play the blues with you.’ He goes, ‘Well, just don’t do it again.’”

Similarly to Dudek, Bloomfield himself – who tragically died in 1981, aged just 37 – still has yet to reach household name status, often overshadowed by the likes of Eric Clapton and fellow 'Burst-slinger Peter Green.

“He [Bloomfield] accomplished what Eric Clapton tried to do with Cream in the Sixties,” Guitar World's Brad Tolinski wrote in 2013. “He expanded on the vocabulary of his blues heroes, but did so with just a bit more restraint, taste, and style.”

Below, check out some high-quality footage of late guitar legend Mike Bloomfield performing with the Electric Flag at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967.

The clip—which represents Bloomfield's debut gig with his new band (which followed his tenure in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band)—is from a fairly recent documentary, Sweet Blues: A Film About Michael Bloomfield, which combines vintage audio interviews and performance footage with new interviews with Bloomfield’s friends and bandmates.

If not for two famous Fender Strats at the fest—the one Jimi Hendrix burned and the one the Who's Pete Townshend smashed to bits—at least some of the Electric Flag's set might've appeared in Monterey Pop, D.A. Pennebaker's iconic 1968 concert film. Alas, it did not happen. Some of the set is, however, available on YouTube.

Although he often is overshadowed by Eric Clapton and Fleetwood Mac's Peter Green, Bloomfield—with his Sunburst 1959 Gibson Les Paul—set the pace for the disruptive fervor of the Sixties youth revolution with his greasy mix of Chicago blues and freak-out frenzy.

As Brad Tolinski wrote in 2013, "In many ways, [Bloomfield] accomplishes what Eric Clapton tried to do with Cream in the Sixties: he expands on the vocabulary of his blues heroes, but does it with just a bit more restraint, taste and style."

Below, check out "Drinkin' Wine" (also known as "Wine") and "Over-Lovin' You" from the Electric Flag's electrifying June 17, 1967, set. He uses his Les Paul in the former and his Fender Tele in the latter.

That's Buddy Miles on drums, by the way. He'd go on to become a key member of Hendrix's Band of Gypsys (1969-1970). Bloomfield died in 1981, Miles in 2008.

Michael Bloomfield — Legendary Licks: An Inside Look at the Guitar Style of Michael Bloomfield is available now at the Guitar World Online Store.

The Legendary Licks series — which features a softcover tab book with CD — presents the music of a band or artists in a comprehensive play-along package.

Each book contains note-for-note transcriptions and detailed performance notes on how to play a multitude of classic licks, fills, riffs and solos — complete with recorded demonstrations of each exercise and gear setup tips. The CD is playable on any CD player but is also enhanced so Mac and PC users can adjust the recording to any tempo without changing the pitch!

This pack, which is by Dave Celentano, includes instruction on playing 11 of Bloomfield's finest, including: "Albert's Shuffle" • "Another Country" • "Born in Chicago" • "East-West" • "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" • "It's My Own Fault Darlin'" • "Killing Floor" • "Texas" • "Wine" • "Work Song" • "You're Killing My Love."

"Mike Bloomfield is number one. Not only did he play over-the-top well — and I mean amazingly well — but he also played what I call 'real' guitar. If you've ever heard Mike Bloomfield, then you know what I'm talking about.

"It just came from his heart. I never got a chance to see him because he died at an early age, but he was a big influence on me as to the way I learned to bend strings and get everything I could out of a note. One of the best players ever.” — Mick Mars (Motley Crüe)

The book/CD is available now for $19.99 at the Guitar World Online Store.

On June 16, 1965, a young man sporting a Jewfro walked through the rain on New York’s Seventh Avenue to Columbia Studio A, a white Telecaster slung over his shoulder like John Henry’s hammer.

Once inside, he wiped down the wet guitar, sat on a folding chair and played his way into history.

Until then, few people outside of his native Chicago had heard of Michael Bloomfield.

A little over a month later, after that session’s first single, “Like a Rolling Stone,” was released, he was nearly as well known among musicians as the tune’s writer, Bob Dylan. Bloomfield’s roiling fills and lightning-strike licks in Studio A had put the high-voltage in Dylan’s first electric album, Highway 61 Revisited.

Just a month after that LP appeared, Bloomfield’s reputation was etched deeper with the release of The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. On that debut by his hometown outfit—Chicago’s first integrated blues band signed to a major label—Bloomfield played guitar with the authenticity and intensity that Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Peter Green, Jimmy Page and the other young guns of British blues aspired to attain. Clapton himself observed, “Mike Bloomfield is music on two legs.”Bloomfield was 22 when he arrived on the music scene, blazing a path for guitarists that burned through the strata of multiple elements—jazz, country, world music, atonality—while staying faithful to his beloved blues. And while the legacy of Bloomfield’s artistry is still embedded in the muddy terra firma of American music, his influence is virtually uncelebrated today. The new three-CD-plus-DVD box set From His Head to His Heart to His Hands, curated by Bloomfield’s friend and playing partner, rock and roll legend Al Kooper, aims to correct that.“I’m trying to replicate what King of the Delta Blues Singers did for Robert Johnson in 1961,” says Kooper, referring to the 1961 compilation that rescued Johnson’s recorded legacy from obscurity. “A lot of people didn’t know about Johnson because so many decades had passed since he recorded, and yet when that album came out, English kids like Keith Richards, Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton were swept up by it. I want to do the same thing—catch people who don’t know what Michael sounded like or maybe don’t even know his name. “I loved Michael’s music for the intellectualism of what he played, which is why I came up with the title. I think his music started in his head and then went to his heart before he played it. That’s what’s so great about it.”Kooper spent a year going through tapes from the Columbia Records vaults, Dylan’s archives and other sources, including his own collection, to make the case for Bloomfield’s enduring greatness. The set begins with three previously unreleased demo recordings from Bloomfield’s 1964 audition for the legendary record producer John Hammond, whose signings—which included Billie Holiday, Charlie Christian, Aretha Franklin, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Ray Vaughan—spanned several generations. (Hammond was also the driving force behind the King of the Delta Blues Singers compilation.) The songs from Bloomfield’s 1964 audition feature him playing acoustic Delta blues and an absolutely stratospheric high-torque country rag inspired by the great Kentucky-born picker Merle Travis. In all likelihood, those recordings would be lost if Kooper and Hammond hadn’t become neighbors years after the session. One day Hammond surprised Kooper with a two-track reel-to-reel copy, which is now the only one in existence.Another gem comes at the set’s opposite bookend: a live recording of Bloomfield reunited onstage with Dylan at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater in 1980, months before his death from an overdose on February 15, 1981, at age 37. Sitting in on “The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar,” Bloomfield exorcises blitzing chromatic lines, quivering bends, warbling fingerpicked triads and keening slide from his head, heart and hands.There are demos Bloomfield recorded with his own group after he was signed by Hammond, tracks from Highway 61 with the vocals peeled off to reveal the underlying brilliance of his playing, and roaring cuts from the Butterfield Band and Bloomfield’s own eclectic flower-power-era ensemble, the Electric Flag. His celebrated 1968 Super Session and Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper recordings are well represented, and Bloomfield’s slide guitar on Janis Joplin’s “One Good Man” is like a blade to the heart. The final recording, a gorgeous fingerpicked solo acoustic live take called “Hymn Time,” brings the performances full circle. It’s here that the DVD Sweet Blues takes over. An hour-long documentary directed by Bob Sarles, the film expands on the music with interviews featuring Dylan, Kooper, Elvin Bishop, Electric Flag vocalist Nick Gravenites, Bloomfield’s ex-wife Susan Beuhler and others. Bloomfield himself serves as narrator, with Sarles using sections of a sprawling tape-recorded interview with the late guitarist to propel the narrative of his career—from his apprenticeship playing in Chicago clubs with Muddy Waters, Big Joe Williams and his other blues heroes to the sessions and festivals that were part of the apex of his popularity.In the 16 years spanning the CDs, Bloomfield’s electric tone darkens and expands as he shifts his preference from Telecasters to Les Pauls and swaps the roles of bandleader, sideman and solo performer, playing like a champion every step of the way. The consensus among Bloomfield’s friends is that by age 16 or 17, his six-string style was fully formed.Reached by phone at his northern California home, 75-year-old Gravenites says that he was just learning to play blues when he first met Bloomfield at the Fret Shop, a folk music store near the University of Chicago campus, “but Bloomers—I called him Bloomers, I don’t know why—already knew it cold. "He played like all of the older black guys he idolized. He was an authentic stylist as a teenager.”Five years later, when Kooper met Bloomfield at the Highway 61 Revisited sessions, Kooper says he wondered, “How can a guy my age play so good? I was taken aback. I had brought my guitar hoping to play on Dylan’s record, but when I heard Michael warm up, I put my guitar away.” Instead, Kooper played the album’s barebones organ tracks—his first shot at the Hammond B-3, which became his signature instrument.Despite his deep blues grounding, Bloomfield was an omnivorous listener, and that had a profound impact on his playing. He shared his fascination with Bulgarian vocal choirs and intense jazzmen like Charlie Parker and Charles Mingus with Kooper. Those fascinations are reflected in the sweeping, cinematic passages of their Live Adventures album, cut in 1968 at promoter Bill Graham’s legendary Fillmore West, as well as the cluster bombs of chromatic notes Bloomfield would inject into his solos in concert. “Live, everything he played was golden,” Kooper recalls. “My guess was that he was intimidated in the studio by producers. I wanted to get great playing out of him, so my premise with the recordings we made was ‘let’s go in and jam and it’ll be fun.’ ” Both Super Session and Live Adventures were hits, reaching numbers 12 and 18, respectively, on Billboard’s album chart.Bloomfield’s picking technique also came from a varied base. He could use a flatpick on a whim but preferred the organic tone generated by plucking strings with his fingers or thumbnail, or by using his index finger’s nail as a pick. He reserved fingerpicks or thumb picks for lap steel and resonator guitars. Unlike Clapton, Beck, Jimmy Page and Duane Allman, he also preferred running his Les Pauls and Telecasters through loud, clean amps with plenty of headroom and minimal breakup, for a more open tone.Kooper describes his musical relationship with Bloomfield as symbiotic—“We never had to discuss a thing we played. We’d just start and it would all be there.” Gravenites, for his part, spent a decade of his 20-year friendship with Bloomfield sharing the stage and studio. Yet, both say Bloomfield’s overall approach to guitar was subjective, idiosyncratic—a code they ultimately never cracked.“I could never make heads or tails of his technique,” says Gravenites, who, like 69-year-old Kooper, continues to perform. “I called it ‘the Cloaking Device.’ It was like he was part Romulan. We’d be having a conversation. Everything about the music we were about to play would be perfectly clear, and then he’d start to play and the Cloaking Device kicked in. I’d watch his fingers moving everywhere and have no idea what the hell he was doing.” The excellent 1979 album If You Love These Blues, Play ’Em As You Please provides some hints. In the liner notes Bloomfield explains his amp and guitar choices for each of the tracks, provides the genesis of each number, and lists the keys and further salient details for the songs. The 2004 CD reissue also includes acoustic guitar duets Bloomfield recorded with Woody Harris. Combined, these 31 tracks trace many veins of Bloomfield’s roots, from African-American work songs to Appalachian spirituals to T-Bone Walker swing to primal country, and his playing is absolutely inspired. Bloomfield was an entirely self-made—and unlikely—bluesman. In 1943, he was born into a wealthy Jewish family whose fortune was based on his ex-boxer father’s invention of the flapper-topped sugar dispenser, the institutional coffee brewer, revolving pie displays and other restaurant staples. His mother was a Wrigley’s Spearmint gum model. School and Michael didn’t mix, but to his father’s dismay, he loved guitar.At age 14, Bloomfield’s passion for Elvis Presley and guitarist Scotty Moore as well as the other Sun rockabilly cats led him to recordings by bluesmen like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, who, he soon discovered, were regularly playing in his own town. After that, it was on.Bloomfield chased down the potent first-generation electric Chicago blues players in urban nightspots where few white people ventured. His youth and nervous energy made him stand out as much as the innate talent he displayed when he got onstage. Often, he couldn’t contain his enthusiasm, leaping up with the likes of Magic Sam or Buddy Guy, plugging in, hitting notes and asking to sit in, all at the same time.Even as an adult, “Michael was always on 10,” Kooper says. “He was funny and smart and always very much in the moment.” “Michael was a special character,” Gravenites concurs. “He’d say exactly what was on his mind to anyone without any concern for repercussions. If he didn’t like what you were playing, he’d tell you to get in line. But he was also very kind and generous with people.” Bloomfield also suffered from chronic insomnia and bouts of depression. He spent many nights awake playing guitar in his formative years. As his playing developed, Bloomfield became interested in older bluesmen with acoustic roots. Hired to book the Fickle Pickle coffeehouse, he scheduled nine-string guitarist Big Joe Williams, mandolinist Yank Rachell, guitarist Sleepy John Estes and pianist Little Brother Montgomery specifically so he could play with them. He and Williams became close and recorded together several times. He also got his first pointed taste of the volatility of some of the older bluesmen when Williams stabbed him in the hand during a disagreement.During July 1966—the same month that Cream played its first unofficial gig in England—Bloomfield, harmonica demon Paul Butterfield, guitarist Elvin Bishop, pianist Mark Naftalin, drummer Billy Davenport and bassist Jerome Arnold released the second Paul Butterfield Blues Band album, East-West. Many consider that recording Bloomfield’s crowning achievement. His playing on the disc is knotty, dramatic and unpredictable, his sonorous tone snaking in all directions, from needling staccato licks to burnished metallic slides to warm wail-and-moan bends to dark sustained notes singing with his B.B. King–inspired vibrato. On the band showcase “Work Song,” Bloomfield’s melodies climb through scales like free-jazz saxophonist John Coltrane’s, balancing chromatic ascents and descents with radically slurred bends and off-the-beat accents. The tune “East-West,” a 13-minute exploratory fusion of blues and Indian modality that showcases Bloomfield and Bishop, flipped the switch for long-form rock improvisation. Thus Bloomfield ran neck and neck with Clapton in transporting blues guitar into the psychedelic era.So the question raised by Kooper’s quest to elevate Bloomfield to Robert Johnson–like status remains: Why don’t more people know about this profoundly talented six-string genius?“First of all, he didn’t dress up,” Kooper says. “All those guys—Clapton, Page—they dressed like rock stars. In the set’s booklet, there’s a photo I chose of Clapton and Bloomfield backstage at the Fillmore. It’s like a sight gag. Clapton’s in sartorial and hair-and-moustache splendor, and Mike’s just wearing a plain denim shirt and a vest. They couldn’t look more different.“Second, he was done with the music business by the time he was 34,” Kooper continues. “He had done it all—dealing with the crooked promoters and record labels—and said, ‘Enough of this shit.’ ”Gravenites agrees. “Back then the music business was packed with thieves,” he says. “I don’t mean crooked accountants and rigged books; I mean they were a bunch of gangsters who’d break your fingers to get a penny out of a jukebox. When we started out, we were launched into a sea of ugly.”There’s also, of course, Bloomfield’s premature death, which forever pre-empted any second winds or late-career comebacks. “People who say they were surprised by Michael’s death didn’t really know him,” Gravenites contends. “Michael had died in every major city in America—New York, Chicago, L.A., Detroit, San Francisco—but he was revived every time because he was with junkies who knew what they were doing. Around heroin, he always wanted to be first on the bag, and he always took too much. It didn’t work out sometimes, so he’d OD. That was Michael. A crazy guy.“But I never thought of him as a junkie,” Gravenites continues. “He’d junk up for a while and then he’d stop. Michael was a genius. And comical. He was like Lenny Bruce or something. He was very well read and could talk intelligently about all kinds of topics: art, poetry, history. I’m lucky enough to still be alive. And having been his singer and his friend, I look back on those years—his generosity, his humor, his intelligence, his amazing musical vision—and they’re beautiful memories.” Photo: John Siveri/Getty Images

Today, GuitarWorld.com presents the exclusive premiere of a previously unreleased 1964 recording by the late Mike Bloomfield.

Although he often is overshadowed by Eric Clapton and Fleetwood Mac's Peter Green, Bloomfield — and his Sunburst 1959 Gibson Les Paul — set the pace for the disruptive fervor of the 1960s youth revolution with his greasy mix of Chicago blues and freak-out frenzy.

The track, which you can hear below, is a demo performance of "Hammond's Rag," Bloomfield's tricky, fingerpicked salute to guitarist Merle Travis. It is included on From His Head to His Heart to His Hands, an impressive, career-spanning box set that will be released February 4 via Sony’s Legacy imprint.

The box, which includes three CDs and one DVD, includes an assortment of previously unreleased recordings, such as Bloomfield’s first demos (including "Hammond's Rag"), which were recorded for legendary A&R man John Hammond. It also includes Bloomfield’s final live performance, which took place at a Bob Dylan concert in 1980.

In addition to a focus on his solo material and his time with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the Electric Flag, the box offers a healthy serving of Bloomfield’s session work for other artists, including Dylan, Muddy Waters and Janis Joplin.

The DVD features a new documentary, Sweet Blues: A Film About Michael Bloomfield, which combines vintage audio interviews and live performance footage alongside new interviews with Bloomfield’s friends.

For more about Bloomfield and the box set, check out this in-depth feature from our sister publication, Guitar Aficionado. The story is available here.

For more about Bloomfield, visit his official Facebook page.

In the current issue of Guitar World magazine (March 2013), we celebrate the 30th anniversary of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s revolutionary debut album, Texas Flood.

But while SRV is on our cover, another bluesman has been occupying my mind.

I’ve been editing Guitar World for close to two decades, so there are very few gaps in my guitar knowledge — but there are gaps, nonetheless. For example, when I was growing up in Detroit, nobody really listened to the Grateful Dead or Moby Grape (or much of the music coming out of San Francisco in the late Sixties and Seventies), and to this day, I don’t really know that corner of music as well as I probably should.

Another artist that somehow escaped my attention — and I’m not really sure why — is the late Chicago blues guitarist, Michael Bloomfield. I was certainly aware of his reputation as a great player and that he was well regarded by the likes of B.B. King and Buddy Guy. He also played on one of my favorite albums of all time, Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, but I was never motivated enough to investigate his rather substantial body of work.

Recently, I was having a conversation with Sony publicist Tom Cording, who was promoting the new re-issue of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Texas Flood (complete with a killer bonus live disc), and he asked me what I thought of Bloomfield. I had to admit to my ignorance, and Cording very kindly sent me Super Session (1968) featuring Bloomfield, Stephen Stills and Al Kooper, and the truly wonderful live double album successor, The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper (1969).

All I can say is I’m an idiot. How could I have missed this gifted musician?

Bloomfield is fantastic, especially on the live album. In many ways, the guitarist accomplishes what Eric Clapton tried to do with Cream in the Sixties: he expands on the vocabulary of his blues heroes, but does it with just a bit more restraint, taste and style. Where Cream sounds psychedelic and a little kitschy, Bloomfield sounds as sleek and modern as his greased-back hipster pompadour. Just check out his slinky version of Ray Charles’s “Mary Ann” or his wonderful, understated accompaniment on “The Weight.”

Yes, it is the 30th anniversary of Texas Flood, but if you’re a fan of the electric blues like myself and aren’t familiar with magic Mike, do yourself a favor: After you’ve bought SRV re-issue, spread a little more of that iTunes money around on The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper.

It’s the kind of blues that makes you happy you did!

Brad Tolinski is the editorial director at Guitar World magazine.