[Slowhand] Re: Guitar Player Article

[DeltaNick]

>> Current issue of Guitar player features 'the masters of tone'.... They
say Mike Bloomfield 'was to the Les Paul the way that Hendrix was to the
Strat in terms of influencing other's'  I always thought it was EC who
turned Bloomfield and other's on to the LP (via Freddy King of course) ...
Seems to me Bloomfield was still playing a Strat in the '66-'67 time frame
... Sounds like more 'revisionist' history from a lazy journalist ... <

It's not revisionist history at all, but there are a few corrections.
Clapton played Gibson Les Paul model guitars nearly exclusively from about
June 1965 thru February 1967. Bloomfield played a Fender Telecaster with the
Paul Butterfield Blues Band through at least July 1965, and switched to a
Les Paul with P-90 soapbar pickups after that. Sometime in either 1966 or
1967, Bloomfield traded his Les Paul for a 1959 sunburst model with
Humbucking pickups and played it, probably, into the 1970s. Thereafter,
Bloomfield used a series of guitars, including a Fender Strat.

Following the Beatles "invasion of America, the first one noted playing a
Les Paul was Keith Richard (later Richards) of the Rolling Stones, who
played a Les Paul as early as 1964, and owned several of them.

Bottom Line: Clapton used a Les Paul BEFORE Bloomfield, but Bloomfield
started playing a Les Paul on his own, and wasn't influenced by Clapton's
choice of guitar. However, on MikeBloomfield.com, Bloomfield's brother Allen
writes that Mike had been given a Gibson Les Paul for his 12th or 13th
birthday. If this is true, then Bloomfield owned one during the 1950s, long
before the Beatles and any of the "second wave" of rock'n'rollers, including
Keith Richard and Eric Clapton.

                DeltaNick
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