Audio Fidelity - AFZ 172 - Hybrid Stereo SACD -       

Mastered by Kevin Gray - Numbered Limited Edition - Plays on All CD Players

 

Numbered  Limited Edition  Mastered by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio

 

The Butterfield Blues Band had already shown on their first album that they had a definite command of the Chicago blues idiom. On East-West they open up and branch out without losing the edge and drive of their first recording. East-West represented a watershed for pop music...more maturity, better musicianship, more exploration, more successful blending of other genres.

East-West stretches the boundaries of the blues, above any other extended piece of the mid-Sixties. A rock band finally achieved a version of the musical freedom that free jazz had found a few years earlier. It can also be heard as part of what sparked the West Coast's rock revolution, in which song structures with extended improvisation became commonplace. 

 

In 1966 when this album debuted, it was nothing less than astonishing. A mixed-race band? A white guy singing blues? A Jewish kid and a southern farmboy sounding like Robert Johnson on guitars? The album was recorded at the famed Chess Studios in Chicago. This album features traditional blues covers and the guitar work of Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop.

 

The two centerpieces of the album, the instrumentals "Work Song" written by jazz great Nat Adderly, and the title cut "East-West," are recognized by many as the first recorded versions of jazz-rock fusion put to vinyl.

 

Mastered by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio

Hybrid SACD Plays on All SACD & CD Players

 

Selections:

1. Walkin' Blues

2. Get Out of My Life, Woman

3. I Got A Mind to Give Up Living

4. All These Blues

5. Work Song

6. Mary, Mary

7. Two Trains Running

8. Never Say No

9. East-West