Anthology: The Elektra Years. (Carousel Corner).

Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Anthology: The Elektra Years (Elektra)

The very first concert my brother and I attended at the original Fillmore Auditorium featured a long-forgotten local band, Raahsan Roland Kirk, and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Kirk's multiple reeds and caterwauling, free-fall jazz held us spellbound. But we were there for Butterfield and his tandem guitar line-up of Elvin Bishop and Michael Bloomfield. What we didn't know was that Bloomfield had left the band a couple of weeks before to co-found the Electric Flag. Of course we were disappointed that we wouldn't witness "East/ West", Bloomfield's groundbreaking proto-mid-Eastern tour de force, performed live. But the Fillmore had no proper stage -- the bands were cordoned off in one corner -- and we sat enraptured at the edge of the cords as the Butterfield band tore through two sets of savage electric blues. We didn't know at the time, but Bloomfield's departure had turned Bishop loose, no longer having to find his space under the former's considerable skill and shadow. In a sense, we witnessed the rolling of the stone that presaged the resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw -- Bishop's nom de band.

The two-disc Anthology chronicles the band's origins in Chicago in 1964 to its final horn-drenched 1971 incarnation. The first disc leans heavily on the band's Chicago years with the majority of the material coming from Elektra samplers and their first three albums. The second disc races through the last four albums, arguably a less ...