Paul Butterfield's Better Days

The Butterfield Blues Band may have maintained an eight-year reign atop the American blues-revival pecking order, but the ensemble's focus was clearly waning by the time Paul Butterfield--by then the last remaining founder--closed down the operation in the early '70s. He resurfaced in 1973 with the more versatile and democratic Better Days. Their self-titled debut displays Better Days' strengths, which include three strong singers (Butterfield, Geoff Muldaur, and Ronnie Barron) and a more pastoral sensibility that's reflective of the setting of the recording--Woodstock, New York. When Butterfield's old band tackled "Walkin' Blues" on their groundbreaking sophomore release, East-West, they attacked it with Chicago-style aggression; Better Days' version of the same song is more relaxed and easy-flowing. It says a lot about Butterfield's shifting perspective that one of the nine-song collection's highlights is a tender ballad, "Done a Lot of Wrong Things."

—Steven Stolder