Song:Killing Floor
Album:A Long Time Comin'
When guitarist Mike Bloomfield left the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1967, he wanted to form a band that combined blues, soul, rock and even have a horn section. This turned into the inconsistent and short lived supergroup The Electric Flag. This kind of jazz rock fusion would go mainstream with Blood, Sweat & Tears and other bands. Their debut album A Long Time Comin' was their most popular album and this cover of Howlin' Wolf's Killing Floor was probably their best known song. The Electric Flag should have been much bigger but remember Bloomfield was a heroin addict. When Bloomfield left the Butterfield band, he moved from Chicago to San Francisco and keyboard player Barry Goldberg and bassist Harvey Brooks came with him. They had played together on the Bob Dylan album Highway 61 Revisited. Brooks recommended 19 year old hot shot drummer Buddy Miles. He was playing with Wilson Pickett at the time. Then they tried to get Mitch Ryder to be the lead singer. He turned them down and they chose Nick Gravenites who they knew from the Chicago blues scene. So their first project was the music for Roger Corman's film The Trip. Star Peter Fonda approached Bloomfield after Corman rejected Gram Parsons' original score. Once they finished that, they made their live debut at Monterey Pop. They're not in the movie but they are in the DVD extras. A Long Time Comin' was released in 1968 and reached #31 on the Billboard Hot 200. Bloomfield and Goldberg wrote most of the songs and Miles added a lot to the whole fusion concept. Sony released A Long Time Comin' with bonus tracks in 2004 and it's available as a budget CD. The album was highly praised and sold well. So The Electric Flag was on their way to a long and successful run, right? Nope. Bloomfield left in June 1968 claiming exhaustion. But it appears the band may have fired him as his heroin addiction made him increasingly unreliable. Bloomfield never licked the addiction and he died in 1981. The Electric Flag attempted to continue with Miles leading them through their second album. But the band was through by the time it came out. Miles went on to his own Buddy Miles Express and then worked with Jimi Hendrix. Barry Goldberg and Harvey Brooks went on to session work and record production. Nick Gravenites replaced Janis Joplin in Big Brother & The Holding Company and has also done a lot of producing. A 1974 attempt to revive The Electric Flag flopped but a 2007 one time reunion at Monterey led by Gravenites and Goldberg was well received. As I said, The Electric Flag were influential but could have been much bigger. Here's a video for Killing Floor by The Electric Flag.
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