The Electric Flag (An American Music Band) A Long Time Comin' 1968

Michael Bloomfield was an enormously talented blues and rock guitar player. He first came to notice on the first two Paul Butterfield Blues Band albums in1965-66, Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited 1965, and frequent session work. In early 1967, he formed The Electric Flag in San Francisco with an outstanding line-up of musicians. Harvey Brooks on bass and Buddy Miles drums and vocals held down the rhythm, Nick Gravenites on guitar and vocals, Barry Goldberg on keys, and a smoking hot horn section with Marcus Doubleday on trumpet, Peter Strazza on tenor sax, Stemsy Hunter on alto sax, and Herbie Rich on baritone sax. 

Bloomfield and Goldberg saw the group as one which would feature an amalgamation of American music styles of soul, blues, rock and R&B, and on their audacious debut, they achieved that goal. 

The set kicks off with Howlin' Wolf's Killing Floor, with Nick Gravenites' smooth vocal, hot guitar from Bloomfield and killer horn charts. Ron Polte wrote three songs for the record, and Groovin' Is Easy is all smooth soul, hippie vibe, and hot horns. Over-Lovin' You from Bloomfield and Goldberg is an uptempo soul that gets a really fine Buddy Miles vocal and horns, horns, horns. She Should Have Just from Polte's pen again is more terrific R&B that sounds like a future Tower Of Power hit. Side one ends with Wine, sung by Bloomfield (or Herbie Rich?) is fast blues with a very cool jazzy outro.

The second side is almost as good. Buddy Miles rips another tasty vocal on Texas, as Bloomfield solos throughout the entire song. Barry Goldberg wrote Sittin' In Circles, with it's complex arrangement and another melodious Gravenites vocal. You Don't Realize is a great Bloomfield blues ballad that has everything except the guitar solo it practically begs for, and it's still solid. Another Country, again from Polte's pen, starts as a mid-tempo rocker with classic sixties paranoia/escapist lyrics, slides into a too long music concrete collage, followed by a jazzy section featuring piano, and finally returns to the first verse and chorus with up-tempo guitar and horn charts. It's an impressive piece, but at nine minutes it's just a tad too long. The record ends with a 53-second East Rider with Bloomfield teasing us with some nice licks.

Another Country is a good song, and was ahead of the curve with the music concrete section, but it is a thing of it's time, and you might need to be high. The rest of the record is near perfect.

Bloomfield and Goldberg would leave the band before their second record, and Buddy Miles, Herbie Rich and Nick Gravenites tried to produce a follow-up, and almost got there with An American Music Band, also in1968. It's OK, but doesn't have the magic or the songs of A Long Time Comin'. Miles and Gravenites were not the songwriters that Bloomfield, Goldberg and Polte were. Two from that follow-up, Bobby Hebb's Sunny, and Mystery from Miles's pen, both have strong vocals from Miles and were added to the 2003 CD reissue of Long Time Comin' along with two obscurities, one with some hot Bloomfield guitar. 

There were plenty of horns on soul records of the time. But this one in 1968 was before Chicago, Sons of Champlin, and Tower of Power. It isn't just the horns that make this record so special. Great songs, singing, guitar, the blues/rock/soul blend, and an all-star band make this a lost classic of the first order.