[Harp-L] Butterfield To Tell the Truth--Strange but Untrue Dep't.

[Aeskow@xxxxxxx]

Sean, our priapic correspondent from Belfast, wrote:
--> Incidently,wasnt Butter 2nd or 3rd generation Irish?

But Joe and Cass Leone <leone@xxxxxxxx> told him:
--* SMO-J...Butterfield was Jewish.
 
Paul Butterfield was no more--and quite less--Jewish than Barry Goldwater,  
who ran for President of the USA against Lyndon Johnson in '64, a candidate of  
the far right (though in fact he was more complex than any one label) who 
came  under "attack" from even-more-right-wing types (i.e. drooling lunatics)  
because, they claimed, he was "secretly" Jewish.  While history eventually  
proved that Goldwater's father had, in fact, converted from Judaism as an  early 
settler of Arizona, believe me, no such documentation exists for Paul  
Butterfield.  Perhaps your earlier correspondent confused Butterfield  with his 
proudly Jewish bandmate, and equally astounding bluesman,  Mike Bloomfield. (Who 
once wrote a slow 12-bar blues called "I'm Glad I'm  Jewish" and pushed to have a 
collaboration album with organist Barry  Goldberg--who himself never ran for 
President as a Gentile Republican--"Two  Jews' Blues.") I hope that's 
clarified everything for you.  Besides which,  I'm sure you realize that answering ANY 
question about a person's nationality  with the name of his religion is a non 
sequitur.  Just ask  Madonna. (The singer OR the Blessed Mother of Jesus.) Or 
Marilyn Monroe, or  Elizabeth Taylor (both American bombshells who converted 
to Judaism), golfer  Corey Pavin (non-bombshell choke-artist who went the 
opposite way), or  Butterfield/Bloomfield collaborator Bob Dylan (once called a 
"bluesman" by no  less than Freddie King), who ran the whole theological 
pool-table, converting  from Judaism to fundamentalist Christianity to evangelical 
Judaism back to  Christianity, somehow missing Zoroastrianism and the Baha'i 
faiths along the  line (and who now seems to dwell in his own personal synthesis 
of  C&J.)  My point--and I do have one--is: who gives a damn?  As the  
well-known Taoist authority Bo Diddley once observed: "You Can't Judge A Book  (By 
Whether You're S'pozed to Read It Front-to-Back or Back-to-Front)."
 
Sounding a little forlorn, Sean then asked, in his own special way:
--> Is (Butterfield) a common/popular name in U.S?
 
To which he was told, in no uncertain terms:
--Not at all.
 
Again, I'm afraid, this is--to quote Alex Trebek, of Jeopardy--"not the  
answer we were looking for" (i.e., it's wrong.)  While "Butterfield" is no  
"Smith"--or "Wesson," for that matter--it's by no means an uncommon name.   For 
example, there was a fine jazz trumpeter from the old days named Tommy  
Butterfield; you can find a number of Butterfields in the phone book of any  large city; 
and in 1978, I broke up with my fiancee (who I'm about to marry  after 25 
years of marriage to other people, and no contact with each other) in a  popular 
Sunset Boulevard restaurant called Butterfield's.  Do you see,  Sean, a mystic 
force at work behind all this?  I don't, but you've got the  
mystic-force-seeking energy of youth.  Let me know what it all means, Big  Picture-wise.  But 
don't try to win any free pints over there by wagering  that Paul Butterfield 
(or Sam Lay) were Jewish.  And don't give up on the  Irish connection.  Tom 
Ellis, Nick Gravenites, or Mark Naftalin could help  you out on that.  And in 
this time of creepy vituperation in American  politics, you might want to skip 
the whole Barry Goldwater thing  completely.  He used to do the worst version 
of "Key to the Highway"  you ever heard.
 
Peace and Respect,
Your Faithful Correspondent on American Blues Theology,
Johnny T