Barry Goldberga blues-rock keyboard player whose work with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band led to playing with Bob Dylan in the 1960s, including the infamous 1965 Newport Folk Festival concert dramatized in “A Complete Unknown,” died Wednesday at age 83.
Bob Merlis, a representative, said Goldberg died in hospice after a 10-year battle with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, with his wife of 53 years, Gail Goldberg, and son Aram at his bedside.
Goldberg was also a founding member of the 1960s group Electric Flag.
His association with Dylan led to an unusual triviality: His self-titled “Barry Goldberg” album, released in 1974, was the only album Dylan ever produced for another artist. The arrangement ultimately went both ways, as 16 years later Goldberg produced a recording Dylan made of the classic song “People Get Ready,” which was released on the soundtrack to the 1990 film “Flashback.”
In addition to Dylan and the Butterfield Blues Band, Goldberg’s credits include playing with, writing for or producing artists such as Steve Miller, the Ramones, Leonard Cohen, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Mitch Ryder, Stephen Stills, Rod Stewart, Bobby Blue Bland, Percy Sledge and Kenny Wayne Shepherd.
He was one of the subjects of a documentary film entitled “Born in Chicago”, narrated by Dan Aykroyd and chronicling a concert he did in the late 2000s with the Chicago Blues Reunion, consisting of himself and fellow veterans Corky Seigel, Harvey Mandel and Nick Gravenite. After more than a decade of work on the film, the doctor finally played film festivals in 2021 and received a wider release in 2023. Dylan, Keith Richards, Carlos Santana and Bob Weir are among the stars of the film that talks about the Chicago blues scene Goldberg was a part of.
As a session player, Goldberg played organ on projects ranging from Ryder’s “Devil With a Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly” to the Ramones’ Phil Spector-produced “End of the Century.” As a writer, he collaborated with Gram Parsons on Flying Burrito’s “Do You Know How It Feels” and with Gerry Goffin on Gladys Knight & the Pips’ #1 R&B hit “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination” (also recorded by Joe Cocker ) and Bland’s “It’s Not the Spotlight” (also cut by Rod Stewart). As a producer, he worked on two Sledge albums with Saul Davis.
In later years, he was part of the blues rock supergroup the Rides with Shepherd and Stills, recording two No. 1 blues albums in the mid-2010s.
Already in the 1960s he formed Electric Flag with Mike BloomfieldBuddy Miles and Harvey Brooks. The group provided the soundtrack to Peter Fonda’s cult film “The Trip” and released the album “A Long Time Comin'” in 1968.
That group followed on the heels of another group Goldberg played in with his guitarist friend Bloomfield, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, leading to the fateful gig with Dylan as the legend delighted or shocked Newport audiences with his new, noisy, full-band electric format. In 1973, Goldberg secured a record deal with RCA for a solo album, and Robert Shelton’s Dylan biography reports Dylan saying, “I’m on the phone with Jerry Wexler from Atlantic Records and I think we can get along but I I have to produce you; it’s cool, right?” Goldberg thought it was really cool, and the Dylan/Wexler-produced album became another part of Dylan lore.
Goldberg wrote about the Newport 1965 experience for an article in the Jewish publication The forward year 2022.
“The 1965 Newport Folk Festival started as a wonderful dream for me – and then it became a nightmare, and then it became a wonderful dream again,” he began. “When I met up with the Butterfield Band to rehearse our set, Paul Rothschild – the Elektra Records A&R guy who would produce the band’s debut album – took one look at me and told Paul Butterfield, ‘I don’t hear any keyboards with the band. I don’t want him here. And that was it. In a minute I went from having the best time to being all alone and not having a gig. It just destroyed me. I wanted to go home, but I couldn’t.”
Then, on Saturday night, he wrote: “I was at a party with Michael Bloomfield and Bob Dylan. Bob had made a short acoustic appearance at the festival that afternoon, which was what everyone expected from him, but now he was talking to Michael about to get a band together for his festival closing performance on Sunday – something people definitely weren’t expecting.
“‘I don’t know if anyone’s going to show up to play with me tomorrow night,’ I heard him say to Michael. “Al Kooper was coming, but I’m not sure he’ll be here, and I might need a band.” Michael called me over and introduced me to Bob. “Barry’s a great keyboard player,” he said. “Hey, why don’t you use the Butterfield Band to back you up?” “That’s a great idea,” Bob replied. … Bob Dylan had made up his mind in an instant to form a band and decided that Michael and I had what it took to be a part of it. And as soon as he invited me to play with him, it was like Newport went back to ‘wonderful dream mode’ for me.” When Dylan put an end to the mix of cheers and boos by playing an acoustic encore, Goldberg packed up and left. “I walked offstage that night feeling like a hero, and I didn’t want anything to break that spell.”
Goldberg was born in Chicago on Christmas Day 1941. He was the grandson of United States Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and the son of Frank Goldberg and Nettie Goldberg, the latter of whom played barrelhouse piano and was part of a Jewish theater circle.
In 1971, his friend Bloomfield set him up with designer and artist Gail Fliashnick, and the couple married at the Chelsea Hotel in 1971. Aram, their son, is an LA-based management executive.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations be made in his name to Bear League.
