Mark Naftalin

Blues keyboardist / songwriter Mark Naftalin, a former member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, was born in Minneapolis, MN. He has long been a major figure in the San Francisco Bay Area blues community, producing concerts, albums, radio shows and performing in local blues clubs. In 1961 he moved from Minneapolis to Chicago after enrolling in the University of Chicago. It was there he hooked up with Paul Butterfield and guitarist Elvin Bishop. In 1965 he joined Buttefield's band, and played on their classic "East-West" album. In 1968 he left the band and moved to San Francisco and teamed up with former Butterfield Blues Band guitarist Mike Bloomfield, and they often played together as "Mike Bloomfield and Friends". In 1979 he started his own radio show in the Bay Area, called "Mark Naftalin's Blue Money Party", which lasted for five years. He later had another radio show, "Blues Power Hour", on radio station KALW-FM and formed a band called "The Mark Naftalin Rhythem & Blue Revue", which included such future major blues musicians as Lowell Fulson and Luther Tucker. He started the annual Marin County Blues Festival in 1981 and founded his own record label, Winner Records, in 1985.