Barry Goldberga blues-rock keyboardist whose work with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band led to him playing with him Bob Dylan in the 1960s, including the infamous 1965 Newport Folk Festival concert that was dramatized in the film “Totally Anonymous.” He died Wednesday at the age of 83.
Bob Mirlis, one of the actors, said that Goldberg died in a nursing home after a 10-year struggle with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and at his bedside was his wife, Jill Goldberg, of 53 years, and his son, Aram.
Goldberg was also one of the founding members of the electroscience group in the 1960s.
His association with Dylan led to an unusual point of trivia: his self-titled album, Barry Goldberg, released in 1974, was the only album Dylan ever produced for another artist. The arrangement eventually went both ways, and 16 years later, Goldberg produced a recording by Dylan of the classic “People Get Ready”, which was released on the soundtrack to the 1990 film “Flashback.”
Besides Dylan and the Butterfield Blues Band, Goldberg’s credits include playing with, writing for or producing such artists as Steve Miller, the Ramones, Leonard Cohen, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Mitch Ryder, Stephen Stills, Rod Stewart, and Percy Sledge. And Kenny Wayne Shepherd.
He was one of the subjects of a documentary called “Born in Chicago,” narrated by Dan Aykroyd and chronicling a late-2000s concert he had with Chicago Blues Reunion, which consisted of him and old bandmates Corky Siegel, Harvey Mandel and Nick. graphite. After more than a decade in the making, the film finally played at film festivals in 2021 and received a wider release in 2023. Dylan, Keith Richards, Carlos Santana and Bob Weir are among the film’s stars talking about the Chicago blues. The scene that Goldberg was a part of.
As a session player, Goldberg has played organ on projects ranging from Ryder’s “Devil in the Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly” to Phil Spector’s “End of the Century” produced by The Ramones. As a writer, he collaborated with Gram Parsons on the Flying Burritos’ “Do You Know How It Feels” and with Gerry Goffin on Gladys Knight & the Pips’ No. 1 R&B hit “I Gotta Use My Imagination” (also recorded by Joe Cocker) and Bland’s “It’s Not the Spotlight (It was 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-2000s.
In the 1960s, he formed Electric Science with Mike BloomfieldBuddy Miles and Harvey Brooks. The group provided the soundtrack to the Peter Fonda film “The Journey” as well as the album release “A Long Time Comin'” in 1968.
This set came on the heels of another set in which Goldberg played with his guitarist friend Bloomfield, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, leading up to the fateful gig with Dylan where the legend delighted or astounded crowds in Newport with his new, raucous electric band. appearance. By 1973, Goldberg had secured a record deal with RCA for a solo album, and a biography of Dylan by Robert Shelton reports that Dylan said: “I’m on the phone with Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records and I think we can work out a deal but I’m going to have to produce you; that’s great; Didn’t he? Goldberg thought it was really great, and the Dylan/Wexler-produced album became another part of Dylan lore.
Goldberg was born in Chicago on Christmas Day 1941. He is the grandson of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and the son of Frank Goldberg and Nettie Goldberg, the latter of whom played the piano and was part of a Jewish theater circle.
In 1971, his friend Bloomfield set him up with designer and artist Jill Fleashnick, and the couple married at the Chelsea Hotel in 1971. Their son, Aram, is a Los Angeles executive.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations in his name to Bear League.
