BARRY GOLDBERG,
1941-2025

Blues-rock mainstay Barry Goldberg has died in hospice care after a 10-year struggle with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The noted keyboard player, band leader, session man and songwriter was 83. Gail Goldberg, his wife of 53 years, and son Aram were at this bedside.

Goldberg, the centerpiece of the documentary film Born in Chicago, was born in the Windy City on Christmas Day,1941. His mother Nettie Goldberg, née Nettie Becker, was a barrelhouse piano player in her own right and a veteran of the Jewish theater circuit. His father Frank Goldberg was one of eight children born to Ukrainian-Jewish immigrant parents, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg.

While still in high school, Goldberg befriended guitarist Mike Bloomfield; the two often ventured from Chicago’s northern suburbs to the inner-city night clubs on the South Side, where they, along with Paul Butterfield, Musselwhite and Siegel, became acquainted with and were ultimately mentored by such first-generation blues legends as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Lay and others. Goldberg, Bloomfield and other members of The Paul Butterfield Blues Band backed Bob Dylan in his transformative electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

Goldberg’s relationship with Dylan transcended that historic moment as they would go on to jam with Doug Sahm and The Band in Woodstock, New York. When Goldberg was on the cusp of signing a contract with RCA to record a solo album in 1973, Dylan told him to hold off until he spoke to Jerry Wexler at Atlantic, who signed him to the label

Barry Goldberg (1974) would become the only album Dylan ever produced for another artist. They recorded the LP in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where he had cut some of the fabled collaborations with Bloomfield that became the 1969 LP Two Jews Blues (which included Duane Allman). Years later, Goldberg returned the favor when he produced Dylan’s version of “People Get Ready” for Flashback, a film starring Dennis Hopper and Kiefer Sutherland for which he served as music supervisor.

As a session player, Goldberg contributed organ to Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels’ 1966 Top 5 hit “Devil With a Blue Dress On & Good Golly Miss Molly” and later worked on albums by Leonard Cohen, The Flying Burrito Brothers and The Ramones, among many others. He and Bloomfield formed The Electric Flag with Buddy Miles and Harvey Brooks, who recorded 1968’s A Long Time Comin’ (Columbia), and well as the soundtrack to The Trip, starring Peter Fonda.

Goldberg was the co-writer, with Gerry Goffin, of hits including “It’s Not the Spotlight” (Bobby Blue Bland, Rod Stewart) and “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination” (a #1 R&B record for Gladys Knight & the Pips; also recorded by Joe Cocker). He also co-produced with Saul Davis two award-winning Percy Sledge albums. More recently, he toured and recorded with The Rides, a partnership with Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Stephen Stills. Their two albums, released in 2013 and 2016, both hit #1 on Billboard’s Blues Albums chart.

Most recently he headed The Chicago Blues Reunion, a band that over the past two decades toured and recorded with an array of seasoned blues practitioners including Sam Lay, Nick Gravenites, Harvey Mandel, Corky Siegel, Tracy Nelson, Charlie Musselwhite, Jimmy Vivino, Marcy Levy and others.

Goldberg met Gail Fliashnick in 1970 at the Chelsea Hotel in New York after Bloomfield set them up. Within two weeks they were engaged and were wed on May 15, 1971. Gail is a designer and artist who studied in Rome and at Temple University in Philadelphia. Their son Aram is a Los Angeles-based management executive.

In lieu of flowers, Barry's family asks that donations in his name be made to the Bear League through savebears.org.