I was more than a little surprised but quite pleased to learn a Paul Butterfield performance from the late 1970s was being released this year as part of the Rockpalast DVD Collection.

For the uninitiated, Rockpalast is a long-running German TV show that started in the early 1970s and broadcasts live concerts. Many performances from those shows by scores of artists have been officially released or generally available over the years.

This DVD, Paul Butterfield Band Blues Rock Legends Vol. 2,  is part of a new series. Other recently released DVDs from the Rockpalast (which translates as Rock Palace) include John Cipollina, who played with Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane, Commander Cody, Randy California and Spirit, and Dickey Betts.

This concert was filmed long after the heyday of The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, a revered and highly influential but often overlooked group from the mid-to-late ’60s and early ’70s. Butter was a solo artist at this point, having released the album Put It In Your Ear (1975) and two years after this show North South (1980) on the Bearsville label, neither of which made much of a dent on the sales charts or the public’s perception.

The DVD’s notes state this is Butter’s first European performance. It was taped on September 15, 1978 in Essen at the Grugahalle in a show that also included Alvin Lee and Peter Gabriel.

The makeup of Butterfield’s band is unusual but interesting and one that I don’t believe he kept together very long. The centerpiece and band leader is Buzzy Feiten, an extraordinary guitarist who at 19 joined the Butterfield Blues Band in 1968 to replace Elvin Bishop and then went on to form Full Moon and the Larsen-Feiten Band with keyboardist Neil Larsen. He’s joined by the precocious 19-year-old guitarist Peter Atanasoff from San Francisco, who later played with Tito & Tarantula, bassist Bobby Vega and drummer Ernest Carter.

The group is a showcase for Butterfield’s harp and Feiten’s guitar although it starts with Buzzy holding back for the first two tunes, the funky instrumental Fair Enough, on which Atanasoff displays his technical ability with a stream of blazing rock licks, and One More Heartache, a Butterfield staple on which Butter takes a trademark harmonica solo. Switching from his vocal microphone to a hand-held mic pumped through a Fender Twin Reverb amp, Butter produces his identifiable big sound that is often likened to a sax or horn and blows bluesy, melodic phrases over the R&B groove of the Marvin Gaye classic.

Feiten gets his first workout on a stomping, heavy version of the R&B tune Fool In Love. Feiten is at the top of his game on his black Strat, mixing a distinctive feel with speedy chops but always a clear sense of melody. He gets a ferocious tone out of the Strat and displays an inspired and fun-to-watch stage presence.

Butterfield’s voice is in great shape, sounding much like he did in his seminal blues band. As a vocalist, Butter had range and feeling in a husky, blues timbre that could be raised to a holler or used subtly as on the slow R&B ballad It’s Alright. It’s a nice change of pace in the set that follows New Walking Blues, the Robert Johnson tune Butter had been playing since the mid-60s and that he later resurrected in his ’70s band Better Days.

Feiten takes an effective lyrical solo on the tag of It’s Alright, but Walking Blues contains Feiten’s bluesiest solo on which he shows stunning technique, in a somewhat more controlled manner than on some of his other flights, combined with a singing melodicism. Butter also contributes a classic harp solo on the Johnson song that has the same straight, driving four feel as when Butter played it on the 1965 album, East-West.

Two classic blues tunes follow, Don Nix’s Goin’ Down, played much in the style of Freddie King’s and the Jeff Beck Group’s versions with the exception of a rhythmic change at the end of the tune’s main riff, and Born Under A Bad Sign, written by Booker T. Jones and William Bell and recorded on Butterfield’s Resurrection Of Pigboy Crabshaw. Both enjoy excellent renditions.

Just When I Need You Most is the second tempo changer, another R&B style pop ballad on which Feiten plays electric piano and Atanasoff solos, and the closer is a rousing, funky Be Good To Yourself, on which all three soloists get room to stretch out.

The disc also contains a bonus track, which features Butter and his band being interviewed backstage by one of the Rockpalast hosts, who has to translate questions and answers into German for his home audience. Butterfield gives insights about his start in Chicago, seeing and then sitting in with the blues greats, most notably Muddy Waters, and his feelings about playing with such a young band.

There is precious little of Butterfield, who died in Hollywood in 1987, on video and virtually nothing of the Butterfield Blues Band at their artistic height, except for a couple of Woodstock performances and part of the band backing Bob Dylan at his infamous 1965 Newport Folk Festival performance. So this release is welcomed as one of the only performance examples of the greatest harp player of the modern blues era as well as a powerful singer and song interpretor. I wish there were more but this will do for now.