Blues Musician Barry Goldberg Dead at 82

Blues musician Barry Goldberg, who played keyboards for Bob Dylan‘s infamous 1965 Newport Folk Festival concert, died on Wednesday at the age of 82.

The news was confirmed via his publicist Bob Merlis, who noted in a press release that Goldberg died in hospice care after a decade-long battle with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Goldberg’s family has requested that in lieu of flowers, donations in his name be made to the Bear League through savebears.org.

Goldberg was born in Chicago in 1942. As a teenager, he rubbed shoulders with blues legends like Muddy Waters, Otis Rush and Howlin’ Wolf, and also befriended a guitar player by the name of Mike Bloomfield.

Newport 1965

Both Goldberg and Bloomfield appeared with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, backing Dylan in an electric set that would go on to be one of the most controversial performances in rock history. Goldberg was thrown into the mix unexpectedly.

READ MORE: Top 10 Bob Dylan Protest Songs

“When I got to Newport the producer, Paul Rothchild, was really obstinate and rude, and said, ‘Absolutely no organ,'” Goldberg recalled in a 1996 interview. “He didn’t want that element, he just wanted the five pieces. Paul and Michael tried to talk to him but he was just really against it.

“So I had nowhere to go. I was stuck there, a long way from Chicago. One night we were just sitting around and Bob showed up and said, ‘The keyboard player isn’t here yet,’ and Michael said, ‘There’s a great keyboard player here in Barry,’ and Bob said, ‘You want to come to the sound check?’ and I said, ‘Sure,’ and that’s how I got to do it, and it worked out great. And then we went on that night.”

Watch Bob Dylan Perform ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival

Not long after that, Goldberg formed Goldberg-Miller Blues Band with Steve Miller. They released a single called “The Mother Song” before Miller left for San Fransisco. He also formed the Electric Flag with Bloomfield in 1967, as well as the Barry Goldberg Reunion in 1968.

As a songwriter, Goldberg’s work (some of which was co-written with Gerry Goffin) was recorded by the likes of Rod Stewart, Gladys Knight, Joe Cocker, Gram Parsons, B. J. Thomas and more. He also contributed to albums by the Ramones, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Leonard Cohen and others.

In 1974, Goldberg’s released his self-titled album, produced by Dylan and Jerry Wexler. It marked the one and only time Dylan produced an album for another artist. Goldberg later returned the favor by producing Dylan’s 1989 version of “People Get Ready.”

Listen to Bob Dylan’s ‘People Get Ready’

In more recent years, he performed and recorded with a band called the Rides, which featured Stephen Stills, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Chris Layton. The band landed two No. 1 blues albums.

“When I’m playing with great musicians, it just opens up my history to when I started playing as a teenager,” Goldberg said to Blues Rock Review in 2016, “when we would go out to the south side or the west side of Chicago and play with Muddy Waters – that was another high point of my life, of my career: playing with Muddy, playing with [Howlin’] Wolf, playing with Mike Bloomfield, playing with the Chicago Blues Reunion. I’m spoiled. I’ve had a wonderful career, and now to be playing with a band I love…at this time and place at my age, to be getting off the way I am with the Rides…that’s it for me. I couldn’t want anything more than this.”