Barry Goldberg:  A Life in Blues and Rock – The Keyboardist Who Shaped a Generation Dies at 83

Barry Goldberg:  A Life in Blues and Rock – The Keyboardist Who Shaped a Generation Dies at 83 

Edited by: Fern Sidman

Barry Goldberg, a legendary keyboardist whose career spanned decades and touched some of the most defining moments in rock history, passed away on January 22 in the Tarzana neighborhood of Los Angeles at the age of 83. His son, Aram Goldberg, confirmed that complications from lymphoma were the cause of his passing, as reported by The New York Times on Friday.

Born Barry Joseph Goldberg on December 25, 1941, in Chicago, he was the only child of Frank Goldberg, a leather tanning factory owner, and Nettie (Spencer) Goldberg, a pianist and singer who performed in Yiddish theaters. His musical journey began under his mother’s guidance, and as The New York Times report recounted, he developed his performance confidence early, despite persistent stage fright. Reflecting on this, he once told The Forward that his mother’s insistence on making him perform for strangers as a child left a lasting impression on his career.

Barry Goldberg’s musical journey was shaped in the shadows of Chicago’s South Side blues clubs, where he first absorbed the raw, untamed energy of the music that would define his career. As The New York Times report recounted, his true education began not in a formal setting but through the crackling sounds of a transistor radio, where he tuned in late at night to hear the wailing guitars and impassioned voices of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Buddy Guy. “Things would be unleashed in the music, and I could feel the excitement,” he reflected in a 1996 interview with Bloomfield Notes, a sentiment echoed by The New York Times in its chronicles of his life.

By his midteens, Goldberg was no longer just a listener; he was an active participant in the Chicago blues scene. Alongside his high school friend, guitarist Michael Bloomfield, he ventured into the city’s legendary blues clubs, rubbing shoulders with the very artists he had once idolized through his radio. The New York Times reported that these experiences were formative, immersing him in an electric atmosphere where music was more than entertainment—it was an emotional force, “wild and uncontrollable.”

At just 18, Goldberg’s career took another leap when he joined Robby and the Troubadours, a band riding the wave of the twist craze. As the report in The New York Times described, he played in the vibrant nightclubs along Rush Street, a district he called “the Bourbon Street of Chicago.” His growing reputation even granted him entry into the famed Playboy Mansion, where he mingled with the elite of Chicago’s nightlife, further broadening his musical exposure and professional connections.

Perhaps Goldberg’s most defining moment came in 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival, where he took the stage with Bob Dylan in a performance that changed the course of music history. As The New York Times report detailed, this electrified performance—where Dylan swapped his acoustic folk roots for an amplified Fender Stratocaster—marked a seismic shift that outraged folk purists but paved the way for a new era of rock. Goldberg, as the band’s keyboardist, was an integral part of this revolutionary moment, a legacy that continues to be debated and analyzed six decades later.

But destiny had other plans. As was detailed in The New York Times report detailed, later that night at a festival party, Goldberg and Bloomfield found themselves in an impromptu jam session. Among the musicians present were Butterfield’s sidemen and Al Kooper, who had famously played the swirling organ part on Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” When Dylan himself arrived, Goldberg immediately felt a kinship. “We were three Jewish guys from the Midwest who had similar backgrounds, similar attitudes, and even the same clothes,” he recalled in The Forward. “Bob could tell we were cool, that we were at Newport to play music and not just to ‘make the scene.’”

The next day, as Dylan and his newly assembled electric band ran through soundcheck, tensions were already palpable. The report in The New York Times described how Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary, serving as the evening’s M.C., was unsettled by the band’s volume. He repeatedly demanded they turn down their instruments, but Goldberg recalled how Bloomfield defiantly glared back as if to say, “Oh, just you wait.” And when the moment arrived, Bloomfield made sure the audience had no choice but to listen—he cranked his amplifier to nine, unleashing a sound that would reverberate through music history.

The performance itself was brief but seismic. As The New York Times report recounted, Dylan and his band—featuring Goldberg on piano and Kooper on organ—blasted through “Maggie’s Farm,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” and “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.” The response was immediate and deeply divided. The now-mythic image of folk purists booing Dylan for betraying acoustic traditions has been debated for decades, with some seeing the moment as a bold artistic reinvention and others as an abandonment of folk’s purity.

In The New York Times’ analysis, there are multiple interpretations of what happened that night. Music historian Elijah Wald, in his book “Dylan Goes Electric!”, challenges the common narrative that pits Dylan as the future against an audience trapped in the past. “There is another version,” Wald argues, “in which the audience represents youth and hope, and Dylan was shutting himself off behind a wall of electric noise, locking himself in a citadel of wealth and power.” Yet, for Goldberg, the moment was less about debate and more about revelation. As he told “Rolling Stone” in 2013, “At the end, there were boos but also cheers. Those who were upset presumably felt betrayed by him. But Bob was creating a new kind of music, and after we were done, everyone knew how special it was.”

Beyond his collaboration with Dylan, Goldberg’s fingerprints are found on some of rock’s most enduring tracks. The report in The New York Times credited him with playing on Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels’ 1966 hit “Devil With a Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly,” as well as contributing to albums by The Byrds, Leonard Cohen, and even punk pioneers The Ramones. His ability to seamlessly integrate his blues-based keyboard style into a variety of genres cemented his reputation as one of rock’s great unsung heroes.

During the mid-1960s, Goldberg relocated to San Francisco and co-founded The Electric Flag, an innovative blues-rock band that included Michael Bloomfield, vocalist Nick Gravenites, and drummer Buddy Miles. As The New York Times report indicated, The Electric Flag brought a raw, soulful energy to the psychedelic era, culminating in a celebrated performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967. The group’s fusion of blues, rock, and soul made them pioneers in a rapidly evolving music landscape.

Goldberg’s influence extended beyond performance into songwriting. As The New York Times reported, he co-wrote “Do You Know How It Feels to Be Lonesome?” with country-rock legend Gram Parsons, which was later recorded by The Flying Burrito Brothers in 1969. His songwriting prowess also led to a collaboration with lyricist Gerry Goffin, resulting in the 1973 hit “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination” by Gladys Knight & the Pips, a song that remains a classic of the era.

Despite his vast contributions to music, Goldberg’s legacy will always be intertwined with the historic night in Newport when Dylan “went electric.” As The New York Times report emphasized, this moment is immortalized in the Academy Award-nominated film “A Complete Unknown,” with Timothée Chalamet portraying Dylan in what is a defining cinematic representation of that watershed event.