PITTSBURGH — Mark Wenner discovered the blues while he was in high school in Bethesda, Maryland, and started messing around with harmonica, in part, because of a 1965 recording of “Born in Chicago” by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
The following year, the future Nighthawks frontman went off to Columbia University, where the homecoming dance band was none other than, yep, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
“And I was screwed,” Wenner says. “My poor girlfriend came up on a train in a nice little dress and a handbag, and I put on a coat and tie. Then, I just stood at the foot of the stage in front of Butterfield and just let it wash over me. Then, I spent the rest of the year working on harmonica in my dorm room, when I should have been reading Plato and Socrates and all that (stuff).”
