Editing Paul Butterfield (section)

==Personal life==
By all accounts, Paul Butterfield was absorbed in his music.  According to his brother Peter,
{{blockquote|He listened to records and went places, but he also spent an awful lot of time, by himself, playing [harmonica].  He'd play outdoors. There's a place called [[Promontory Point (Chicago)|the Point]] in Hyde Park [Chicago], a promontory of land that sticks out into Lake Michigan, and I can remember him out there for hours playing.  He was just playing all the time&nbsp;... It was a very solitary effort. It was all internal, like he had a particular sound he wanted to get and he just worked to get it.{{sfn|Erlewine|1996|p=41}}}}
Producer Norman Dayron recalled the young Butterfield as "very quiet and defensive and hard-edged. He was this tough Irish Catholic, kind of a hard guy. He would walk around in black shirts and sunglasses, dark shades and dark jackets&nbsp;... Paul was hard to be friends with."{{sfn|Wolkin|Keenom|2000|p=40}} Although they later became close, Michael Bloomfield commented on his first impressions of Butterfield: "He was a bad guy.  He carried pistols. He was down there on the [[South Side, Chicago|South Side]], holding his own. I was scared to death of that cat".{{sfn|Wolkin|Keenom|2000|p=93}} Writer and [[AllMusic]] founder [[Michael Erlewine]], who knew Butterfield early in his recording career, described him as "always intense, somewhat remote, and even, on occasion, downright unfriendly".{{sfn|Erlewine|1996|p=41}} He remembered Butterfield as "not much interested in other people".{{sfn|Erlewine|1996|p=41}}

By 1971, Butterfield had purchased his first house, in rural Woodstock, New York, and began enjoying family life with his second wife, Kathy Peterson, and their infant son, Lee. According to Maria Muldaur, she and her husband were frequent dinner guests, which usually involved sitting around a piano and singing songs.{{sfn|Ellis III|1997}} She doubted her abilities, but "it was Butter that{{sic}} first encouraged me to let loose and just sing the blues [and] not to worry about singing pretty or hitting all the right notes&nbsp;... He loosened all the levels of self-consciousness and doubt out of me&nbsp;... And he'll forever live in my heart for that and for respecting me as a fellow musician."{{sfn|Ellis III|1997}}