Elvin Bishop is an American jazz and blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He was born on May 17th, 1937 in New Orleans. His mother died when he was three years old and his father abandoned him to go back to the United States. At age 12, he began playing guitar for a living after being inspired by listening to the radio station WWOZ.
Elvin Bishop is an American musician who was born on June 25, 1945. He has been a member of the bands The Band and The Big Three. In addition to his music career, he also had a small role in the film The Last Waltz.
Elvin Bishop was a veteran guitarist who fused the blues with gospel, R&B, and country stylings. As a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, he became one of the first stars of blues-rock, and later went on to a solo career that peaked with the Top Ten hit “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” in 1976. Bishop’s picking was showy, but it was also deeply based in roots music traditions, and he was fluid and playful in a manner that few of the 1970s’ guitar superstars were. His guitar was featured prominently on The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1967, and after going solo, he found his stride on 1974’s Let It Flow and 1976’s Struttin’ My Stuff. After a hiatus from recording, Bishop returned with Big Fun and Don’t Let the Bossman Get You Down! in 1988 and 1991, respectively, and he continued to produce excellent work into the 2010s with Red Dog Speaks (2010) and Something Smells Funky ‘Round Here (2018).
Elvin Bishop was born on October 21, 1942, in Glendale, California. He grew up on a farm in Iowa without electricity or running water, and when he was ten, he and his family relocated to Oklahoma. His first introduction to African-American customs was via the radio, which exposed him to the blues stations in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he was raised in an all-white neighborhood. The piercing sound of Jimmy Reed’s harp drew Bishop’s attention; he subsequently compared it to solving a crossword problem.
In 1959, Bishop was awarded a National Merit Scholarship at the University of Chicago, allowing him to immerse himself in the burgeoning Chicago blues scene. Bishop dropped out of college after two years to focus only on music, ultimately meeting Howlin’ Wolf’s guitarist Smokey Smothers and learning the fundamentals of blues guitar from him. Bishop joined up with blues harp maestro Paul Butterfield to create the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in the early 1960s, a group that helped bridge the gap between rock and blues. Despite the fact that Bishop had only been playing guitar for a few years, he practiced regularly and performed with Butterfield in a variety of settings, including campuses, houses, parks, and Big John’s on Chicago’s North Side, a venue that frequently hosted the Butterfield Blues Band and helped them establish their reputation. Bishop influenced the sound of many Butterfield albums, including The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw, released in 1967 and named after Bishop’s nickname and country image.
Following the release of their fourth album, 1968’s In My Own Dream, Bishop departed Butterfield’s band in 1968. He started a solo career and moved to the San Francisco region, where he shared the stage with Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, and the Allman Brothers Band at the Filmore. Beginning with The Elvin Bishop Group in 1969, Bishop released four albums for Epic Records before signing with Capricorn in 1974. His song “Traveling Shoes” (from the 1974 album Let It Flow) made an impact on the charts, but his single “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” (from Struttin’ My Stuff) reached at number three on the Billboard charts in 1976. Despite the popularity of “Fooled Around,” Bishop’s subsequent albums were only somewhat successful, including 1976’s Hometown Boy Makes Good! and 1978’s Hog Heaven, and the Elvin Bishop Group quietly disbanded. Elvin Bishop’s The Best of Elvin Bishop was released by Capricorn in 1979 (a collection of his Epic material, The Best of Elvin Bishop: Crabshaw Rising, was released in 1975), and after the German Line label released Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby in 1981, he went underground for a few years before resurfacing when he signed with the blues-oriented independent label Alligator Records.
Bishop’s debut album for Alligator, Big Fun, was released in 1988, followed by Don’t Let the Bossman Get You Down! in 1991, both of which received greater critical acclaim than his last recordings from the 1970s. He also took part in Alligator’s 20th anniversary cross-country tour in 1992, and performed with legendary bluesman B.B. King three years later, releasing the album Ace in the Hole. In 1998, he released The Skin I’m In, and in 2000, he released That’s My Partner, a collaboration with Smokey Smothers, the guitarist who had taught him guitar many years before.
Bishop returned to the music scene in 2005 with Blind Pig Records’ Gettin’ My Groove Back; he then moved to the Delta Groove Music label for 2008’s The Blues Rolls On, which included guest appearances by B.B. King, Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, and others. In 2010, he released Red Dog Speaks (the title alludes to his favorite red 1959 ES-345 Gibson guitar), followed by the joyful and gritty Can’t Even Do Wrong Right in 2014. Bishop formed the Big Fun Trio with Bob Welsh on piano and guitar and Willy Jordan on hand percussion and vocals the next year. They made their music debut on Alligator’s Something Smells Funky ‘Round Here, released in 2018. Bishop and his band performed a performance at the Crescent City’s renowned annual music event, which was recorded in the album Live at New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival 2019. In 2019, Bishop embarked on an intimate concert tour with longtime friend and harmonica master Charlie Musselwhite; the musicians and the audience were so impressed that they took the act to the studio to record 100 Years of Blues, which will be published by Alligator in 2020.
Elvin Bishop is an American singer-songwriter who has been active since the 1950s. He was born in Nashville, Tennessee on May 24, 1936. His career began when he joined a gospel group called The Revivers. Reference: elvin bishop wife.
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