Elvin Bishop Source: Downbeat Magazine Date: 10/2008 Writer: Frank-John Hadley

Elvin Bishop has played blues guitar since the 1960s and his self-produced new album, The Blues Rolls On (Delta Groove), shows how much he wants to pass on to the new generation.
           
“I got to thinking about how nice guys were to me when I was starting out and how lucky I was to play with guys like Hound Dog Taylor, Big Joe Williams, Paul Butterfield, Junior Wells and Clifton Chenier,” Bishop said from his home north of San Francisco. “Then I got to thinking about how the guys coming up now and how it’d be nice to go back and do the tunes from some of those old guys and get these new guys to help me out and illustrate the way blues flows from one generation to another.”
           
Guided by Bishop, the flow is natural. B.B. King joins him in updating the Roy Milton jump-blues “Keep A Dollar In Your Pocket” and blues harp elder James Cotton , with up and coming singer John Nemeth and veteran harmonizer Angela Strehli, deliver the Chicago blues flag-waver “I Found Out”. Middle-aged folks on other songs include zydeco master R.C. Carrier, boogie revivalist George Thorogood, harmonica champ Kim Wilson and guitarists Warren Haynes, Tommy Castro and Mike Schermer. In addition to Nemeth, representatives of the youth movement are guitarists Derek Trucks and Ronnie Baker Brooks and bayou accordion player Andre Thierry and the Delta’s preteen-and-teenage Homemade Jamz Blues Band.
           
Bishop does not want anyone to get the impression The Blues Rolls On is just another blues album with “a bunch of names up there to sell the thing.” He reasoned, “I tried to come up with material that would be right down the artists’ alley, match things up good.”
           
Bishop’s own slide guitar is pronounced on Jimmy Reed’s “Honest I Do”.
           
“I play the melody and get a lot of satisfaction out of it, because in a way it’s the voice I never had,” Bishop said. “It’s got a big range and you can put the vibrato you want on it.”
           
“Where a lot of guys play slide in open tuning and fire off a bunch of licks simply because those notes are underneath their fingers, Elvin picks only the choice notes and plays them meaningfully,” Schermer said.
           
For Bishop, the idea of combining different generations is rooted in the early 60’s, when he accepted a scholarship to the University of Chicago. His school’s South Side location provided the ultimate in luck for a blues enthusiast.
           
“It was ground zero for the Chicago blues,” Bishop said. “I got to make friends with the guys. When you actually see a guy’s hand on the guitar doing this stuff, you can get somewhere.”