Elvin Bishop Source: Music Tap Date: 10/2008 Writer: Matt Rowe

When you accumulate a party of bluesmen like B.B. King, James Cotton, Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, Kim Wilson, and George Thorogood, you’re going to have some thunder and lightning overhead.  That’s what veteran bluesman Elvin Bishop has gone and done with his latest album, The Blues Roll On.  Elvin Bishop has some blues years behind him.  Starting in Chicago with Paul Butterfield, helping to form the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, then moving on to more notoriety with his own band known simply as Elvin Bishop.  They enjoyed a Top40 hit with “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” with belter, Mickey Thomas (Jefferson Starship) at the mike.  From then on, it was a blues-fest for Elvin as he created album after album of some fine smokin’ blues material.

On his new release, The Blues Rolls On, he produces a solid effort with some originals (the roll call title cut, “The Blues Rolls On,” “Struttin’ My Stuff,” the excellent “Oklahoma”), and a host of electric covers.  He finds magic with Junior Wells’ “Come On in This House” and Jimmy Reed’s “Honest I Do.”  But every song on this album is performed with love of the genre built in.

Good songs need good people to light them up and with his use of the above mentioned blues folks, The Blues Rolls On is a hot ball of fire.  The blues can run slow and they can run fast.  Elvin Bishop knows both speeds.  History has taught him well.