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| A portrait of the artist with "Red Dog" (the guitar). |
The Hit
I have no recollection of ever hearing Elvin Bishop’s “Fooled Around and Fell in Love.” By Bishop’s count, it has appeared on about 20 movie soundtracks - including Guardians of the Galaxy and Boogie Nights, both of which I’ve seen (and liked!)…but, nope.
Musically, it listens like a 1950s rock slow-jam with 1970s production - e.g., a little something to make the instruments sound warmer, smoother, and with a goose of echo (especially on the guitar solo) - something that certainly applies to Bishop’s famously…limited singing voice. 1950s nostalgia was all the rage when it came out as a single in 1976 (fwiw, Spotify shows the album it appears on, Struttin’ My Stuff, coming out in 1975), so the combination isn’t all that surprising.
Apart from him denying it took him just 20 minutes to write - as he told Rock & Blues Muse in 2019, he wrote that song like any other (“I kind of got a little groove going and started up with the lyrics. Once you get a strong central idea, it’s kind of like hanging clothes on a line, verse-by-verse.”) - there aren’t any great stories about the making of the song. The inspiration came from the most natural place you can imagine - the preamble for a 2002 Swampland interview says he wrote it about his love affair with his first wife, Jenny Villarin - which brings up the only sad thing you’ll read in this post: Jenny Villarin and their daughter, Selina Bishop, were murdered in 2000 in connection with an extortion scheme gone wrong by the younger Bishop’s then-boyfriend. Only the tiniest sliver of humanity deserves that kind of hell and, based on everything I’ve read, Elvin Bishop deserves it less than most.
The only other point of interest was the guy who produced it. As noted in an interview with Guitar World (2011), a guy named Bill Szymczyk produced that one and that gave him his only hit. Szymczyk did the same for B. B. King. Bishop’s aside on Szymczyk’s name struck me as a nice introduction to the man himself: “big waste of consonants.”
The Rest of the Story
“Everything that has happened to me in the music business over the years has been a complete surprise to me. I just try I just try to play to my taste and hope somebody likes it.”
- Elvin Bishop, Guitar World (2011)
Now that I’ve read about sp,e early blues musicians, Elvin Bishop’s life story reads like some of them. Born in 1942, he came in a family of farmers. They never had much - e.g., he spent his childhood years on a farm near Elliott, Iowa and, according to the history by Blues Blast Magazine, he didn’t see electricity or indoor plumbing until he moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma circa 1953 - and, unlike a lot of musicians (even those old blues guys) he didn’t grow up with music in the household…
…but he found it all the same. Once in Tulsa (and not far from the site of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street), Bishop tapped into the blues by way of the 50,000-watt clear-channel broadcasting behemoths they had back then. He caught the bug, but found the guitar too hard until the proper motivation came along - in this case, seeing girls at school fawn over the boys who could play. He recalled sneaking out to Tulsa’s blues joints as a teenager. Despite that mild rebellious streak, he did well enough in school to earn a National Merit Scholarship, and that paid his way to college that his parents would have otherwise never been able to afford. When it came time to choose, he opted for the University of Chicago. He showed up, took classes, even chose physics for a major, but he chose Chicago because he wanted to get closer to the heart of the blues.
He set about connecting to Chicago’s then-(particularly)-thriving blues scene, befriending a Black cafeteria employee the day he arrived and bumping into Paul Butterfield within the first week. He followed that cafeteria employee to every nearby blues joint that would let him in and started forming friendships that would become mentorships with some of the original blues artists. I’d direct anyone interested in a detailed reading of his Chicago days to that Blues Blast piece, but he singled out one person, in particular, as a mentor, a guy named Little Smokey Smothers. Bishop singles out a few artists as inspirations - John Lee Hooker and Lightin’ Hopkins came up in Rock & Blues Muse - but, based on the Blues Blast piece, if he didn’t meet every single blues artist in Chicago, he sure as hell tried. As he told Guitar World:
“I’ve always been lucky in my career in that I’ve got to meet all my heroes and play with them just about. Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, Albert Collins, Otis Rush, Magic Sam, all those guys. Junior Walker. Those guys were super nice to me.”
Because he had no one to play with, or even learn from, growing up, Bishop arrived in Chicago “square as a pool table and twice as green” (he loves that phrase), but he kept working and improving on the guitar. He started in house parties playing from 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. and kept plugging away until he could land a spot in the blues joints he frequented. For all the famous people he worked (and played with very, very hard), Bishop’s big break came through Paul Butterfield. Butterfield was playing guitar when they first met, but he picked up a harmonica (or the harp, as they keep calling it) and took off like a shot after six months. Bishop joined the Paul Butterfield Blues Band at its inception. With Howlin’ Wolf’s rhythm section behind then, they became one of the earliest interracial acts of the mid-1960s (1963-68, basically). Bishop stuck with them through three albums, the last of which was named The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw in honor of Bishop’s nickname and a subtle celebration of his return to playing lead guitar. Related, and rather than list every example of Bishop’s all around generosity with praise for the people he’s played with over an insanely long career, he easily acknowledged that the guitarist he replaced, Mike Bloomfield, was well-ahead of him technically at the time. If you read any interview with Bishop, you’ll see him praise another musician.
During his time in other people’s bands, those bandleaders would take breaks here and there during performances and let other members play their own material; after getting a taste of that and good reactions from the crowds, Bishop decided to strike out on his own. He started with the Elvin Bishop Group in 1968 - a group that included Bloomfield - but that didn’t last so long. He kept busy afterwards, sitting in with the Grateful Dead at Fillmore West and with The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East. From there…he just kept going. Literally. As much as he found peace during the COVID lockdowns (he has a spread in Marin County, California, where he very merrily gardens), he was playing 50-60 gigs a year and doing Blues Cruises all the way up to it and it sounds like he’ll return to doing them on this side of them.
Bishop has a life filled with projects, collaborations, performances, and albums, far too much to cover in a short little post. As such, I’ll close on a couple notes on his brush with stardom. If you include what he released with The Elvin Bishop Group, he’d released six albums before 1975’s Struttin’ My Stuff. He had a minor hit on 1974’s Let It Flow with “Travelin’ Shoes,” but it took working with Szymczyk for him to put out a hit. With “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” for a single and a little more polish on the album as a whole, Struttin’ My Stuff became one of the originals of the AOR (Album Oriented Rock) era. Bishop didn’t recall thinking anything different about his biggest hit; to give the beginning of the quote up top: “No, I had no idea. I don’t have a feel for that sort of thing.” Oh, and a fun bit of trivia: Mickey Thomas and Donny Baldwin, later of Jefferson Starship, sing back-up vocals on “Fooled Around and Fell in Love.”
Elvin Bishop represents a certain type of one-hit wonder - e.g., call it the one hit/fantastic career model. He clearly has the respect of his peers. Little tributes to him have slipped into songs by The Charlie Daniels Band (1975’s “The South Is Gonna Do It”; “Elvin Bishop sittin’ on a bale of hay/he ain’t lookin’ good, but he sure can play”) and Molly Hatchet (1978’s “Gator Country”; “Elvin Bishop out struttin' his stuff with little Miss Slick Titty Boom, I'm goin' back to the Gator Country and get me some elbow room”). Bishop has enjoyed the version of success that makes most sense to me because it’s just a bigger, longer version of what happens with the overwhelming majority of bands and artists I like - i.e., people who can make a living in music (or come close), but who rarely if ever chart, aka, people who “just try to play to my taste and hope somebody likes it.”
And he’s on the short list for my “four famous people you’d like to have dinner with…”
About the Sampler
Given Elvin Bishop’s…fucking massive catalog, I limited myself to a handful of albums, most of them from around the time “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” came out. The exceptions fall either a little before - e.g., two by The Elvin Bishop Group, “The Things That I Used to Do” and “Sweet Potato” and, the other, a live recording of Bishop’s Fillmore East session with The Allman Brothers, “Drunken Hearted Boy” - and well after that period - e.g., two songs from 2017’s reunion of Elvin Bishop’s Big Fun Trio, “Ace in the Hole” and “Let the Four Winds Blow.” The earlier fall under the “white blues” of the late 1960s/early 1970s, while the latter two have a leaner blues sound that a man with his career can put out and that a loyal fan-base will welcome.
As for the stuff from Bishop’s, for lack of a better word, most successful period, they all put slightly different spins on a similar sound. For instance, “Sunshine Special,” “Honey Babe,” and “Let It Flow” (I linked to “Travelin’ Shoes” up above), all from 1974’s Let It Flow, take steps toward what he’d do on Struttin’ My Stuff, only with varying touches of 70s pop, country and even gospel - all in keeping with Bishop’s belief that “white blues” isn’t a thing, but that just about every artist of any era has a headful of influences. I heard more consistency across the material on Struttin’ My Stuff - repped here by the title track, “Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey,” and (because I had to) “Slick Titty Boom” - with a heavier touch on production and a touch of funk wobble. Call it “southern rock” and you won’t be too far off. That metier carried over into his next two albums, Juke Joint Jump and Hometown Boy Makes Good!, if with some clear diversions. To show what they sounded like, I included “Juke Joint Jump,” “Rollin’ Home,” and the gentler “Wide River” and the 70s pop number, “Sure Feels Good,” from the former and “Give It Up,” “D.C. Strut,” and the (again) 70s pop, “Sidelines.”
Thematically, it’s a mix of standard pop/blues fare - e.g., trouble with love - but there’s, like, a lot of humor that wouldn’t fly today - especially on The Elvin Bishop Group material and “Slick Titty Boom.” It was the times, man
I have no recollection of ever hearing Elvin Bishop’s “Fooled Around and Fell in Love.” By Bishop’s count, it has appeared on about 20 movie soundtracks - including Guardians of the Galaxy and Boogie Nights, both of which I’ve seen (and liked!)…but, nope.
Musically, it listens like a 1950s rock slow-jam with 1970s production - e.g., a little something to make the instruments sound warmer, smoother, and with a goose of echo (especially on the guitar solo) - something that certainly applies to Bishop’s famously…limited singing voice. 1950s nostalgia was all the rage when it came out as a single in 1976 (fwiw, Spotify shows the album it appears on, Struttin’ My Stuff, coming out in 1975), so the combination isn’t all that surprising.
Apart from him denying it took him just 20 minutes to write - as he told Rock & Blues Muse in 2019, he wrote that song like any other (“I kind of got a little groove going and started up with the lyrics. Once you get a strong central idea, it’s kind of like hanging clothes on a line, verse-by-verse.”) - there aren’t any great stories about the making of the song. The inspiration came from the most natural place you can imagine - the preamble for a 2002 Swampland interview says he wrote it about his love affair with his first wife, Jenny Villarin - which brings up the only sad thing you’ll read in this post: Jenny Villarin and their daughter, Selina Bishop, were murdered in 2000 in connection with an extortion scheme gone wrong by the younger Bishop’s then-boyfriend. Only the tiniest sliver of humanity deserves that kind of hell and, based on everything I’ve read, Elvin Bishop deserves it less than most.
The only other point of interest was the guy who produced it. As noted in an interview with Guitar World (2011), a guy named Bill Szymczyk produced that one and that gave him his only hit. Szymczyk did the same for B. B. King. Bishop’s aside on Szymczyk’s name struck me as a nice introduction to the man himself: “big waste of consonants.”
The Rest of the Story
“Everything that has happened to me in the music business over the years has been a complete surprise to me. I just try I just try to play to my taste and hope somebody likes it.”
- Elvin Bishop, Guitar World (2011)
Now that I’ve read about sp,e early blues musicians, Elvin Bishop’s life story reads like some of them. Born in 1942, he came in a family of farmers. They never had much - e.g., he spent his childhood years on a farm near Elliott, Iowa and, according to the history by Blues Blast Magazine, he didn’t see electricity or indoor plumbing until he moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma circa 1953 - and, unlike a lot of musicians (even those old blues guys) he didn’t grow up with music in the household…
…but he found it all the same. Once in Tulsa (and not far from the site of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street), Bishop tapped into the blues by way of the 50,000-watt clear-channel broadcasting behemoths they had back then. He caught the bug, but found the guitar too hard until the proper motivation came along - in this case, seeing girls at school fawn over the boys who could play. He recalled sneaking out to Tulsa’s blues joints as a teenager. Despite that mild rebellious streak, he did well enough in school to earn a National Merit Scholarship, and that paid his way to college that his parents would have otherwise never been able to afford. When it came time to choose, he opted for the University of Chicago. He showed up, took classes, even chose physics for a major, but he chose Chicago because he wanted to get closer to the heart of the blues.
He set about connecting to Chicago’s then-(particularly)-thriving blues scene, befriending a Black cafeteria employee the day he arrived and bumping into Paul Butterfield within the first week. He followed that cafeteria employee to every nearby blues joint that would let him in and started forming friendships that would become mentorships with some of the original blues artists. I’d direct anyone interested in a detailed reading of his Chicago days to that Blues Blast piece, but he singled out one person, in particular, as a mentor, a guy named Little Smokey Smothers. Bishop singles out a few artists as inspirations - John Lee Hooker and Lightin’ Hopkins came up in Rock & Blues Muse - but, based on the Blues Blast piece, if he didn’t meet every single blues artist in Chicago, he sure as hell tried. As he told Guitar World:
“I’ve always been lucky in my career in that I’ve got to meet all my heroes and play with them just about. Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, Albert Collins, Otis Rush, Magic Sam, all those guys. Junior Walker. Those guys were super nice to me.”
Because he had no one to play with, or even learn from, growing up, Bishop arrived in Chicago “square as a pool table and twice as green” (he loves that phrase), but he kept working and improving on the guitar. He started in house parties playing from 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. and kept plugging away until he could land a spot in the blues joints he frequented. For all the famous people he worked (and played with very, very hard), Bishop’s big break came through Paul Butterfield. Butterfield was playing guitar when they first met, but he picked up a harmonica (or the harp, as they keep calling it) and took off like a shot after six months. Bishop joined the Paul Butterfield Blues Band at its inception. With Howlin’ Wolf’s rhythm section behind then, they became one of the earliest interracial acts of the mid-1960s (1963-68, basically). Bishop stuck with them through three albums, the last of which was named The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw in honor of Bishop’s nickname and a subtle celebration of his return to playing lead guitar. Related, and rather than list every example of Bishop’s all around generosity with praise for the people he’s played with over an insanely long career, he easily acknowledged that the guitarist he replaced, Mike Bloomfield, was well-ahead of him technically at the time. If you read any interview with Bishop, you’ll see him praise another musician.
During his time in other people’s bands, those bandleaders would take breaks here and there during performances and let other members play their own material; after getting a taste of that and good reactions from the crowds, Bishop decided to strike out on his own. He started with the Elvin Bishop Group in 1968 - a group that included Bloomfield - but that didn’t last so long. He kept busy afterwards, sitting in with the Grateful Dead at Fillmore West and with The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East. From there…he just kept going. Literally. As much as he found peace during the COVID lockdowns (he has a spread in Marin County, California, where he very merrily gardens), he was playing 50-60 gigs a year and doing Blues Cruises all the way up to it and it sounds like he’ll return to doing them on this side of them.
Bishop has a life filled with projects, collaborations, performances, and albums, far too much to cover in a short little post. As such, I’ll close on a couple notes on his brush with stardom. If you include what he released with The Elvin Bishop Group, he’d released six albums before 1975’s Struttin’ My Stuff. He had a minor hit on 1974’s Let It Flow with “Travelin’ Shoes,” but it took working with Szymczyk for him to put out a hit. With “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” for a single and a little more polish on the album as a whole, Struttin’ My Stuff became one of the originals of the AOR (Album Oriented Rock) era. Bishop didn’t recall thinking anything different about his biggest hit; to give the beginning of the quote up top: “No, I had no idea. I don’t have a feel for that sort of thing.” Oh, and a fun bit of trivia: Mickey Thomas and Donny Baldwin, later of Jefferson Starship, sing back-up vocals on “Fooled Around and Fell in Love.”
Elvin Bishop represents a certain type of one-hit wonder - e.g., call it the one hit/fantastic career model. He clearly has the respect of his peers. Little tributes to him have slipped into songs by The Charlie Daniels Band (1975’s “The South Is Gonna Do It”; “Elvin Bishop sittin’ on a bale of hay/he ain’t lookin’ good, but he sure can play”) and Molly Hatchet (1978’s “Gator Country”; “Elvin Bishop out struttin' his stuff with little Miss Slick Titty Boom, I'm goin' back to the Gator Country and get me some elbow room”). Bishop has enjoyed the version of success that makes most sense to me because it’s just a bigger, longer version of what happens with the overwhelming majority of bands and artists I like - i.e., people who can make a living in music (or come close), but who rarely if ever chart, aka, people who “just try to play to my taste and hope somebody likes it.”
And he’s on the short list for my “four famous people you’d like to have dinner with…”
About the Sampler
Given Elvin Bishop’s…fucking massive catalog, I limited myself to a handful of albums, most of them from around the time “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” came out. The exceptions fall either a little before - e.g., two by The Elvin Bishop Group, “The Things That I Used to Do” and “Sweet Potato” and, the other, a live recording of Bishop’s Fillmore East session with The Allman Brothers, “Drunken Hearted Boy” - and well after that period - e.g., two songs from 2017’s reunion of Elvin Bishop’s Big Fun Trio, “Ace in the Hole” and “Let the Four Winds Blow.” The earlier fall under the “white blues” of the late 1960s/early 1970s, while the latter two have a leaner blues sound that a man with his career can put out and that a loyal fan-base will welcome.
As for the stuff from Bishop’s, for lack of a better word, most successful period, they all put slightly different spins on a similar sound. For instance, “Sunshine Special,” “Honey Babe,” and “Let It Flow” (I linked to “Travelin’ Shoes” up above), all from 1974’s Let It Flow, take steps toward what he’d do on Struttin’ My Stuff, only with varying touches of 70s pop, country and even gospel - all in keeping with Bishop’s belief that “white blues” isn’t a thing, but that just about every artist of any era has a headful of influences. I heard more consistency across the material on Struttin’ My Stuff - repped here by the title track, “Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey,” and (because I had to) “Slick Titty Boom” - with a heavier touch on production and a touch of funk wobble. Call it “southern rock” and you won’t be too far off. That metier carried over into his next two albums, Juke Joint Jump and Hometown Boy Makes Good!, if with some clear diversions. To show what they sounded like, I included “Juke Joint Jump,” “Rollin’ Home,” and the gentler “Wide River” and the 70s pop number, “Sure Feels Good,” from the former and “Give It Up,” “D.C. Strut,” and the (again) 70s pop, “Sidelines.”
Thematically, it’s a mix of standard pop/blues fare - e.g., trouble with love - but there’s, like, a lot of humor that wouldn’t fly today - especially on The Elvin Bishop Group material and “Slick Titty Boom.” It was the times, man
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