ELVIN BISHOP

Can’t Even Do Wrong Right

Alligator Records

Brian K. Read

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and while that may be true most of the time, what about the old dog who still has some tricks left up his sleeve?  Today, it’s more about “old school” for many blues fans, straight-ahead good-time blues, played by musicians who’ve trotted around the block a few times, and left a scent. 

Rockin’ good-time slide guitarist and clownin’ vocalist Elvin Bishop is just the dog you want in the hunt.  And now the new Elvin Bishop CD, Can’t Even Do Wrong Right hits the shelves with a “real” blues sound that feels as good as losing enough weight to fit back into your favorite blue jeans!

Yep, might as well face it, none of us dogs is getting any younger.  Elvin just turned 72, but he sounds just as fine and natural singing and playing as he did way back in 1965, when he played guitar here in Chicago with the venerable Paul Butterfield Blues Band.  That powerhouse band shaped the sound of electric blues for an entire generation and well beyond, and you’ll find that classic sound all over this release. 

This is one fun record, start to finish.  From the look of the pitiful fool on the cover of Elvin Bishop’s CD, caught pants down between two women, one in bed, one with a baseball bat, the ability to do wrong right apparently is among the first to go with age. (Don’t fret, it’s a cartoon by fellow musician Paul Thorn!)  It’s hard not to crack up to Elvin’s folksy way of spinning out a story, and he sure has a lot to offer here, including four new originals.   

Thanks to the runaway box-office hit “Guardians Of The Galaxy,” a whole new generation gets to hear Elvin’s 1975 hit radio classic, “Fooled Around And Fell In Love.”  Now, thanks to Alligator Records’ release of Can’t Even Do Wrong Right, you can hear once again the soaring voice of Mickey Thomas, an old friend and former Jefferson Starship vocalist, who hasn’t worked with Elvin since that original 1975 release.

Famed Chicago harp player Charlie Musselwhite also guest-stars on this record, on the cuts “Old School” and “Doggin’.”  Musselwhite is another artist still out there playing and passing down the blues to kids across America.  The blues is an important touchstone to American culture, one that has shaped all of the music that followed, and continues to influence all artists and their music today.  

Elvin Bishop honed his chops with a lot of Chicago blues artists back in the ‘60s, when he took a stab at studying physics at the U of Chicago, which is where he first met harpist Paul Butterfield too.  Fortunately for us, he gave up the slide rule for the slide guitar.  Blues dogs like Lil’ Smokey Smothers took him under their wing, and taught him how to play the blues the Chicago way.  He’s been doing it ever since, and this roadhouse record sets a new high water mark!

It’s always a treat worth sitting up for when old dogs get together and howl at the moon, and all the better when they howl classics like “Blues With A Feeling,” or “Boll Weevil.”  These sweet classics are like butter on hotcakes, and you just know that somewhere, the spirits of Little Walter and Fats Domino are smiling to hear ‘em played the way they wrote ‘em. 

Some might indeed call the kind of music on this CD more “Southern Soul” than blues.  With the kind of searing slide guitar, solo-riffs and stabs coming from Bishop’s guitar, it’s hard to deny the blues is what it is; listen to the arrangement the band does of Jimmy Reed’s “Honest I Do.”  Elvin says it’s the first blues song he ever heard as a kid in the 1950s, coming out of Nashville on radio station WLAC, which at night could reach his ears all the way into Oklahoma.  He covers it true.

The title cut, “Can’t Even Do Wrong Right,” is Elvin Bishop at his storytelling best, all thick drawl, down home country talk that slides and glides together like corn bread and sweet tea.  The story is about a dude in a whole lotta trouble, and by trouble I mean pantloads of funny.  It’s set to a Muddy Waters riff that sounds mighty fine, with a Chicago “inside out” back beat (ask a drummer). 

The band captures one Chicago style after another, and throws in some tasty ‘70s style guitar work too, reminiscent of Southern sounds like the Allman Brothers band, or even Lynryd Skynyrd at times.  “Let Your Woman Have Her Way” leaves you wanting more of those tasty guitar licks. 

This is a great record to listen to while driving down the road, whether it’s Lakeshore Drive, or way out in the sticks.  You’ll be in no danger of dozing off.  Just make sure you can resist the urge to hang your head out the window with your tongue out in the breeze!

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