Ravinia 2023 Issue 4

“ I found out where the good part of rock and roll was coming from, and I went straight to the blues . ” BOB HAKINS But it wasn’t so much the music that compelled him to pick up the guitar. It was “girls, I guess,” Bishop said with a laugh. “I’d go to junior high and high school dances and see the girls gathered around the gui- tar players.” That motivated him to purchase a guitar he found at a local pawn shop. Bishop did not see the blues per- formed live until he came to Chicago. “It depends on how far you want to stretch the definition of blues,” he clarified. Tulsa, the site of race riots in the 1920s, was “pretty hardcore” when it came to anything with racial involvement, Bishop said. “But I attended what they called ‘package’ shows that featured Black and white performers on the bill. They’d have Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Larry Wil- liams, Jerry Lee Lewis, maybe Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers. I went to see a Ray Charles concert at the Big Ten Ballroom. They ran a rope with white people on one side and Black people on the other.” National Merit Scholar honors brought Bishop to the University of Chicago to study physics in 1960. He might have chosen Northwestern; both schools have stellar reputations, but the University of Chicago is in Hyde Park, and that’s where the blues clubs were. “The first thing I did when I got to the University of Chicago was to make friends with the Black guys who worked in the cafeteria,” Bishop said. “They started taking me out. I got a chance to see Muddy Waters at Pepper’s Lounge, 43rd and Vincennes. Playing with him were James Cotton, Otis Spann, Pat Hare, and Willie Smith on drums.” Bishop was self-taught on the gui- tar. “Like Bob Seger said, working on mysteries without any clues,” Bishop said. “I started shaping up really quick after I got to Chicago. I made friends with some of the musicians, and they’d invite me to their house. I just went at it 24 hours a day; just being able to see a guy’s hands on the fingerboard and see the lifestyle that went along with the words of the songs. They were much nicer than they had to be. I gave them a lot of respect and didn’t come across as an asshole, I guess.” So much for studying physics. “I tried to keep it up,” Bishop said. “It was important to my folks, who went through the Depression. I come from a long line of farmers, and nobody had ever been to college in my family. It would have been extremely unpop- ular to mess that up, which I did, and it was.” In 1963, Bishop met blues harp player Paul Butterfield, one of those fortuitous meetings that not so much changed the course of music, but spurred it to leapfrog miles ahead. The ensemble, proclaimed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for their 2015 induc- tion, was “one of the first integrated blues bands with mass appeal. They pounced on the music and took no prisoners.” The first two albums, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band and East-West , especially, were staples of FM and underground radio stations. Bishop said that breaking musical barriers was not done with intention. “I was in the middle of it,” he said. “I was just thrilled to do what my heroes did; make a little living playing music.” Rolling Stone ranked the band’s debut record among the top 500 albums of all time. Asked to confirm a claim that it was the Paul Butterfield Blues Band that inspired Dylan to go electric, Bishop demurs, “You’d have to ask him.” Bishop recorded four albums with Butterfield before going solo, following the likes of James Cotton and Luther Tucker to San Francis- co. “Opportunities opened to play auditoriums like the Fillmore, where RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JULY 31 – AUGUST 14, 2023 80 BOB HAKINS