I saw the Elvin Bishop Group perform at the Atlanta Municipal Auditorium in the early 70s, as the opening act for, strange to say, The Kinks. Elvin was at that time part of the Macon, Georgia- based Capricorn Records stable of southern rockers (Wet Willie’s lead singer did a cameo on stage with the EBG the night I saw them), and there was nothing about him that disturbed my assumption that he was a deep-fried good ol’ boy who like so many others get enchanted by the blues music he was hearing from the other side of the Jim Crow racial barricades in some backwater town in south Georgia or Alabama.
Turns out, as MuddyLee alluded to at Daylight Video, that Bishop is a California native who fell in with blue-eyed bluesman Paul Butterfield while a physics student at the University of Chicago. But he sure seemed to walk the walk once he learned it.
Here are some non-fried midday news/views snacks:
* Well, some pundits kept their reputations intact over the Biden saga: Bill Kristol was one of those confidently predicting the Veep would run.
* Grover Norquist still wants to make government small enough to drown it in a bathtub, in case you were wondering.
* Brian Beutler doesn’t think the demands Paul Ryan is making before accepting the Speaker’s gavel will be sufficient to stop right-wing mischief against him.
* Ben Carson’s not the only one getting heat for revisionist Holocaust remarks: Bibi Netanyahu’s suggestion that Hitler may not have thought about exterminating European Jewry without the Mufti of Jerusalem’s inspiration isn’t going over well.
* Mighty weird: Richard Nixon met Justin Trudeau when Justin was a baby, and “toasted the future Prime Minister of Canada.”
And in non-political news:
* Royals and Mets just one win away from the World Series.
As we break for lunch, here’s the Elvin Bishop Group performing “Crazy Bout You Baby” at the Fillmore East in 1970, with Jo Baker on vocals.
