Rock and Roll

As the magazine’s 40th anniversary approaches, we rank the 40 best albums ever by Chicago artists

Growing up in the 1940s on a farm in Iowa with a loving but non musical family, Elvin seldom heard music as a kid. "This was before TV," Elvin says, "and on the radio you got a lot of Frank Sinatra and 'How Much Is That Doggie In the Window' type of stuff." The family moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, when Elvin was 10, in 1952. Tulsa was "totally segregated," says Elvin, "I mean, hard core." However, "the one thing they couldn't segregate was the airwaves. When rock and roll started up in the mid-'50s, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Little Richard showed up on white radio."


And then, late one night when Elvin was 14 or 15, the atmospheric conditions a little rough, Jimmy Reed's harmonica came cutting through the static from WLAC in Nashville, and Elvin Bishop's life was changed. The song was "Honest I Do." "That piercing harp came through, cutting in like a knife, and I said, 'Oh, man, that's it.' I found out that blues was where the good part of rock and roll was coming from." And about that time, he started trying to play guitar. "I wanted to play it from the beginning," Elvin says. "I kept trying and then quitting it. Hurtin' my fingers, playing those old pawn-shop guitars with the strings two inches off the fret board. Nobody I knew played." But he kept after it. "Not being able to dance, and seeing how the musicians did with the girls, and loving the music, I finally stuck with it."


Hooked on the sounds emerging from the radio, Elvin had to find out where they were coming from and who was responsible. When he was awarded a National Merit Scholarship in 1959, he could have gone to pretty much any college he wanted, but chose The University Of Chicago, because that's where the blues were. And so he landed in the middle of one of the richest and most vital scenes in blues history. "Any night of the week you could hear Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Hound Dog Taylor, Otis Rush, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, Magic Sam, Bobby King, Eddie King, Little Smokey, Big Smokey, and a whole ton of people you never heard of."


His first week in Chicago, he came across Paul Butterfield, who was sitting on some steps drinking beer and playing blues on guitar. "We fell together right away," says Elvin. "I was amazed to find other white guys into blues." After playing with a lot of different people, including J.T. Brown, Hound Dog Taylor and Junior Wells, Elvin hooked up with Butterfield to form the legendary Paul Butterfield Blues Band, with bassist Jerome Arnold and drummer Sam Lay, who'd been Howlin' Wolf's rhythm section. Producer Paul Rothchild of Elektra Records encouraged them to add guitarist Michael Bloomfield. "I'd met Bloomfield before, in a pawn shop," says Elvin, "when I was looking for guitars. We got to talking. He got a guitar out, started playing circles around the world."


In 1965 the Butterfield band went into the studio and recorded The Paul Butterfield Blues Band album, which turned out to be a sea-change record for thousands of rock fans and musicians. An integrated band playing blues music in 1965 was unheard of. It introduced a lot of people to the blues, and to the musicians who had influenced the Butterfield band. After several more albums with Butterfield, including the pivotal genre bending East West, Bishop took off on his own. "I wanted to stretch out, see how far I could take it on my own," says Elvin. Bishop had visited San Francisco with the Butterfield band during the Summer of Love in 1967. "I loved the people, the weather, and not having to watch my back all the time." And like several other Chicago musicians he ended up moving to the Bay Area.


The 70's saw Elvin hit the charts with solo tracks like "Travelin' Shoes," "Sure Feels Good" and what would become his biggest hit, "Fooled Around and Fell in Love," with a powerful vocal by Mickey Thomas (later of Jefferson Starship). During the 1980's, Elvin spent most of his time on the road, "entertaining the people and maybe having a little too much fun myself." Later in the decade he hooked up with Alligator for a number of excellent albums that grew right out of his blues roots.


Elvin's brand new release "The Blues Rolls On" on Delta Groove Music, harks back to Bishop's roots, paying tribute to the musicians who helped give him his start. A who's who of blues musicians support Bishop on the album, including B.B. King, Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, George Thorogood, James Cotton, Kim Wilson, Tommy Castro, John Nemeth, Ronnie Baker Brooks, and Angela Strehli. Bishop handles the majority of the vocals, with Nemeth and others pitching in as well.


Bishop revisits his own '70s solo hit "Struttin' My Stuff" with Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks, Junior Wells' "Come On In This House," and the Butterfield Band's "Yonders Wall" and Hound Dog Taylor's "Send You Back To Georgia." He also contributes the autobiographical boogie "Oklahoma," played solo electric. Sessions for the rollicking album ranged from Jacksonville, FL to Clarksdale, MS, and to a cruise ship off the Mexican coast.


Bishop is a slide guitar great with 45-years of blues under his belt. Rolling Stone has tagged Bishop's music as "raucous," praising his "careening slide and razor-edged bursts, all delivered with unflagging enthusiasm and wit. "The Blues Rolls On" is another defining moment in Bishop's long career and a welcome reminder that the blues is still alive and well.

Detroit's Amboy Dukes are best remembered for their 1968 acid-rock classic "Journey to the Center of the Mind," as well as introducing the world to "the Motor City Madman", guitarist Ted Nugent.

Nugent was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1948 and started playing guitar at age nine. Early in 1960, he formed his first group, "the Royal High Boys", and by 1962 had moved on to "the Lourds". The Lourds won a Battle of the Bands contest, with fourteen year old Nugent doing a guitar solo on the judge's table. Soon, they were opening for the Supremes and The Beau Brummels.

Much to his regret, Nugent's family moved to Chicago in 1965 where young Ted formed a new band. He had heard of a Detroit group who had just broken up called "Amboy Dukes" and started using the name for his new Chicago band. "The Amboy Dukes" was actually the name of a novel about gang members and their lifestyle. In later interviews, Nugent said that although many people have given him a copy of the book, he has never actually read it.

Nugent returned to southeastern Michigan in 1967, and assembled a new Dukes line-up including vocalist John Drake, a former bandmate in the Lourds, as well as rhythm guitarist Steve Farmer, bassist Bill White, keyboardist Rick Lober and drummer Dave Palmer. The group quickly emerged as one of the hottest attractions in the Detroit.

After a series of line-up shifts which saw White and Lober exit in favor of bassist Greg Arama and keyboardist Andy Solomon, in 1968 the Dukes released their album "Journey to the Center of the Mind" on the local "Mainstream" label. The title track, which Nugent wrote the music for Steve Farmer's lyrics, was released as a single and climbed the U.S. pop chart to number 16. Despite its apparent drug related theme, Nugent himself claims to have "never smoke a joint...never done a drug in my life. I thought 'Journey to the Center of the Mind' meant look inside yourself, use your head, and move forward in life".

By the time the Amboy Dukes recorded their follow-up L.P. in 1969, vocalist Rusty Day had replaced John Drake. "Migrations", failed to equal the success of its predecessor and a third effort, "Marriage on the Rocks" was issued later that same year. It was also a disappointment, and after 1971's "Survival of the Fittest", Nugent dismissed Day and Solomon as Dave Palmer left the group to accept an engineering job at Electric Lady Studios.

Nugent would later explain, "There never really was a break-up of the Amboy Dukes. It just got to be such a revolving door mentality with the musicians. I was so upset internally with the amount of effort I was putting out with the constant human battering I was doing with the musicians. I was bailing them out of jail for breaking into a Coke machine or because they got caught with a joint. I felt like I was a babysitter. I also acted as a road manager. I used to book the band. I used to maintain all the equipment. I used to change the oil in the cars. I used to drive the truck and set it up. I handled all the hotels. I kept all the ledger books. I did everything. So for the first time in my life I took a year off. It was too loony".

As it turned out, Nugent took only three months off, but it changed his life. He went to Colorado to go deer hunting and found it to be of incredible therapeutic value.

Nugent's magnificent self-titled 1975 solo album set the stage for a spectacular career of hell raising guitar mayhem. A master guitarist, accomplished songwriter and wild showman, it was no surprise that the success of Ted Nugent led to a rapid fire succession of multi-platinum albums including "Free For All" (featuring budding musical star Meat Loaf on several cuts), "Cat Scratch Fever", "Double Live Gonzo", "Weekend Warriors" and "State Of Shock".

On a sad note, Nugent's old friend from his Amboy Duke days, bassist Greg Arama was killed in a motorcycle accident on September 18th, 1979, at the age of 29.

By the time the Eighties arrived, Ted Nugent's commercial fortunes took a nosedive. But the ever resilient guitarist carried on, recording a string of new studio albums ("Scream Dream", "Intensities In 10 Cities", "Nugent", "Penetrator", "If You Can't Lick 'Em, Lick 'Em") and logging millions of miles on the rock and roll highway.

The Nineties were kinder to Ted, with a major renaissance in the shape of a new supergroup, "Damn Yankees", a band whose recruits included former Styx guitarist, Tommy Shaw, ex-Night Ranger bassist, Jack Blades and drummer Michael Cartellone. The group's self-titled 1990 debut was an instant success and included the # 3 smash, "High Enough". Enjoying his newfound commercial success, Nugent was able to balance a blockbuster career with Damn Yankees and as a solo artist, while allowing ample time for his other great love, hunting, and what he celebrates as "The Great Spirit Of The Wild".

Into the 21st Century, after five decades of hard rockin', Ted Nugent remains a distinctive and uncompromising musician whose thirst for rock and roll is unequalled. A world renowned hunter, NRA board member, New York Times best selling author, magazine publisher (Ted Nugent's Adventure Outdoors), award-winning writer for over forty publications, radio personality, and business entrepreneur, Ted Nugent still lives and dies for the raucous scream that is his sacred rock and roll. A live 2001 album called "Full Bluntal Nugity" was supported by a 28 date tour with Lynyrd Skynyrd and Deep Purple.

In January, 2004, Ted hopped on the reality TV bandwagon, hosting "Surviving Ted: The Ted Commandments" for VH1, where contestants attempt to live in survival mode on one of his ranches. Ted almost didn't survive himself, having an unfortunate accident with a chainsaw during the making of the show. He required 40 stitches to close the wound.