Following his years with Chicago's legendary Butterfield Blues Band, Elvin Bishop relocates to San Francisco and becomes a mainstay of the Bay Area jam scene before forming his own band. Another early signing to Bill Graham's fledgling record label, this group becomes a popular Bay Area attraction. To Bishop's credit, he did not dominate all the band's material and they developed a repertoire that included a wide range of musical styles that often…entire summary

Elvin Bishop - guitar, vocals
Perry Welsh - vocals, harp
Stephen Miller - piano, organ, vocals
Kip Maercklein - bass
John Chambers - drums

Following his years with Chicago's legendary Butterfield Blues Band, Elvin Bishop relocates to San Francisco and becomes a mainstay of the Bay Area jam scene before forming his own band. Another early signing to Bill Graham's fledgling record label, this group becomes a popular Bay Area attraction. To Bishop's credit, he did not dominate all the band's material and they developed a repertoire that included a wide range of musical styles that often showcased the other talent in the band, especially female vocalist Jo Baker, who becomes the focal point on much of this earlier material. Also of particular note is keyboardist, Stephen Miller (not to be confused with Steve Miller), an incredibly talented musician, who was also a ubiquitous presence on the San Francisco jam scene.

On the second night of this run, two fragments of the first and second set have been located. The first set on this night begins with a monologue from Elvin Bishop, welcoming the audience and explaining that the frontline of singers are bedridden with the flu. He also mentions that several friends may be dropping by to jam later in the evening. The first set begins with a relaxed instrumental jam on "Never Trust a Woman." This serves as a warm-up exercise for the group and allows the recording engineer to tweak the recording mix. With everything feeling and sounding good, they turn the energy level up a notch and proceed into another jam, this one unidentified. It sounds vaguely reminiscent of "Born in Chicago," a song Bishop had played countless times during his tenure with The Butterfield Blues Band. This gets things cooking, but unfortunately the recordings from the first set abruptly end approximately 9 minutes in.

The sequence from the second set also happens to be the beginning of the set. Bishop approaches each set as if it were a new audience. He again welcomes everyone and chats briefly before they begin. The first song on this set is unidentified, followed by an extended romp through one of the bands most popular songs, "Sweet Potato." Although only these two fragments remain from this night, they set the stage for the more spontaneous approach that the core band would continue to explore over the next two nights.

 collapse