Duffy Bishop is an American
electric blues
Electric blues refers to any type of blues music distinguished by the use of electric amplification for musical instruments. The guitar was the first instrument to be popularly amplified and used by early pioneers T-Bone Walker in the late 1930 ...
singer and songwriter. She is in the Cascade Blues Association and Washington Blues Society Halls of Fame, and has been given a Lifetime Achievement Award by both bodies.
In a career spanning over forty years, Bishop has also been a costume designer and an actress in
musical theatre. To date she and her band have released seven albums.
She has been the opening act for such artists as
Roy Orbison,
John Lee Hooker,
Lou Rawls,
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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,
Ruth Brown,
Bonnie Riatt, and
Etta James, among others.
She lives in
St. Augustine, Florida during the winter, although she and her husband return to their home in the
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Tho ...
during the summer months.
Life and career
Born in
Redding, California, United States, her family relocated to
Yreka and later finally settled in
Woodland, California
Woodland is a city in and the county seat of Yolo County, California, located approximately northwest of Sacramento, and is a part of the Sacramento metropolitan area. The population was 61,032 at the 2020 census.
Woodland's origins date to 1 ...
. In the third grade at school, Bishop was involved in a staged public performance, and formed her first group three years later. Their collective name of Effervescence did not last long, when she discovered it was also a term for a bubbling laxative. As a teenager, Bishop joined her school friend, Jan Dunton, and performed as a folk singing twosome named duo.image.
Her early musical career included a three-year spell with Roadside Attraction, before gaining experience in outfits named Toulouse Lautrec, Coda, and Skeezix.
In 1975, she relocated to Los Angeles with her then husband, and sang at both the
Whisky a Go Go
The Whisky a Go Go (informally nicknamed "the Whisky") is a historic nightclub in West Hollywood, California, United States. It is located at 8901 Sunset Boulevard on the Sunset Strip, corner North Clark Street, opposite North San Vicente Boule ...
and
the Troubadour, albeit with other musician's bands. Four years later she moved to
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
,
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
, and was divorced in 1982.
In 1983, she joined Cool Ray & the Shades, and later worked with the Rhythm Dogs. With the latter she issued two albums, ''Dogs Run Cheap'' and ''On a Journey''.
After her appearances in the title role in a play about the life of
Janis Joplin in 1991,
Bishop toured Japan with
Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company is an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Jefferson Airplane. After som ...
. She had earlier formed the Duffy Bishop Band in 1985,
with Chris Carlson, Keith Lowe, Dave Jette and Henry Cooper.
They toured around the world and, in 1994, Bishop and guitarist Carlson married and moved to
Portland Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the list of cities in Oregon, largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, Columbia rivers, Portland is ...
. Their debut album for
Burnside Distribution, ''Bottled Oddities'' was released the same year.
''Back To the Bone'' followed in July 1996. The Duffy Bishop Band won a Muddy Award for Best Regional Blues Act in 1994, and two years later for Best Contemporary Blues Act.
''Fly the Rocket'' (1999) was their third Burnside release, and
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...
noted that "they apply an energy, tightness and focus to their music that serves them well." ''The Queen's Own Bootleg'' followed in 2002.
Around this time Bishop became involved in costume design and worked with the Brass Ring Theater, Skid Row Theater, and Pasadena's
American Academy of Dramatic Arts, with the latter seeing her design over a period of four years. In addition, Bishop appeared in musical theater in both San Francisco and Seattle, including the part of Dr. Frankenfurter in ''
The Rocky Horror Show
''The Rocky Horror Show'' is a Musical theatre, musical with music, lyrics and book by Richard O'Brien. A humorous tribute to the Science fiction film, science fiction and Horror film, horror B movies of the 1930s through to the early 1960s, the ...
''.
Outside of their touring commitments, Bishop and Carlson joined
Teatro ZinZanni
Teatro ZinZanni is a circus dinner theater that began in the neighborhood of Lower Queen Anne in Seattle, Washington. It has since expanded to a site on the waterfront at Pier 29 on The Embarcadero in San Francisco, California.
History
Teatr ...
in 1998, a
circus
A circus is a company of performers who put on diverse entertainment shows that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, magicians, ventriloquists, and unicyclis ...
dinner theater
Dinner theater (sometimes called dinner and a show) is a form of entertainment that combines a restaurant meal with a staged play or musical. "Dinner and a show" can also refer to a restaurant meal in combination with live concert music, where pat ...
show which undertook performances in Seattle, San Francisco and across Europe. They were also the headline act at the Portland
Waterfront Blues Festival
The Waterfront Blues Festival is an annual event in Portland, Oregon, United States featuring four days of performances by blues musicians. The festival started in 1988 and takes place in Tom McCall Waterfront Park, along the west bank of the Wil ...
and the Winthrop Blues Festival. Bishop took the role of Madame ZinZanni, which had previously been performed by
Thelma Houston
Thelma Houston ( Jackson; born May 7, 1946) Retrieved . is an American singer. Beginning her recording career in the late 1960s, Houston scored a number-one hit record in 1977 with her recording of " Don't Leave Me This Way", which won the Gramm ...
,
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez (; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more ...
and
Ann Wilson
Anne, alternatively spelled Ann, is a form of the Latin female given name Anna. This in turn is a representation of the Hebrew Hannah, which means 'favour' or 'grace'. Related names include Annie.
Anne is sometimes used as a male name in th ...
.
The core of the Duffy Bishop Band then was Bishop, Carlson, Dover Weinberg (keyboards), Phil Haxton (bass guitar), and Jeff Minnick (drums). This line-up recorded ''Ooh Wee!'' (2003) for Trillium Records, although Haxton died before the album was released.
''Who Is Duffy Bishop And Why Is She Not World Famous?'' a documentary on her life, was released in 2010.
In April 2014, Bishop and her band self-released ''Find Your Way Home''. The previous year Bishop and Carlson moved to
St. Augustine, Florida for warmer weather during the winter months, although they travel back to the
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Tho ...
for three months each June.
Bishop and her band appeared at the 28th Waterfront Blues Festival in 2015, having previously performed there in 2012.
The present day band consists of Bishop (vocals), Carlson (guitar), Kelly Dunn (drums), Jon Goforth (saxophone), Dean Mueller (bass guitar) and Brad Ulrich (saxophone).
Discography
Albums
See also
*
List of electric blues musicians
References
External links
Partial discography at Discogs.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bishop, Duffy
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
20th-century American singers
21st-century American singers
American blues singers
American costume designers
Songwriters from California
People from Redding, California
Singers from California
People from Woodland, California
20th-century American women singers
21st-century American women singers