Elvin Bishop is a respected American blues and rock guitarist, a veteran of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, whose place on this list comes from one atypical hit. "Fooled Around and Fell in Love", released in 1975, was a tender, soulful soft-rock ballad, and notably the lead vocal was sung not by Bishop himself but by his bandmate Mickey Thomas, later of Jefferson Starship.
The song became a major US hit, by far the biggest commercial moment of Bishop's long career, even as it sat apart from the rootsy blues that defines most of his work.
On streaming, "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" sits near 218 million plays, while his next most-streamed track trails at around two million. That sends the ratio above 100, far past our 5.0 line.
By our measure Elvin Bishop is a certified one-hit wonder, with a real caveat: he is a serious, lifelong bluesman admired within that world, whose one pop hit is something of an outlier in his catalogue. It is simply that this smooth, radio-friendly ballad, sung by someone else entirely, reached an audience the rest of his blues work never did, and on streams it stands far ahead of everything else.