"I've had the pleasure to play with some of the best lead guitar players in the world, in my opinion, including Mike Bloomfield, Henry (Sunflower) Vestine, Alan (Blind Owl) Wilson and Harvey Mandel," says Canned Heat drummer Fito de la Parra over the phone from a hotel room in Paris. Canned Heat, which had a big role in turning on the Woodstock generation to blues music, is headlining Blues v lese, coming in from the woods this year to Prague's Střelecký Island.

Although the guitarists Parra mentions are obscured in the popular mind by the likes of Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughn, former Canned Heat members like Mandel and the late Vestine had a range that could unleash the lightning of all the above. When Vestine left Canned Heat briefly in 1969 to work with the influential jazz god Albert Ayler, he was replaced by Mandel, a respected Chicago guitarist who was once a candidate for the Rolling Stones.

And then there was Blind Owl Wilson, a real piece of work. Back in 1964, as Parra is quick to remind, it was Wilson who scoured the United States looking for the forgotten father of delta blues known as Son House. It was through Wilson's coaching and encouragement that Son House returned from decades of obscurity to the studio and to venues like Carnegie Hall. And it was Wilson's blues sensibility, gained from a lifetime study of Indian classical music and rural blues, that formed the modal base for two of Canned Heat's biggest hits, "Goin' up to the Country" and "On the Road Again."

When Parra joined Canned Heat in 1967, he landed in a band of blues monsters. In particular, the group's 300-pound blues shouter, Bob "the Bear" Hite, pushed the band beyond any kind of pretty-boy image. Instead, it was their musical merits that over the years had them backing the likes of Memphis Slim and John Lee Hooker. The latter's Boogie Chillin' workout with Canned Heat led blues critic J.D. Kleinman to declare it Hooker's "most Dionysian rendition."

These days, Canned Heat consists of Parra and bassist Greg "the Gator" Kage in the rhythm section, fronted by guitarists Barry Levenson and Robert Lucas. Lucas and Levenson's combined credentials include previous work with Big Joe Turner, Etta James, Pee Wee Crayton, Percy Mayfield, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson, Percy Mayfield and Lowell Fulson.

This has been an exceptionally active year for the band, which has been in the studio working on a Christmas album slated to include a previous collaboration with the cartoon trio known as the Chipmunks. Germany's Ruf records is releasing a Canned Heat CD this month descriptively entitled Instrumentals. And Parra's book Living the Blues: Canned Heat's Story of Music, Drugs, Death, Sex and Survival, published in 2000, has recently been cited as the basis of an upcoming feature film.

"Its very satisfying that I've been able to continue this American institution, which is what it is," says Parra, who is personally on his 109th European tour. "We were once called the band that married country blues with rock 'n' roll. The L.A. blues thing had a touch of rock 'n' roll in it, especially with bands like ours and [Captain] Beefheart — even the Doors did some blues-oriented material. But not as much as us, we were very blues-oriented," an orientation Parra says the band plans to continue. "We don't want to be trendy, that would be foolish."

But that doesn't mean the band is coasting. "It's a challenge for us to educate a little, and not just rest on our laurels," Parra says. "So we also play traditional Mississippi-oriented blues and country blues, some Elmore James, Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker–influenced material." All of which, Parra promises, is enhanced by some of the more well-known Canned Heat tunes.