A sonic exploration and tonal analysis of contemporary creative music in a myriad of improvisational/composed settings, textures, and expressions.
Welcome to Sound Projections
I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.
Thus this magazine will strive to critically question and go beyond the conventional imposed notions
and categories of what constitutes the generic and stylistic definitions of ‘Jazz’, ‘classical music’, ‘Blues.’
'Rhythm and Blues’, ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘Pop’, ‘Funk’, ‘Hip Hop’, etc. in order to search for what individual
artists and ensembles do cretively to challenge and transform our ingrained ideas and attitudes of what
music is and could be.
So please join me in this ongoing visceral, investigative, and cerebral quest to explore, enjoy, and pay
homage to the endlessly creative and uniquely magisterial dimensions of MUSIC in all of its guises and expressive identities.
Saturday, October 22, 2022
Bobby Blue Bland (1930-2013): Legendary, iconic, and innovative singer, songwriter, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, producer, and teacher
Bobby Bland earned his enduring blues superstar
status the hard way: without a guitar, harmonica, or any other
instrument to fall back upon. All Bland had to offer was his magnificent
voice, a tremendously powerful instrument in his early heyday, injected
with charisma and melisma to spare. Just ask his legion of female fans,
who deemed him a sex symbol late into his career.
For all his promise, Bland's musical career ignited slowly. He was a founding member of the Beale Streeters, the fabled Memphis aggregation that also included B.B. King and Johnny Ace. Singles for Chess in 1951 (produced by Sam Phillips) and Modern the next year bombed, but that didn't stop local DJ David Mattis from cutting Bland on a couple of 1952 singles for his fledgling Duke logo.
Bland's tormented crying style was still pretty
rough around the edges before he entered the Army in late 1952. But his
progress upon his 1955 return was remarkable; with saxist Bill Harvey's band (featuring guitarist Roy Gaines and trumpeter Joe Scott)
providing sizzling support, Bland's assured vocal on the swaggering
"It's My Life Baby" sounds like the work of a new man. By now, Duke was
headed by hard-boiled Houston entrepreneur Don Robey, who provided top-flight bands for his artists. Scott
soon became Bland's mentor, patiently teaching him the intricacies of
phrasing when singing sophisticated fare (by 1962, Bland was credibly
crooning "Blue Moon," a long way from Beale Street).
Most of Bland's savage Texas blues sides during the
mid- to late '50s featured the slashing guitar of Clarence Hollimon,
notably "I Smell Trouble," "I Don't Believe," "Don't Want No Woman,"
"You Got Me (Where You Want Me)," and the torrid "Loan a Helping Hand"
and "Teach Me (How to Love You)." But the insistent guitar riffs guiding
Bland's first national hit, 1957's driving "Farther Up the Road," were
contributed by Pat Hare, another vicious picker who would eventually die in prison after murdering his girlfriend and a cop. Later, Wayne Bennett took over on guitar, his elegant fretwork prominent on Bland's Duke waxings throughout much of the '60s.
The gospel underpinnings inherent to Bland's
powerhouse delivery were never more apparent than on the 1958 outing
"Little Boy Blue," a vocal tour de force that wrings every ounce of
emotion out of the grinding ballad. Scott
steered his charge into smoother material as the decade turned: the
seminal mixtures of blues, R&B, and primordial soul on "I Pity the
Fool," the Brook Benton-penned
"I'll Take Care of You," and "Two Steps From the Blues" were
tremendously influential to a legion of up-and-coming Southern
soulsters. Collected on the 1961 LP Two Steps from the Blues, they produced one of the classic full-lengths of modern blues.
Scott's
blazing brass arrangements upped the excitement ante on Bland's frantic
rockers "Turn on Your Love Light" in 1961 and "Yield Not to Temptation"
the next year. But the vocalist was learning his lessons so well that
he sounded just as conversant on soulful R&B rhumbas (1963's "Call
on Me") and polished ballads ("That's the Way Love Is," "Share Your Love
With Me") as with an after-hours blues revival of T-Bone Walker's
"Stormy Monday Blues" that proved a most unlikely pop hit for him in
1962. With "Ain't Nothing You Can Do," "Ain't Doing Too Bad," and
"Poverty," Bland rolled through the mid-'60s, his superstar status
diminishing not a whit.
In 1973, Robey sold his labels to ABC Records, and Bland was part of the deal. Without Scott and his familiar surroundings to lean on, Bland's releases grew less consistent artistically, though His California Album in 1973 and Dreamer
the next year boasted some nice moments (there was even an album's
worth of country standards). The singer re-teamed with his old pal B.B. King
for a couple of mid-'70s albums that broke no new ground but further
heightened Bland's profile, while his solo work for MCA teetered closer
and closer to MOR (Bland has often expressed his admiration for
ultra-mellow pop singer Perry Como).
Bland began recording for Jackson, Mississippi's
Malaco Records in the mid-'80s. His pipes undeniably reflected the
ravages of time, but he endured as a blues superstar of the loftiest
order, resurfacing in 1998 with Memphis Monday Morning, and five years later with Blues in Memphis. Bland died in Memphis in June 2013 at the age of 83.
In the 50s and early 60s, Bobby "Blue" Bland was one of the main
creators of the modern soul-blues sound. Along with such artists as Sam
Cooke, Ray Charles, and Junior Parker, Bland developed a sound that
mixed gospel with blues and R&B. Bobby's style of soul-blues was
punctuated with a big-band sound and slick, B.B. King-flavored guitar
riffs.
Bland was born on January 27, 1930 in Rosemark, Tennessee. a
small town just outside Memphis. In 1947 he moved to the city with his
mother and began his career, first as a singer in the gospel group the
Miniatures, then in the loosely knit blues group the Beale Streeters,
which included such future blues stars as Johnny Ace, B.B. King, Junior
Parker, and Rosco Gordon.
Bland's first recordings were from 1950
to 1952, when he cut sides for the Modern and Chess labels. Being
drafted into the army in 1952 put his career on hold, but shortly after
his discharge in 1954, he began a long-term relationship with Duke
Records. This would result in dozens of records, many of them big
sellers in the R&B market.
Bobby's first Duke single, "It's My
Life, Baby," was released in 1955. Two years later, he scored with the
seminal Texas shuffle "Farther On Up The Road," which went to number 1
on the R&B charts. Follow-up records included two 1961 hits, "I Pity
the Fool," which also made it to number 1 on the R&B charts, and
"Turn on Your Love Light," which went to number 2. "That's the Way Love
Is," a 1963 release, gave Bland his third number 1 hit. His record “Two
Steps from the Blues,” (1961) is considered a classic, and a definitive
example of the soul blues style which he masters.
From 1957 to
1961 Bland played the chitlin' circuit with Junior Parker and his band,
the Blue Flames. But in 1961 Bland broke with Parker, went out on his
own, and rose to his greatest popularity. Because Bland neither composed
nor played an instrument, he relied on others for songs and inspired
instrumentation. Joe Scott, his bandleader and arranger, and for years
one of Duke label owner Don Robey's chief talent scouts, helped create
Bland's big-band sound. Just as important to Bland's sound was guitarist
Wayne Bennett, who complemented the horns and Bland's vocals with
jazz-influenced solos, a la T-Bone Walker and B.B. King.
Bland
worked with Scott and Bennett until 1968 when the band broke up,
partially the result of Bland's alleged alcohol problems. But Bland
resuscitated his career in 1972, this time with producer Steve Garrie
and bandleader Ernie Fields, Jr. Rather than dwell on R&B ballads,
Garrie gave Bland a blues-based sound that resulted in two of his more
commercially successful albums: “California Album,” (1973) and “Dreamer”
(1974). Both works were released on the ABC-Dunhill label, the company
that purchased Duke in 1972.
Bland signed on with Malaco Records based out of Jackson,
Miss. One of the leading labels for Southern Soul, they have been
securing him into of a more relaxed style of singing that’s geared for a
soul pop mature audience. Since 1985 he has released over ten albums
for them delivered in his unique style of going from heartbreak to
exultation. He is still readily recognizable, and remains an original in
the genre.
Despite Bland's extensive recording catalogue, his
long- term success on the R&B charts, and his near-constant touring
(often with longtime friend B.B. King), he rarely crossed over into the
pop realm. Dozens of blues and R&B influenced rock vocalists,
however, have credited Bland as a main influence.
Bland was
inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1981 and the Rock
& Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. In 1997, he was the recipient of the
Recording Academy’s coveted Lifetime Achievement Grammy. 1998 brought
him The Blues Foundations Lifetime Achievement Award.
Robert Calvin Bland (born Robert Calvin Brooks; January 27, 1930 – June 23, 2013), known professionally as Bobby "Blue" Bland, was an American blues singer.
Bland developed a sound that mixed gospel with the blues and R&B.[1]
He was described as "among the great storytellers of blues and soul
music... [who] created tempestuous arias of love, betrayal and
resignation, set against roiling, dramatic orchestrations, and left the
listener drained but awed."[2] He was sometimes referred to as the "Lion of the Blues" and as the "Sinatra of the Blues".[3] His music was also influenced by Nat King Cole.[4]
Bland was born Robert Calvin Brooks in the small town of Barretville, Tennessee.[1][7][8]
His father, I. J. Brooks, abandoned the family not long after Robert's
birth. Robert later acquired the name "Bland" from his stepfather, Leroy
Bridgeforth, who was also called Leroy Bland.[8] Robert dropped out of school in third grade to work in the cotton fields and never graduated from school.[9]
With his mother, Bland moved to Memphis in 1947, where he started singing with local gospel groups, including the Miniatures. Eager to expand his interests, he began frequenting the city's famous Beale Street, where he became associated with a circle of aspiring musicians, including B.B. King, Rosco Gordon, Junior Parker and Johnny Ace, who collectively were known as the Beale Streeters.[1][2][10]
Early career
In 1951, talent scout Ike Turner recorded Bland for Modern Records at Tuff Green's house in Memphis.[11][12] Because Bland was illiterate, they first recorded the one song he knew, "They Call It Stormy Monday."[13][11] While the recording was never released, Bland later recorded the song in 1961, which became one of his hit singles.[14] Turner backed Bland on piano for his first two records which were released under the name Robert Bland.[14][15] Between 1951 and 1952, Bland recorded commercially unsuccessful singles for Modern and Sun Records (which licensed its recordings to Chess Records).[5] However, these records caught the attention of Duke Records.[12][16]
Bland's recordings from the early 1950s show him striving for
individuality, but his progress was halted for two years while he served
in the U.S. Army, during which time he performed in a band with the singer Eddie Fisher.[17]
When Bland returned to Memphis in 1954, several of his former
associates, including Johnny Ace, were enjoying considerable success. He
joined Ace's revue and returned to Duke Records, which was then being
run by the Houston entrepreneur Don Robey.
According to his biographer Charles Farley, "Robey handed Bobby a new
contract, which Bobby could not read, and helped Bobby sign his name on
it". The contract gave Bland just half a cent per record sold, instead
of the industry standard of 2 cents.[16]
Bland released his first single for Duke in 1955.[10] In 1956 he began touring on the Chitlin' Circuit with Junior Parker in a revue called Blues Consolidated, initially doubling as Parker's valet and driver.[18]
He began recording for Duke with the bandleader Bill Harvey and the
arranger Joe Scott, asserting his characteristic vocal style and, with
Harvey and Scott, beginning to craft the melodic big-band blues singles
for which he became famous, often accompanied by the guitarist Wayne Bennett.[16] Unlike many blues musicians, Bland played no instrument.[3]
Commercial success
Bland's first chart success came in 1957 with "Farther Up the Road", which reached number 1 on the R&B chart and number 43 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was followed by a series of hits on the R&B chart, including "Little Boy Blue" (1958).[19] He also recorded an album with Parker, Blues Consolidated, in 1958.[2] Bland's craft was most clearly heard on a series of early-1960s releases, including "Cry Cry Cry", "I Pity the Fool" (number 1 on the R&B chart in 1961) and "Turn On Your Love Light",
which became a much-covered standard by many bands. Despite credits to
the contrary—often claimed by Robey—many of these classic works were
written by Joe Scott.[1] Bland also recorded a hit version of T-Bone Walker's "Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad)", which was erroneously given the title of a different song, "Stormy Monday Blues".[2]
His last record to reach number 1 on the R&B chart was "That's the Way Love Is", in 1963,[19]
but he continued to produce a consistent run of R&B chart entries
through the mid-1960s. He barely broke into the mainstream market; his
highest-charting song on the pop chart, "Ain't Nothing You Can Do",
peaked at number 20 in 1964, in the same week in which the Beatles held down the top five spots. Bland's records mostly sold on the R&B market rather than achieving crossover success. He had 23 Top Ten hits on the Billboard R&B chart. In the book Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942–1995, by Joel Whitburn, Bland was ranked number 13 of the all-time top-charting artists.[19]
Later career
Bland, 1974
Financial pressures forced the singer to cut his touring band and in 1968 the group broke up.[20] He suffered from depression and became increasingly dependent on alcohol,[1] but he stopped drinking in 1971.[20] His record company, Duke Records, was sold to the larger ABC Records group.[20] This resulted in several successful and critically acclaimed contemporary blues and soul albums including His California Album and Dreamer,[20] arranged by Michael Omartian and produced by ABC staffer Steve Barri. The albums, including the later "follow-up" in 1977, Reflections in Blue, were recorded in Los Angeles and featured many of the city's top session musicians at the time.
The first single released from His California Album, "This
Time I'm Gone for Good" took Bland back into the pop Top 50 for the
first time since 1964 and made the R&B top 10 in late 1973. The
opening track from Dreamer, "Ain't No Love in the Heart of the City", was a strong R&B hit. A version of it was released in 1978 by the hard-rock band Whitesnake, featuring the singer David Coverdale. Much later it was sampled by Kanye West on Jay-Z's hip-hop album The Blueprint (2001). The song is also featured on the soundtrack of the crime drama The Lincoln Lawyer (2011), starring Matthew McConaughey.[21]
The follow-up, "I Wouldn't Treat a Dog" was his biggest R&B hit for
some years, climbing to number 3 in late 1974, but as usual his
strength was never the pop chart (on which it reached number 88).
Subsequent attempts at adding a disco flavor were mostly unsuccessful.[20] A return to his roots in 1980 for a tribute album to his mentor Joe Scott, produced by music veterans Monk Higgins and Al Bell, resulted in the album Sweet Vibrations, but it failed to sell well outside of his traditional "chitlin circuit" base.
In 1985, Bland signed a contract with Malaco Records,[20]
specialists in traditional Southern black music, for which he made a
series of albums while continuing to tour and appear at concerts with B. B. King.
The two had collaborated on two albums in the 1970s. Despite occasional
age-related ill health, Bland continued to record new albums for Malaco
and perform occasional tours alone, with the guitarist and producer Angelo Earl and also with B. B. King, and performed at blues and soul festivals worldwide. In 1985, the album Members Only
on Malaco reached number 45 on Billboard's R&B albums chart, and
the title song reached number 54 for R&B singles. It was his last
chart single, and became Bland's signature song for the rest of his
career. Bland was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
in 1992. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame described him as "second in
stature only to B. B. King as a product of Memphis's Beale Street blues
scene".[3]
Collaborations and tributes
The Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison was an early adherent of Bland, covering "Turn On Your Love Light" while with the band Them (he later covered "Ain't Nothing You Can't Do" on his 1974 live album It's Too Late to Stop Now),
and Bland was an occasional guest singer at Morrison's concerts. He
also included a previously unreleased version of a March 2000 duet of
Morrison and Bland singing "Tupelo Honey" on his 2007 compilation album, The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3.
Bland continued performing until shortly before his death. He died on June 23, 2013, at his home in Germantown, Tennessee, a suburb of Memphis, after what family members described as "an ongoing illness." He was 83.[8][24][25][26] He is interred at Memorial Park Cemetery in Memphis.[27] He is survived by his wife, Willie Martin Bland, and his son Rodd, who is also a musician.[2] After his death, his son Rodd told news media that Bland had recently told him that the blues musician James Cotton was Bland's half-brother.[8]
Accolades
Bland was nominated for seven Grammy Awards in the course of his career.[28]
In their sixties Houston-based prime, the music of Bobby “Blue”
Bland and his musical director Joe Scott was every bit as good as that
of Frank Sinatra and Nelson Riddle.
Ladies and gentlemen, here’s the man! I mean, the man! The sensational…the incomparable…the dynamic Bobby…Bobby Bland!
Though
it was over thirty years ago, I can still recall it as if it were
yesterday: the first time my dad dropped a needle on a Bobby “Blue”
Bland LP. Today Bland, who died in 2013, would have been 85, and in
thinking about his birthday, I was transported back to a late summer
evening in Nashville, where I heard that record. My father and I were
two Houstonians in exile, he, at almost forty, loving his new hometown
and jobs in the music business; me, at thirteen, not so thrilled with my
underachieving at a conservative Christian school where I was always a
bit of a misfit.
I had a cold can of Coke, Dad a sweaty quart of Bud. We’d set up a tabletop baseball game: Sports Illustrated’s
All-Time All-Star Baseball. We’d filled out our line-up cards: My nine
was anchored by Willie Mays and Honus Wagner; dad’s by Ty Cobb and
Mickey Mantle, and it was Walter Johnson vs. Sandy Koufax on the mound.
And before we rolled the dice for the first at-bat, Dad slipped Bland’s Here’s the Man! LP on the turntable.
At
first there was a crackle. This was an original pressing on the Duke
label (2809 Erastus St. in the Bayou City’s Fifth Ward) that Dad had
owned since his teenage years in Houston. Then a horn fanfare heralding
the first of the hype-man’s words above, all of which were punctuated by
short, crisp blasts of horns and thumping bass guitar. And then the
slinky cymbal wash of the drummer and the sultry piano of Third Ward’s
Teddy “Cry Cry” Reynolds and the chant of the whole band: “36! 22! 36!”
And then that full-throated, honey-caramel voice: My baby she looks so fine!
I was hooked from the get-go, and only more so as the album spun through the achingly gorgeous “You’re the One (That I Adore)”—“Nobody knows, allll the trouble I’ve seen, nobody, nobody but a-youuuu” encircled by a majestic guitar figure by Wayne Bennett.
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And right after that, the proto-funk sanctified freight-train that is
“Turn on Your Love Light,” with its vocal and drum breakdown, Reynolds’
repetitive piano figure, Bennett’s guitar weaving in and out of the din
like Muhammad Ali circling a foe, all culminating in Bland and the
band’s majestic gospel crescendo. Take it a little bit higher,
indeed—the song was later a live staple for the Grateful Dead in its
early days with Pigpen McKernan. (Bland’s drummer, John “Jabo” Starks,
would go on to back James Brown on tracks like “The Payback” and “Sex
Machine.”)
As the album spun on, Dad told me all about Bland’s bandleader,
Houston’s Joe Scott, one of the unsung heroes of twentieth-century
music. Even at thirteen, I could hear that Scott’s band was an absolute
machine. Scott’s arrangements perfectly melded a huge horn-section with
piano and guitar and the rippling rhythms of Starks and bassist Hamp
Simmons, all of which receded and expanded along with Bland’s
alternately gruff and tender bass-baritone.
Dad also told me of
the sinister Duke label head Don Robey, a Fifth Ward gambler who paid
his songwriters pittances for their tunes and then put his own name (or
one of his aliases, such as Deadric Malone) on the finished products.
That lead Dad into the sad tale of Johnny Ace, one of Robey’s early
hitmakers, who shot himself backstage at Houston’s City Auditorium on
Christmas Eve 1954, while he was at the height of his creative power.
Was it suicide? Russian roulette? Or had Robey had a hand in it? Dad
said that nobody knew. (Many years later, I would learn the truth: it
was damned drunken foolishness on Ace’s part. Or at least that was the
way Big Mama Thornton remembered it, and she’d been there.)
By
then Bland had taken us through a flip-side of love, with his cover of
Charlie Rich’s “Who Will the Next Be?” and the joyous, rumba-like
“You’re Worth It All.” I was in the throes of a years-long unspoken
crush to classmate Amy Simmons, a chestnut-haired beauty with huge brown
eyes and a dimple in her chin. “One of these old daaa-aa-ays, you’re gonna realize that you’re gonna…”
As the album spun on, Dad told me all about Bland’s bandleader,
Houston’s Joe Scott, one of the unsung heroes of twentieth-century
music. Even at thirteen, I could hear that Scott’s band was an absolute
machine. Scott’s arrangements perfectly melded a huge horn-section with
piano and guitar and the rippling rhythms of Starks and bassist Hamp
Simmons, all of which receded and expanded along with Bland’s
alternately gruff and tender bass-baritone.
Dad also told me of
the sinister Duke label head Don Robey, a Fifth Ward gambler who paid
his songwriters pittances for their tunes and then put his own name (or
one of his aliases, such as Deadric Malone) on the finished products.
That lead Dad into the sad tale of Johnny Ace, one of Robey’s early
hitmakers, who shot himself backstage at Houston’s City Auditorium on
Christmas Eve 1954, while he was at the height of his creative power.
Was it suicide? Russian roulette? Or had Robey had a hand in it? Dad
said that nobody knew. (Many years later, I would learn the truth: it
was damned drunken foolishness on Ace’s part. Or at least that was the
way Big Mama Thornton remembered it, and she’d been there.)
By
then Bland had taken us through a flip-side of love, with his cover of
Charlie Rich’s “Who Will the Next Be?” and the joyous, rumba-like
“You’re Worth It All.” I was in the throes of a years-long unspoken
crush to classmate Amy Simmons, a chestnut-haired beauty with huge brown
eyes and a dimple in her chin. “One of these old daaa-aa-ays, you’re gonna realize that you’re gonna…”
Bland left the last word unsung. Gonna what? Gonna come to your
senses and realize that you are the one for me, Amy Simmons? (God I was
such a love-lorn buck-toothed little dork back then.)
Next up, the Arlen / Mercer standard “Blues in the Night.”
“My
mama done told me, when I was in knee-pants, my mama done told me, son.
A woman’ll sweet-talk, and she’ll give you the big eye, but! when that
sweet talk is throouugh, a woman’s a two-face, a worr’some thing who’ll
leave you to sing…the bluuuueeees, in the night.”
I could only sigh. I can dig it, Bobby. Or at least I thought I could. Again, I was a dork.
Side
two. Dad let it slide casually that Bland and band had played his prom
back at Lamar High School in ‘62. That’s rankled me ever since. When I
graduated from Strake Jesuit 26 years later, we got some cover band.
Anyway,
next up was “Your Friends,” featuring Joe Scott’s sassy and chattering
muted trumpet over the roiling piano rolls of Reynolds as Bland sang of
his woman’s duplicitous so-called friends…And then the consummately
stately horns and guitar intro to “Ain’t That Lovin’ You,” Bland’s voice
alternating between silk and sandpaper over and over (he once said he
could sing both “Methodist-style” and “Baptist-style,” meaning both
smooth and raw), before breaking into a sort of rap:
“You know, I told you darlin’, that I’d never let you down, and no matter what you do, I’d
always be around. You treat me like a schoolboy. and that you know is
true. It makes no difference darling: I’ll take care of you.”
Cue another immaculate Joe Scott full-band crescendo.
Next,
the salacious exhalation that is the standard “Jelly, Jelly, Jelly.”
Even at my tender age, I kind of new what Bland was talking about when
he sang “Jelly, jelly, jelly, jelly stays on my mind … jelly roll killed
my pappy, and it wrung my mama stone blind.” Closing out the album was
the only dud, a twist craze remake of the classic “Further Up the Road,”
and then another show-stopper: “Stormy Monday,” that famously
impeccable remake of the T-Bone Walker classic, with Wayne Bennett’s
guitar solo so majestic and unearthly it always seems like night-time
when you hear it and dang if those notes of his don’t feel like that
they slow down the very march of time itself. (Bennett’s performance
here and elsewhere utterly transfixed a blond-haired Georgia kid by the
name of Duane Allman.)
By then dad’s Bud and my Coke were empty
and the baseball game was back in its box. My musical education had just
taken a huge leap forward. Dad had already shepherded me gently from
whatever was on Nashville’s KDF rock radio station into the sources they
had drawn from.
When I got heavily into Cream’s Disraeli Gears,
Dad turned me onto Albert King, from whom Eric Clapton lifted most of
his licks. And when I heard George Thorogood, Dad gave me a copy of
Hound Dog Taylor’s Genuine Houserocking Music, and Taylor’s
raw, primeval, distorted Chicago-style slide-guitar boogie became for me
the epitome of what blues was supposed to be about, the music I would
blast in my eardrums via my first Walkman en route to junior high
football games, the better to work myself into a psycho, head-hunting
frenzy.
Here’s the Man! taught me different. Blues could be orchestral, blues could be lush, blues could sound as urbane as it wanted to sound.
A generation prior, the young Bob Merlis—now a veteran music
publicist living in Los Angeles, and the author to the liner notes to
the Bland hits package Turn On Your Love Light: The Duke Recordings Vol. 2—had the same experience.
“I’d
always loved Chicago blues like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, and then
I ran into this, and it was almost too smooth. There wasn’t a lead
guitar per se. I mean there’s a guitar and it’s great, but it’s not
formatted like a rock band. It was formatted like the Count Basie
Orchestra, and that took some getting used to for rock and roll people.
But for some reason I really did get into it, and for me it was a very
broadening experience. It’s bizarre, I think part of it is because we
are both Bobs. I had a vested interest and then I realized, there’s
nothing better than this.”
It also showed both Merlis and me that a
great blues singer could fess up to a love of, and be influenced by,
Lawrence Welk-friendly Squaresville sounds, and yet, thanks to Scott’s
arrangements, retain all the soul of the raw masters like Muddy and the
Wolf.
“I try to do songs in a ballad-type way where it won’t be
strictly blues,” Bland once said. “Now what I basically have to rely on
is the blues but I educate myself through a wide spectrum of records and
people I think have something to offer me. For instance, I’ve always
admired Tony Bennett, Perry Como, and Andy Williams. This is the thing
that I based my blues on and I have quite a few of their records that I
listen to and learn from.”
WTF? A Perry Como-loving bluesman? It
was as if Chuck D. cited Air Supply as a key influence, or D’Angelo
started talking up Kenny G or Celine Dion.
“That was a real crisis for me,” Merlis remembers. “How could I like somebody as much as I do who admires Perry Como?”
Over the years my love of Bland’s music would only grow. His album Two Steps from the Blues
became another all-time favorite of mine, and though Bland’s voice was
pretty much shot by the seventies, some of his late period songs on the
Malaco label —most notably “Members Only”—stand the test of time.
It’s
always irked me that Bland and Joe Scott and Don Robey weren’t as
beloved as Motown or Stax. As a pioneering black record executive, Robey
blazed the trail that Berry Gordy would follow, and nothing that come
out of his Detroit hit factory bested Scott’s finest arrangements. Gordy
was feted from coast to coast, while I’d never so much as seen a
picture of Joe Scott until I bought a replica of a vintage Bobby Bland
poster off the Internet in 1999 or so.
And
with his flawless phrasing and objectively superior pipes, why wasn’t
Bland regarded by society at large as the equal or better of Frank
Sinatra? (Instead, he was known as “the Sepia Sinatra.” I’ve always
thought Sinatra should have been known as the “bronze Bobby Bland”
instead.)
Listen to the two men go head to head on “Blues in the
Night” and see for yourself. Can you honestly that Nelson Riddle’s
arrangement is better than Scott’s?
Nope. There’s proof of Northeastern cultural bias for you, in one
seven-minute lesson. If they had been boxers, Bland would have knocked
out Sinatra in the first round. But music is not sports, and superiority
can’t be proven the same way it can in the ring or between the lines.
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 8 July 1989
Bobby Bland talks about his influences,
including MOR men like Perry Como and Andy Williams, and about the ups
and downs of his career. Oh, and how C.L. Franklin gave him "the
squall".
Overview by John Broven, Blues Unlimited, 12 June 1964
WITH THE emergence of interest in blues
recordings after the war, with its resultant popularity, it was only
natural that there should be a multitude ...
Profile and Interview by John Abbey, Blues & Soul, 23 November 1973
WHEN THE news was announced that the vast
ABC/Dunhill Record complex had purchased the Duke-Peacock group of
companies, speculation began as to what ABC would ...
Profile and Interview by Dan Nooger, Phonograph Record, 11 April 1974
BOBBY BLUE Bland is a big, genial man,
born 1931 in Rosemark, Tenn., former vocalist of the legendary Memphis
"Beale Street Blues Boys," (along with ...
Live Review by Frank Bach, The Ann Arbor Sun, 15 July 1976
JUST ABOUT every time a holiday rolls
around nowadays, Bobby "Blue" Bland can be found singing down at Phelps'
Lounge, a comfortable nightclub located in an otherwise bleak ...
Retrospective and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 5 June 1982
THE BLUES speaks haltingly at first,
haltingly and quietly in a darkened room. The curtains are drawn to shut
out whatever passes for daylight during ...
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 10 July 1989
"BLUES SINGERS don't retire", said the
late Howlin' Wolf, and Bobby "Blue" Bland might well agree with him.
After thirty seven years virtually nonstop on ...
Book Review by Tony Burke, Blues & Rhythm, August 1990
BIG NICKEL PUBLICATIONS continue their
unsurpassed service of providing a mine of information to R&B record
collectors with another addition to its catalogue of books, ...
Report and Interview by Mike Atherton, Echoes, 2002
JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI, has been a music
town for over half a century. In the early 1950s, Lillian McMurry's
Trumpet label made Sonny Boy Williamson into ...
Interview by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, July 2008
As the multi-million-selling figurehead
of Simply Red, Mick Hucknall found himself in a creative cul-de-sac. On
his debut solo album, a tribute to his idol ...
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, Malaco Records, October 2010
TWENTY-FIVE years ago, searching for the
extant spirit of southern soul, I made my way to a former Pepsi-Cola
warehouse in a decidedly unlovely industrial ...
Book Review by Andy Gill, The Word, September 2011
FORGET JAMES BROWN: the hardest working
man in show business is surely bluesman Bobby "Blue" Bland, who played
over 300 shows per year, for decades ...
Bobby (Blue) Bland, Soul and Blues Balladeer, Dies at 83
PHOTO: Bobby (Blue) Bland, left, with B.B. King, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992Credit: Mark Lennihan/Associated Press
by Bill Friskics-Warren
Bobby
(Blue) Bland, the debonair balladeer whose sophisticated, emotionally
fraught performances helped modernize the blues, died on Sunday at his
home in Germantown, Tenn., a suburb of Memphis. He was 83.
His death was confirmed by his son, Rodd, who played drums in his band.
Though
he possessed gifts on a par with his most accomplished peers, Mr. Bland
never achieved the popular acclaim enjoyed by contemporaries like Ray
Charles and B. B. King. But he was nevertheless a mainstay on the
rhythm-and-blues charts and club circuit for decades.
His
vocals, punctuated by the occasional squalling shout, were restrained,
exhibiting a crooner’s delicacy of phrasing and a kind of intimate
pleading. He influenced everyone from the soul singers Otis Redding and
Wilson Pickett to rock groups like the Allman Brothers and The Band. The
rapper Jay-Z sampled Mr. Bland’s 1974 single “Ain’t No Love in the
Heart of the City” on his 2001 album, “The Blueprint.”
Mr.
Bland’s signature mix of blues, jazz, pop, gospel and country music was
a good decade in the making. His first recordings, made in the early
1950s, found him working in the lean, unvarnished style of Mr. King,
even to the point of employing falsetto vocal leaps patterned after Mr.
King’s. Mr. Bland’s mid-’50s singles were more accomplished; hits like
“It’s My Life, Baby” and “Farther Up the Road” are now regarded as
hard-blues classics, but they still featured the driving rhythms and
stinging electric guitar favored by Mr. King and others. It wasn’t until
1958’s “Little Boy Blue,” a record inspired by the homiletic delivery
of the Rev. C. L. Franklin, that Mr. Bland arrived at his trademark
vocal technique.
“That’s
where I got my squall from,” Mr. Bland said, referring to the sermons
of Mr. Franklin — “Aretha’s daddy,” as he called him — in a 1979
interview with the author Peter Guralnick. “After I had that I lost the
high falsetto. I had to get some other kind of gimmick, you know, to be
identified with.”
The corresponding
softness in Mr. Bland’s voice, a refinement matched by the elegant
formal wear in which he appeared onstage, came from listening to records
by pop crooners like Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett and Perry Como.
Mr. Bland was honored at the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2012. Credit: Nikki Boertman. The Commercial Appeal, via Associated Press
Just
as crucial to the evolution of Mr. Bland’s sound was his affiliation
with the trumpet player and arranger Joe Scott, for years the director
of artists and repertory for Duke Records in Houston. Given to dramatic,
brass-rich arrangements, Mr. Scott, who died in 1979, supplied Mr.
Bland with intricate musical backdrops that set his supple baritone in
vivid relief.
The two men accounted
for more than 30 Top 20 rhythm-and-blues singles for Duke from 1958 to
1968, including the No. 1 hits “I Pity the Fool” and “That’s the Way
Love Is.” Steeped in vulnerability and emotional candor, his
performances earned him a devoted female audience.
Though only four of his singles from these years — “Turn On Your Love Light,”
“Call on Me,” “That’s the Way Love Is” and “Ain’t Nothing You Can Do” —
crossed over to the pop Top 40, Mr. Bland’s recordings resonated with
the era’s blues-leaning rock acts. The Grateful Dead made “Love Light” a
staple of their live shows. The Band recorded his 1964 single “Share
Your Love With Me” for their 1973 album, “Moondog Matinee.” Van Morrison
included a version of “Ain’t Nothing You Can Do” on his 1974 live set,
“It’s Too Late to Stop Now.”
Mr. Bland
himself broke through to pop audiences in the mid-’70s with “His
California Album” and its more middle-of-the-road follow-up, “Dreamer.”
But his greatest success always came in the rhythm-and-blues market,
where he placed a total of 63 singles on the charts from 1957 to 1985.
He signed with the Mississippi-based Malaco label in 1985 and made a
series of well-received albums that appealed largely to fans of
traditional blues and soul music.
Mr. Bland was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement in 1997.
Robert
Calvin Brooks was born on Jan. 27, 1930, in Millington, Tenn., just
north of Memphis. His father, I. J. Brooks, abandoned the family when
Bobby was very young. His mother, Mary Lee, married Leroy Bridgeforth,
who also went by the name Leroy Bland, when Bobby was 6.
Mr.
Bland dropped out of school in the third grade to work in the cotton
fields. Though he never learned to write music or play an instrument, he
cited the music of the pioneering blues guitarist T-Bone Walker as an
early influence.
Bobby (Blue) Bland performing in Houston, around 1964. Credit: Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images
After
moving to Memphis in 1947, Mr. Bland began working in a garage and
singing spirituals in a group called the Miniatures. In 1949 he joined
the Beale Streeters, a loose-knit collective whose members at various
points included Johnny Ace, Rosco Gordon, Earl Forest and B. B. King,
all of whom went on to become popular blues performers as solo artists.
Mr.
Bland also traveled as a part of the Johnny Ace Revue and recorded for
the Chess, Modern and Duke labels before being drafted into the Army in
1952. Several of these recordings were made under the supervision of the
producer Sam Phillips at Sun Studios in Memphis; none sold particularly
well.
After his time in the service
Mr. Bland worked as a chauffeur, a valet and an opening act for the
Memphis rhythm-and-blues singer Junior Parker, just as he had for Mr.
King. He toured as a headliner throughout the ’60s, playing as many as
300 one-night engagements a year, a demanding schedule that exacerbated
his struggles with alcohol. He performed widely, in the United States
and abroad, until shortly before his death.
In
addition to his son, Rodd, Mr. Bland’s survivors include his wife,
Willie Mae; a daughter, Patrice Moses; and four grandchildren. Rodd
Bland said his father had recently learned that the blues singer and
harmonica player James Cotton was his half-brother.
Mr.
Bland’s synthesis of Southern vernacular music and classy big-band
arrangements made him a stylistic pioneer, but whatever he accomplished
by way of formal innovation ultimately derived from his underlying faith
in the emotional power of the blues.
“I’d
like to be remembered as just a good old country boy that did his best
to give us something to listen to and help them through a lot of sad
moments, happy moments, whatever,” he said in a 2009 interview with the
syndicated “House of Blues Radio Hour.”
“Whatever moments you get of happiness, use it up, you know, if you can, because it don’t come that often.”
Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on June 25, 2013, Section B, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Bobby (Blue) Bland, Crooner and Bluesman, Dies at 83. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper
Bobby 'Blue' Bland, who has died aged 83, was among the great storytellers of blues and soul music. In songs such as I Pity the Fool, Cry Cry Cry
and Who Will the Next Fool Be, he created tempestuous arias of love,
betrayal and resignation, set against roiling, dramatic orchestrations,
and left the listener drained but awed.
It
was a skill that came gradually. His husky voice was gorgeous from the
start, but as a young man he followed BB King – for a while literally,
as his valet and chauffeur – and his singing took on a special character
only after he began to study the recorded sermons of the Detroit
preacher CL Franklin,
Aretha's father. "That's where I got my squall from," he recalled. That
alchemy of blues and gospel cadences would create one of the most
affecting voices in black music.
He was born just north of Memphis in Tennessee and in his late teens he hung out in the city with King, the pianist Rosco Gordon and the singer Johnny Ace, an informal musical gang known as the Beale Streeters. He made a few recordings for Chess
and Modern, and then signed with Duke. After a few inconsequential
singles, he began working with the bandleader Bill Harvey and the
arranger Joe Scott, and within a few years, in pieces such as Little Boy
Blue and I'll Take Care of You, this collaboration transformed his recordings from the equivalent of low-budget B-movies to widescreen epics.
For much of the 50s Bland toured the "chitlin'
circuit" of southern clubs and theatres with Duke's other star, the
singer and harmonica player Little Junior Parker, in a revue called Blues
Consolidated. That was also the title, in 1958, of their first, shared,
album, notable not only for hits such as Bland's Farther Up the Road,
which topped the R&B chart in 1957, but also for its overheated
sleevenotes by "Dzondira Lalsac" (probably Duke's proprietor Don Robey),
in which Bland becomes "the freewheeling master rogue of the Blue Note,
rockin' 'em this and that-a-way, across the forty-eight!!!".
Some
of Bland's best work, done under Scott's direction in 1960-63, appeared
on the albums Two Steps from the Blues, Here's the Man... and Call on
Me, such as the ferocious homily Yield Not to Temptation, the joyous
Turn on Your Love Light and a virtuoso reading of the blues standard
(Call It) Stormy Monday, featuring a guitar line by Wayne Bennett that
has become a blues guitarists' set piece. Occasionally, saccharine songs
and lush orchestrations would move Bland rather more than two steps
from the blues, but his admirers endured his straying and waited for him
to find his way back with poised renderings of strong material such as
Blind Man and Black Night.
During
the 60s Bland placed more than a dozen records in the R&B top 10,
reaching No 1 with I Pity the Fool and That's the Way Love Is, but his
kind of soul music was being eclipsed by the catchier sounds of Motown
and the funkier ones of Stax, and by the end of the decade he was
working less and drinking more. Duke was sold to ABC, which made Bland
the object of crossover marketing, rebranding him as a mainstream soul
singer. Bland dutifully strolled into the Technicolor sunsets of His
California Album (1973), Dreamer (1974) and Reflections in Blue (1977),
and in Get On Down with Bobby Bland (1975) he sauntered along
Nashville's Music Row.
Bobby 'Blue' Bland's core audience was African American, mature and predominantly female. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives
Some
relief from this high-sugar diet was provided by recorded encounters
with his old friend King, the first in 1974 at a studio-recorded junket
where they genially reminisced and swapped favourite songs, the second
in 1976 at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles, where Bland, previously
rather the junior partner, was more assertive and received top billing.
They continued to give joint concerts for years afterwards.
While
King and other blues artists were increasingly performing for young
white listeners, Bland preferred to tour the southern circuit and play
to his core audience: African American, mature, predominantly female.
Having spent the early 80s making half a dozen lavish albums for MCA in a
vaguely Barry White manner, in 1985 he signed with Malaco,
a Mississippi company specialising in southern soul, and the move
brought him closer to the people who cared for him most. This last stage
of his recording career produced 10 albums of well-honed material by
Malaco's inhouse writers and producers, in which he embarked again on
the stormy seas of heartbreak and ecstasy with an even surer hand on the
wheel. His last release was Blues at Midnight in 2003.
Bland was admired by artists including Van Morrison, who featured him at some of his concerts, and Mick Hucknall,
who made the album Tribute to Bobby in 2008. He was inducted into the
Blues Hall of Fame in 1981 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992,
and received a Grammy lifetime achievement award in 1997.
He is survived by his wife, Willie Martin Bland, and his son Rodd, who is also a musician.
Bobby Bland (Robert Calvin Brooks), blues and soul singer, born 27 January 1930; died 23 June 2013
https://www.salon.com/2000/03/14/bland/
Bobby "Blue" Bland
A master musician with extraordinary staying power, for decades his
evocative vocal style has taken the blues out of the barroom and into the
bedroom.
If there was any justice, you would hear Bobby Bland on the
radio at night. Especially on the car radio, when you were driving long
stretches on highways that were new to you but looked familiar all the
same. Past neon cocktail glasses and buzzing vacancy signs on beat-up
motels where patrons choose to park around in back and everyone is
registered under some novel name. His is the music of desire and regret,
gaudy and permanent, like a tattoo of some woman's name whose face you
can hardly recall.
As the show-biz name he has worn and discarded will tell you, Bobby
"Blue" Bland sings the blues, but that doesn't really do him justice.
Though he began as one of many Roy Brown imitators, shouting his way
through the jump blues, he grew closer to -- and further from -- a true
blues singer. In a number of remarkable songs ("Cry, Cry, Cry," "I Pity
the Fool," "Turn on Your Love Light," "Lead Me On") recorded primarily
in the 1950s and '60s, Bland invented a sound that felt both unique and
downright lived-in.
While the horn-driven Joe Scott arrangements that buoyed Bland's work
formed a natural bridge between the big band sound of the '40s and the
soul revues of the '60s, there was something odd and angst-ridden about
the tales they told. Beneath titles as lurid as pulp fiction paperbacks
("Woke Up Screaming," "A Million Miles From Nowhere"), penned by
anonymous artists under the single moniker of Deadric Malone (an
arrangement that allowed Bland's manager, Don Robey, to pocket all the
proceeds), were songs that snuck in just under the curtain of kitsch.
They were songs written in lipstick on bar napkins, found beneath
half-empty glasses in roadside taverns. While Bland's singing owed
something to crooners like Tony Bennett and Perry Como, the sound was
rougher -- and just slightly removed. It was, as one of his early '60s
songs had it, "Two Steps From the Blues."
Of course, there is no justice, and you won't hear Bobby Bland on the
radio, or much of anywhere, really. You are more likely to hear some
white band covering one of his tunes. Eric Clapton is still performing
"Farther up the Road," the Grateful Dead used to close their early San
Francisco shows with "Turn on Your Love Light" (Pigpen McKernan was no
great singer, but the band's two-drum attack owed something to blues
revues) and the Band paid homage with "Share Your Love With Me."
But Bland is still going strong. Despite bouts with drink, drugs and
depression -- not to mention a triple bypass in 1995 -- he performed
over 100 shows last year. (That's down from the 300 gigs a year that was
his standard for decades.) A fair amount of his work remains in print
(the best of it captured on three double-CD packages from his day on the
Duke label), he still records for the Malaco label (a sort of living
Smithsonian for blues musicians) and he has been inducted into the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame. And like some roadhouse Sisyphus, he seems by and
large resigned to the life he has chosen.
"Oh, it gets kind of tiresome sometimes," he told Peter Guralnick
back in 1979, "but you get a schedule and you just go and do your work.
Because, really, that's what's paying the bills."
"One month from the day I first met you/Your promises proved to be untrue Step by step, I've been a fool/That's why I'm two steps from the blues."
The cover of Bland's 1961 album "Two Steps From the Blues" is a work
of art, a Mondrian in black and blue. It's a color photograph of the
singer standing in front of a one-story building at the bottom of, yes,
two steps. His pants are gray, his shirt is black. His coat is thrown
over his shoulder, Sinatra style, and dark glasses hide his eyes from
the sunlight. The building that represents "the blues" is paneled in
squares of blue and white -- you would think it was his hotel room
except his name appears on one of the panels, as if he were perpetually
playing there. (Talk about bringing your work home with you.) In fact,
the only thing that isn't black or blue or white in the photo is Bobby
Bland's brown skin.
The road that brought Bland to this place of perpetual emotion began
in the South and crisscrossed the country, six nights a week. The singer
was born Robert Calvin Bland on Jan. 27, 1930, in the little town of
Rosemark, Tenn., just outside of Memphis. He quit school in the third
grade and remains practically illiterate today. He speaks in a garbled
syntax at times, and is suspicious of talk he doesn't understand.
"I didn't like to work much, but I got a job at Bender's Garage,
which was $27 a week," Bland told Guralnick in what remains the
definitive piece about the singer (collected in "Lost Highway"). "And I
started to sing on weekends. Spirituals. Just a small amount of it. We
called ourselves the Pilgrim Travelers after a group that was big at the
time. Then I started hanging around Beale Street with a bunch of guys.
They used to give an amateur show down by the park at the Palace Theater
every Wednesday night. Naturally we came to call ourselves the Beale
Streeters."
Those guys -- Johnny Ace, B.B. King, Roscoe Gordon, Earl Forrest --
were playing for free in the late '40s. Heavily influenced by guitarist
T-Bone Walker, they were forging a blues style that would define the
next couple of decades. And what they were doing did not go unnoticed.
Bland's first recording (backed by Gordon) was produced by Sam Phillips
and later released on Chess records. In 1952, four songs produced by Ike
Turner appeared on the Los Angeles-based Modern label. The man had
something -- these blues mavens could smell it -- and in 1953 he signed
to the Duke label, then owned by Memphis DJ David James Mattis.
Almost immediately, Bland was drafted, and he celebrated by recording
the mournful "Army Blues" ("Uncle Sam done got me/That is the awful
news"). After a two-and-a-half year stint, Bland returned to civilian
life to find that the Duke label had been sold to Houston music
entrepreneur Don Robey -- a Mephistophelean character who would define
Bland's life and career, for good and ill, over the next two decades.
Half-black and half-Jewish, Robey came from Houston's middle-class
black community. He had dropped out of high school and hustled a living
gambling and running a taxi business before stumbling into the music
business. He promoted concerts and ran a record store in the '30s and
'40s, where he doubtless got a good look at the seamier aspects of the
racket. His gospel label, Peacock, recorded such legendary acts as the
Dixie Hummingbirds and the Mighty Clouds of Joy. In 1952 he merged the
label with Duke and doubled his roster, crossing into secular territory
with such popular Duke acts as Ace (who achieved immortality playing
Russian roulette on Christmas Eve, 1954), Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown and
the relatively untested Bland.
History has not been kind to Robey. While some apologists note the
difficulties a black man must have faced running his own label (10 years
before Berry Gordy), most musical historians tend to dwell on Robey's
pugnacious nature and sheer greed. Typical are the remarks of Francis
Davis, who in "The History of the Blues" limns Robey as "a 100 percent
sleazeball," and adds, "as if claiming co-composer credit for most of
his performers' songs wasn't bad enough, he also threatened them with
bodily harm or death when they objected."
While Davis characterizes Bland as "one of Robey's field hands," the
singer has a different outlook. "There's some people that told me the
best thing for me is go to the country and getcha plow and mule," he
told a reporter in 1999. When pressed on Robey's shady business
practices (there is scant evidence that the entrepreneur contributed as
much as one line to the songs he took credit for), the singer demurred.
"Well, he's in business. Each company that you get with does the same
thing. But Robey did a lot of people a lot of favors -- me, for one,
gettin' a chance to record."
A chance to record and a chance to define himself. Pairing the singer
with producer-arranger Joe Scott and band leader Bill Harvey proved an
act of genius. Of Scott, Bland says simply, "I'd say he was everything."
He was like Nelson Riddle to Bland's Frank Sinatra, creating a
landscape in which the singer's complex, vibrant tones could play while
reining him in with rhythm. Working with Scott, Bland learned phrasing
and timing, and to this day the singer can do more with a simple lyric
-- racing it like a motorbike one minute, toying with it like a yo-yo
the next -- than almost any blues singer you can name. If Robey was
Bobby Bland's serpent, Joe Scott was his apple.
Bland's early outings on Duke were riveting, if not exactly
groundbreaking. "It's My Life, Baby" (1955) could have been done by
Muddy Waters (no small praise). It's exciting even now: Roy Gaines'
electric guitar slices though the rolling horns like a hot knife through
butter, and Bland's vocal exudes the kind of dick-swinging confidence
that was the staple of most blues singers. The lyric (attributed to
Robey and "Ferdinand Washington") was rather tongue-in-cheek, while
foreshadowing the singer's future problems: "Well you're always tellin'
people I drink too much/but everytime I get a bottle you add your little
touch."
Other early hits gave scarcely a glimpse of the sensitive-guy persona
Bland would later perfect. The 1956 "You've Got Bad Intentions,"
another roadhouse blues, contains this put-down: "You say you can't go
on living/If you can't be by my side/Gonna send you a bottle of
poison/Please commit suicide." (Well, he did say please.)
Bland was developing the formula for his ultimate success (a success
that would yield more than 30 Top 20 R&B singles) even as he was
breaking through with a familiar blues sound. "If Bland's greatest
natural gift was his ability to make even his shouts sound intimate, his
genius (or Robey's) was in realizing that women bought blues records,
too," wrote Davis. Photos of Bland performing in the '50s testify: Women
reach out to touch the hem of his sharkskin garment while the singer --
a big man with a croissant of a nose and an ungainly, "Eraserhead" pomp
-- caresses the microphone like a lover. He left the rambling-guy songs
to other singers; Bobby "Blue" Bland wanted to stick around and talk
about love.
"It was '57 before I got a style of my own," the singer said years
later. "Well, I was listening to Franklin a lot at the time -- that's
Reverend C.L. Franklin, Aretha's
daddy -- 'The Eagle Stirreth His Nest' -- and that's where I got my
squall from. After I had lost the high falsetto. You see, I had to get
some other kind of gimmick, you know, to be identified with."
If "the Squall" -- a honking, throat-clearing verbal tic that sounds
at times like a prelude to cardiac arrest -- was taken straight from the
church, so were other aspects of Bobby Bland's act. "You could go out
on Saturday night and have a ball," he told Guralnick, "but on Sunday
church was a must." Lyrics were inspired by gospel songs and scripture;
"Yield not to temptation (while I'm gone)," he commanded in one song,
while "You're the One" twisted a familiar lyric thusly:
"Nobody knows the trouble I've seen/Nobody knows but you."
For in the songs that Bland sang -- songs specifically crafted for
his act -- there is always a sense of identification with another. It is
not the loneliness of one he sings about but the loneliness of two.
"You know how it feels," he sang in the epic 1959 song "Lead Me On,"
"you understand/What it is to be a stranger/In this unfriendly land."
Here the singer plays both Orpheus and Eurydice, reaching out a hand to
lead and be rescued, simultaneously.
Is it any wonder the women all went ape-shit for Bobby "Blue" Bland?
While most blues singers were dusting their broom or throwing their
women out the door, Bland was embracing commitment. He made
responsibility sound downright sexy. Between 1959 and 1963, with a
series of hits with titles like "I'll Take Care of You", "Don't Cry No
More" and "That's the Way Love Is," Bland brought the blues into the
bedroom and paved the way for the seductive sounds of soul. His
influence could be heard in the later recordings of crossover artists
like Otis Redding and Sam Moore, and even white boys like Welshman Tom
Jones.
But try and hear Bobby "Blue" Bland
"Without a warning, you broke my heart/You took it darlin' and you tore it apart You left me sitting in the dark crying/You said your love for me was dying." -- "Turn On Your Love Light," 1961
Bland saw some crossover success himself with songs like "Turn on
Your Love Light," a great tune that could be a blueprint for many of his
best records. The jubilee-style big-brass opening sets up the
listeners' expectations for something happy -- until Bland's big
baritone comes in and cuts the melody off at the knees. By the time he
hits the chorus, beseeching his fickle lover -- "Turn on your light! Let
it shine on me!" -- the song has moved right back into church even as
two drummers jive with the singer. It is a supremely sad song in an
almost joyous setting, and the tension these conflicting forces create
is still breathtaking.
But for all his successes, Bland was not getting rich. With
label-mate Junior Parker he toured constantly (under the banner "Blues
Consolidated"), staying loyal to Robey even as friends pointed out that
he was getting ripped off. "I've had several offers, you know," he told
Jim and Amy O'Neal in the periodical Living Blues, "but this was the
first offer that really got me out of the gutter, was Duke label. So I
feel more or less partial to the company."
Throughout the '60s, Bland continued to tour beneath the radar of
most white audiences. "I played the chitlin circuit," he said, "black
only. I have my own people to thank for keeping me out here this long.
They the only ones who had a chance to hear me."
While former band-mate (and onetime boss) B.B. King conquered rock
arenas, Bland remained largely in obscurity (even as white stars like
Boz Scaggs and Van Morrison touted his work). Perhaps it was because he
didn't play an instrument, or write his own songs. Like country's George Jones, Bland was
the instrument, a living embodiment of all he sang about. Any other ax
would have been played out by now. Even as his phrasing bespoke a
greater sophistication, the emotion beneath it was hard won. Asked in a
concert interview in 1998 about his influences, Bland commented, "Nat
King Cole for the diction. The feeling came from disappointments and
what have you."
What Bland had, among other things, was a monumental drinking
problem. "I was an alcoholic for 18 years," he told Guralnick. "The
reason I can say it is because I know it happened." While he boasted of
never missing a gig, "I was drinking up to about three fifths a day,
man. I'm just so happy that I found out that I don't have to do that no
more, that's why I can talk about it now."
Not surprisingly, Bland's drinking bottomed out about the same time
his career did. In 1968, after more than a decade of solid touring, Joe
Scott left, never to collaborate with Bland again. His replacement, Mel
Jackson, still leads the band in the Scott style much as a series of
guitarists (most notably Wayne Bennett) traded licks with Bland in a
call-and-response dialogue style derived from T-Bone Walker. (On numbers
such as "Stormy Monday Blues" and "Black Night," Bennett sounds like
the singer's conscience, an empty bottle and a broken heart all at
once.) But the end of the Scott-Bland union signaled a sea change in the
singer's career.
Bland quit drinking in 1971, Two years later, ABC-Dunhill bought the
Duke label and released a duet of "comeback" albums (though, in fact,
Bland had never gone anywhere), "His California Album" (1973) and
"Dreamer" (1974). By relying on such studio stalwarts as guitarist Larry
Carlton and material made popular by others -- "(If Loving You Is
Wrong) I Don't Want to Be Right," "I've Got to Use My Imagination" --
the records brought him to a wider audience without breaking any new
ground. His collaborations with B.B. King ("Together for the First
Time," 1974, and "Together Again," 1976) also proved popular, if rather
uninspired.
Through it all he kept working, touring, recording. He divorced his
wife Marty in the '70s and now travels with Willie Mae, his wife of 20
years. After moving to Malaco Records in 1984, Bland found himself
playing more dates off the chitlin circuit. It was about then that I saw
him at the San Francisco Blues Festival, an annual event held on a vast
lawn in the city's pristine Marina district. Even as band leader Joe
Hardin tried to warm up the crowd by telling them anyone can have the
blues, the atmosphere put the lie to his testimony. Chinese kites sailed
in a cloudless sky as below, while white blues fans tried to decide
which microbrew to try next.
Bland's set was rather perfunctory, and the vaunted squall was more
of an annoyance than anything else: Most of the time it sounded like he
was going to spit on the Frisbee-tossing crowd. But down in the middle a
group of black women were hollering like an amen choir, waving hats and
scarves at the singer who beseeched them to remember him "late in the
midnight hour, when you don't have your main squeeze around."
In 1992, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; in 1998
he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Blues Foundation.
(Before the ceremony, held at Dan Ackroyd's House of Blues in Los
Angeles, Bland and his party had to wait outside while the management
found passes for them.) That same year, Malaco filmed Bland in concert
back on Beale Street; the videotape ("The Night, the Street, the Man")
shows the singer in fine fellow, three years after his heart surgery.
Slow and stately in a three-piece white suit, sporting a diamond
pinkie ring as big as the Ritz, Bland appears unbowed by four decades of
hard living. Some of the higher notes have been replaced by a pained
whisper, and he takes a stool almost immediately, handing his bow tie to
his valet (a job he once performed for King and Junior Parker).
The folks in the audience, including fellow blues veterans Johnny
Taylor and Otis Rush, treat him like it's old home week, shouting during
his act. They go crazy when the valet hands him a black handkerchief as
he launches into "I Pity the Fool," and cheer perversely when he
announces, "It seems like my luck's been running bad here lately."
It's a good set, tight but not by-the-numbers, though Bland never
looks completely at ease. Maybe it's the cameras, catching his every
move; maybe it's the floral arrangements at the front of the stage that
create a barrier between him and his fans. Whatever it is, his eyes
betray a certain wariness as he sings the funereal "St. James Infirmary"
for the millionth time. That's a song about seeing your lover dying --
the ultimate break-up -- but Bobby "Blue" Bland keeps right on living.
I've seen that look in his eyes before,
in an old photograph collected in Robert Palmer's "Rock & Roll: An
Unruly History." Behind a shuttered motel, Bland and some of Duke's men
are gathered on a break between shows on the chitlin circuit. The hair
is conked, the rings are big. Junior Parker seems to be licking his
fingers while the other men are all jiving and laughing at some unseen
joke. Only Bland, hunkered down in the center, looks like he's ready for
the worst. His focus is somewhere behind the camera, and his hat is in
his hand as he tries to stay just a few steps ahead of oblivion.
Bobby “Blue” Bland mesmerized audiences with a voice both velvety and
primal, controlled and impassioned. His career was one of innovation
and artistic integrity, spanning nearly his entire life.
B.B. King Inducts Bobby "Blue" Bland
B.B. King Inducts Bobby "Blue" Bland at the 1992 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony
Hall of Fame Essay
by Joe McEwen
It's a procession that seems to stand outside time: the Bobby “Blue”
Bland Revue, criss-crossing the country through a helter-skelter
schedule of one-night stands. Peter Guralnick has called it the Lost
Highway, but for those who wake up wondering (or not caring) what town
it is, the name is always the same: The Road. At the helm of this weary
caravan is the star, Bobby “Blue” Bland.
He seems an unlikely sex symbol for black America, yet for many
that's what he is and always will remain. A big, huggable man with an
immediately endearing smile, he sings blues songs with a controlled
intensity and slight insouciance, a style that lends even his most
caustic lyrics a vulnerable softness. Others of his generation have
come and gone, but Bobby “Blue” Bland remains King of The Road.
"To me, there is no better singer to sing any kind of song'
Without a doubt, Two Steps from the Blues is the
definitive Bobby "Blue" Bland album and one of the great records in
electric blues and soul-blues. In fact, it's one of the key albums in
modern blues, marking a turning point when juke joint blues were
seamlessly blended with gospel and Southern soul, creating a distinctly
Southern sound where all of these styles blended so thoroughly it was
impossible to tell where one began and one ended. Given his Memphis
background, Bobby "Blue" Bland was perfectly suited for this kind of
amalgam as envisioned by producer/arranger Joe Scott,
who crafted these wailing horn arrangements that sounded as impassioned
as Bland's full-throated, anguished vocals. It helped, of course, that
the songs were uniformly brilliant. Primarily from the pen of Deadric Malone, along with fellow Duke head Scott
(among others), these are the tunes that form the core of Bobby "Blue"
Bland's legend and the foundation of soul-blues: "Two Steps from the
Blues," "I Don't Want No Woman," "Cry, Cry, Cry," "I'm Not Ashamed,"
"Lead Me On," "Little Boy Blue" -- songs so good they overshadow
standards like "St. James Infirmary." These are songs that blur the
division between Ray Charles
soul and Chess blues, opening the doors for numerous soul and blues
sounds, from Muscle Shoals and Stax through the modern-day
soul-bluesman. It's possible to find key tracks, even the entire album,
on the numerous Bobby "Blue" Bland collections released over the years,
but this remains an excellent, essential blues album on its own terms --
one of the greatest ever released.
A fairly revolutionary blues record for its
time, Two Steps from the Blues matched Bobby Bland's soulful singing
with the gritty swagger of the blues. Like his friend B.B. King, Bland
was influenced by a variety of musical idioms and many of them are
reflected on this record, considered by most to be his finest. Though
many of the songs bare record executive Don Robey's name, it can be
assumed that the real writer was Bland's longtime collaborator Joe
Scott. Scott and Bland created an album that drew from everything from
traditional folk to refined urban blues to the gospel church to modern
soul music. In the process, they created one of the most beloved blues
records of the 1960s.
The variety of influences means that the
record also spans a wide emotional spectrum. Thus, no matter the
listener's mood, there's a song here to match it. In fact, Two Steps
from the Blues will likely shape the listener's mood more than once
during the listen. It is an impressive record which shows off not only
the versatility of its creators, but of the genre as a whole. And it's a
whole lot of fun to listen to, as well.
Who was the greatest singer to emerge from the unique creative
conditions that marked the Memphis music scene in the early fifties? For
most there can be only one answer. However, if the blues means anything
at all to you then Bobby Bland and not Elvis must surely take the
prize. In fact, without in any way decrying the achievements of the
white pioneers of rock ‘n’ roll, when you listen to Bobby “Blue” Bland
you enter a world of grown-up emotions — of male desires, dreams and
frailties that “popular” music seldom claims as it own. In an era when
Boy and Man were terms deeply imbued with political ramifications, Bland
explored and expressed a complex, psychological landscape with a
searing intensity that has lost little of its power. Listen to “I Pity
the Fool” or “Cry, Cry, Cry” and marvel. These were records not made for
restless, hormonal adolescents in the suburbs but for (and about) the
black working-classes and the troubles that beset their lives. No one
ever dismissed Bobby Bland as a “teenager” — even if they may have
called him “Boy” (behind his broad back, I suspect).
Singularly gifted, even amid the wealth of talent that was drawn to
Beale St.( that most evocative of place-names), Bland — a garage hand
out of Rosemark, Tennessee — carved out a career of remarkable
consistency and longevity. Not only that but he kept a black audience
when the blues was struggling to survive, barely ever made a bad record
and repeatedly managed to update his sound without sacrificing one ounce
of integrity. The uncrowned king of the “chitlin’ circuit” (as recently
analysed in these columns by Mark Antony Neal), he was able to do all
this simply because he possessed a voice that was unique, instantly
identifiable and perfectly tailored to the requirements of that most
personal and profound of all American musical genres.
There is a tendency to forget
that the Blues is essentially a vocal art form. Such has been the impact
of the 12-bar and AAB structures, so ubiquitous the influence of blues
guitar licks — not to mention the endlessly copied harmonica,piano and
sax riffs — that it is easy to overlook the fact that the human voice is
the emotional and spiritual centre of the music. Hence the tendency of
instruments to try to emulate cries, moans and pleadings.Even today,
eighty years on, you can play someone two choruses of Bessie Smith
singing and say, “That, my friend, is the Blues.” and they — ancient and
arcane as the accompaniment might sound to them — will fully
understand. It is the same with Bland. His authority and profundity of
feeling are unmatched in the post war period. The sheer weight with
which he invested even the most casual of lyrics puts him in the most
exclusive of clubs.
If this collection was a biography then the term “definitive” would
be appended to it. That is so even if the compilation stops before
dealing with his (successful) latter years at Malaco. Fifty tracks from
1952-1982 — including all the key singles, informative liner notes from
historian Bill Dahl, plus detailed info about each session — add up to a
package that no blues, soul or rock ‘n’ roll fan can afford to miss. I
would also add that no social historian or literary critic who deems him
or herself interested in African-American culture should be without a
copy — though, sadly, I have little confidence in that recommendation
being taken up.
Starting with the mournful “Lovin Blues” — an “after hours” track so
redolent of period and place you can almost reach out and touch it —
this double CD takes the listener on a journey that is epic in its scope
but intimate in each of its moods. We pass through the driving blues of
Bland’s early years with the maverick impresario Don Robey. The young
hero shows a forceful, aggressive side to his personality as guitar
gunslingers like Ray Gaines and Clarence Holliman cook up Saturday night
storms behind him. “It’s My Life Baby” and “I Woke Up Screaming” are
raw, rocking affairs that work hard for their money. Then enter
trumpeter Joe Scott. “I knew I had a good voice but I didn’t know what
to do with it until Joe came along” declared Bland, not quite truthfully
but fittingly. Scott became Bland’s arranger and took some real chances
— adding nods to other genres, sometimes including sweeping strings and
complex horn arrangements — crucially, encouraging the strong gospel
side to Bland’s vocal and generally upping the emotional register.
Scott ushered in the golden age.
For a decade, from 1958 on, Bland developed a soulful, increasingly
easy-paced blues style that yielded classic after classic, all of which
registered on the Rhythm and Blues charts and significantly few of which
crossed over. The songs were generally built around a world-weary
persona who let you glimpse all of his deepest feelings and
frustrations. Whether revisiting and, amazingly, often improving on
standards like “Stormy Monday” or “Chains of Love”, tackling social
issues on tracks such as “Poverty” or endlessly charting the travails of
the heart (“Don’t Cry No More”, “That’s the Way Love Is”, “Ain’t
Nothing You Can Do” etc.) barely an inflection or a sentiment is out of
place. The white blues-rock fans found it an overly rich diet and Bland
never became one of their heroes (anyhow, you could rip-off a guitar
lick but what the hell were you going to do with that voice?). The black
record-buyers stuck with him though and a remarkable 45 R&B hits
for an “outdated” style, in a notably non-nostalgic market, is testimony
to the rapport between singer and audience that was engendered by these
sides.
As in all the best heroic sagas the Gods had a hand in things. In
1957 Bland was laid low and a tonsillectomy robbed him of his upper
register. What could have been a disaster was averted by Bland’s
adopting the Rev. Franklin’s ( Aretha’s dad) throaty “squall” and he
then proceeded to turn it into a trademark technique. There is nothing
like it — although Bobby Womack has made good if rather more frenetic
use of the same device. In Bland’s control it is added to the end of
lines to do what artists have always tried to do — to express the
inexpressible — that which is beyond language. If that sounds over
intellectualised — just say it makes the hair stand up on the back of
your neck. In itself it would guarantee immortality. As a component of a
formidable battery of talents it was merely the finishing touch to a
soul-drenched, Southern style that set the standard for the period.
Those Duke singles show a tenderness, a strength and an almost
unbearable intensity that made Bland number one in his field. Try “Who
Will the Next Fool Be” or “Blind Man” for good examples of the complete
product — although any of a dozen cuts will do.
The long association with Robey’s label eventually ended. Bland had
kept working, in the studio and on the road, mixing gospel and soul with
the basic recipe, but surely the sound had now had its day. Not so. By
moving to California the bluesman, now in his forties, finally found
that white audience that had generally run scared from his work. He did
so, not by ditching his black fans and jumping on the revival circuit,
but by teaming up with a new wave of jazz-funk, jazz-rock session men
for a series of big albums for ABC. The California Album saw a
more lugubrious, less gospel-toned singer mixing old time tunes (“Going
Down Slow”) with new urban material (“This Time I’m Gone for Good”,
“Aint No Love in the Heart of the City”) to the delight of a new younger
audience. Next, he teamed up with B.B. King and the two great Memphis
ambassadors made some memorable live appearances. A sample from one is
included here. He made a country album, showing an ease in that milieu
shared by many Southern black artists. He also had a very
seventies-style club hit with “It Ain’t the Real Thing”, much derided by
critics at the time but now sounding like a great forgotten slice of
two-step soul.
This anthology ends with some
almost Nat King Cole type cocktail hour numbers as Bland’s relaxed side
almost took over. The blues would return in force with tracks like
“Members Only” in the Reagan decade but in truth it never went away. Nor
has Bobby Bland. Now in his eighth decade he is, happily, still with us
and can look back on a recording career of singular distinction, which
is what this magnificent and lovingly compiled collection now allows us
all to do.
Hard
as it is to pick one tune from fifty memorable ones, I think “Ask Me
‘Bout Nothing” from 1969 says all that needs to be said. Over a
luxurious but purposeful arrangement Bland admits to his ignorance of
many things in this world but asserts his one sure area of knowledge —
the blues — what it feels like, what causes it, how to bear it. The
performance has grandeur and great humanity and reveals fully what
modesty prevents him from stating — that he, better than almost anybody,
knew how to articulate, enunciate and just plain SING the genuine, born
under a bad sign, raised in poverty, hard times survival kit that is
the one and only African-American Blues.
Bobby Bland: 'Blues and soul are one and the same' – a classic interview
As
admirers sing the praises of Bobby Bland, who died yesterday, we dig
into the vaults to find a lovely snapshot from a 1982 NME profile with
the great bluesman
'I like anybody who has that good story for me to tell' Bobby Bland in 1964. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives
by Charles Shaar Murray
25 June 2013
The Guardian (UK)
The
blues speaks warmly but carefully in a rich, furry voice. In the
anteroom of a hotel suite, cartons of Alpine cigarettes and a selection
of white polyester suits are strewn around. A bedroom is through there.
The walls fall to mask the sounds of afternoon television and a tenor
saxophone player running through his scales.
Robert
Calvin Bland, better known as Bobby Bland or Bobby "Blue" Bland: born
January 27, 1930, in Rosemark, Tennessee. Moved to Memphis in his
mid-teens and joined the Beal Streeters vocal group, which also included
BB King, Roscoe Gordon and Johnny Ace.
He
recorded for Modern and worked for BB as driver and valet, but didn't
commit himself to music until after he came out of the army. Until 1961
he and Junior Parker toured as Blues
Consolidated, but since Farther Up the Road (1957), his first hit, he
was a regular in the R&B charts. Neither a songwriter nor an
instrumentalist of any distinction, he is purely a vocalist, and as such
is probably the finest singer to come out of the postwar blues.
They don't call him "Big Bobby Blue Bland" for
nothing: Bobby Bland is enormous. He is about six foot three and solid,
not the amiable butterball of his early photos, and not the ingenuous
smiler of those early days, either. His face is lined, his eyes are wary
and watchful, his exquisitely manicured fingers flash with heavy
jewellery. His hair is neither in the extravagant conk of the 50s, nor
the natural of the late 60s and the 70s, but long and straight, down
over his ears, framing his forehead.
"I would
not like to be classified as just a blues singer, because I do a variety
of lyrics on the ballad side, but we do just about whatever comes
along. When I first started listening, it was blues strictly, then
spirituals – I am a Baptist – and then I started listening to Tony
Bennett and Nat King Cole, Andy Williams and people in that line … more
softer stuff. Nat was one of my great admirers. I really idolised the
way he took his lyrics, his diction and his softness.
"And
I listened to country and western, whatever had a story. In my early
days I did the harsh blues kind of thing, but I really wanted to do the
softer stuff. Sometimes I like to go back to the roots of things, get a
good blues lyric going and see what I can get out of that, but mostly
it's mellow. I like Nat because he had that velvet voice. Basically, I
like to have that good story and I've had a lot of good musicians and
good writers. I like anybody who has that good story for me to tell."
Bland
had made his debut with Modern, but after his service stint he ended up
recording for Don Robey's Houston-based Duke Records, ending up with
ABC when that conglomerate bought Duke in '74.
"I'd
done a lot of odd jobs. I specialised in parking cars in this garage
and before that I was a grocery boy. I'd always wanted to sing – I sing
all the time – but I never thought that I'd get into this particular
thing that I have today.
"I'd always wanted to
sing, but I had been singing spirituals because the background was a
church background, basically. It wasn't that big a switchover, because
the blues and spirituals have the same sort of phrasing, and you just
sing 'baby' instead of 'my Lord'. I don't see anything wrong with
singing the blues: I just don't put the two together. I'm just as much a
believer today as I was before I knew anything about the blues. I serve
the Lord in whatever I am doing, but I wouldn't put the two together. I
believe in doing one thing at a time. I did a spiritual album before
the last one called Ain't God Something? and I can relate to that: he is
something."
Bland first met BB King when the
older man came to Memphis from Mississippi and scored his slot on radio
station WDIA. BB combined singing and dee-jaying and "being the kinda
fellow that he is, always willing to help someone out", he let the young
Bland sing a number or two on his show. Bland had known King from his
records before they actually met, and his admiration has remained
undimmed over the years.
And who else does Bland check for vocally?
"I
get a lot of pointers from different people, diction-wise or
phrasing-wise. Nat King Cole, as I said, for that softness, Perry Como
for the old standards, because he shows no strain whatsoever when he's
doing a song. Andy Williams and Tony Bennett. But I had a lot of idols
when I started: Joe Turner, Lowell Fulson, Jimmy Witherspoon, Roy Brown,
and for today – well, B [BB King] is one of my favourites. But for soft
music, it's got to be Como, Brook Benton, those kind of people. I like
Earth Wind and Fire, I listen to War: "You got the pow-weerr". But I'm
not really into groups.
"I also like country
and western. I did a country album a little while back but they told me
it was too bluesy. It didn't do any good because of the way I was doing
it, I don't know, but I thought I did it just the way I do everything
else because I couldn't be just a plain country singer. I was raised
around country music in a little place called Rosemark, Tennessee, and
all you could get on the radio at nighttime was Roy Acuff, Red Foley,
Eddie Arnold, those type people. I think Kenny Rogers is doing a
beautiful job as the new singer in country and western.
"Blues
and soul … I don't see how you can define them. I think they are just
one and the same. They are about facing the facts and seeing that things
are as they are … If there is something that you can do about it, then
you better try, and it if doesn't work out then you had better just
chalk it up to experience if it's not in your favour. That's what it's
all about. I find myself weighin' things, because there's always two
sides to everything, two different approaches or whatever. It's like
havin' a good woman. You got to cherish her, you got to try and see
things how she sees them, and feel what she feels. I call that facin'
facts."
Probably the most oft-heard criticism
made of Bland is that his show is heavily Vegasised: that he is verging
on MOR. Well, he's no Vic Godard, but when the moment comes it's
definitely an album of standards. What else would you expect from a
hardcore Perry Como fan?
This article was originally published January 31, 1997.
When you put a voice to uptown blues, the voice
belongs to Bobby "Blue" Bland. For more than four decades, the
Tennessee-bred, Texas-tempered singer, whose vocal style has had a
lasting impact on blues, soul and R&B, has worked the stages of
the world.
Though he celebrated his 67th birthday Monday, Bland is still flogging
the road with the blues - and still cutting albums for the Jackson,
Miss.-based Malaco label.
"The public allows you to stay in this business this long, " Bland
said from his Memphis home. "The public accepts you. The public says,
'I guess you can hang around another year or two.' I'm thankful to be
out here for 46 years."
Bland has been stopping regularly in San Antonio
since the halcyon days of the Eastwood Country Club. He'll be back
Saturday, with a seven-piece band that includes his son Roderick on
drums, for a blues tripleheader with Katie Webster and Latimore at the
Majestic Theater. Show time is 7:30 p.m.
Bland sang gospel in Memphis with the Miniatures in the '40s. He
worked with B.B. King, Roscoe Gordon, Johnny Ace and Willie Nix in the
Beale Streeters. In '54, Bland started recording for the Houston-based
Duke label - and started making big blues waves.
Though he didn't score a pile of pop hits, Bland had
R&B smashes such as "Farther on Up the Road, " "Stormy Monday
Blues, " "I Pity the Fool, " "Turn on Your Love Light" and "That's the
Way Love Is."
For the last dozen years, Bland has been recording
for Malaco. Albums such as his latest, "Sad Street, " find Bland still
working a smooth, sophisticated, but unmistakably blues-driven,
groove.
"Every seven to 10 years, a new trend comes in. You
just have to weather the storm and stick to your guns, " Bland said.
"Maybe you don't work as much as you want, but as you get older, you
can't work as much anyway."
Bland talked about recording new material when he knows audiences will demand to hear the hits.
"That makes me feel good and gives me a lot of
inspiration, " he said. "I try to be as good with a lyric as I can be.
But there aren't any more 'Stormy Mondays.' But I just recorded a song
that has a flavor that reminds me of the Duke days. I know people will
always want to hear 'Lead Me On, ' 'I Pity the Fool, ' 'Two Steps From
the Blues; ' they'll never go away. That's what has kept me out here all
these years."
One thing that sets Bland's voice apart from other
singers is a little growl that jumps up in numerous songs. "I call it a
squall. Like a Baptist preacher. You'd have to listen to the Rev. C.L.
Franklin to understand, " Bland said, laughing. "I first heard Rev.
Franklin doing a spiritual album and he had this little squall. I use it
like a musician uses a passing chord. It keeps me busy until the beat
comes back in."
Though he has a book full of classics and standards, Bland does find time to work newer material into his shows.
"Yeah, sure. I do some of the things I've recorded for Malaco. I do songs like 'Members Only' and 'Sad Street, ' " he said.
Bland seems pleased that his son is working in his band, but he was quick to make it clear that he didn't push young Roderick.
"I didn't force him, but since he was 3, he was
beating on chairs around the house. After I had to have them re-covered,
I said, 'I might as well go ahead and buy him a set of drums.' I got
him a little set of drums when he was 5. He's good. He's in college,
but he goes out with me when he can, " Bland said.
Bland doesn't write his own material, but there are always plenty of writers willing to pen songs for the man.
"There are writers who listen to your work and they write songs that
they think are Bobby Bland songs," he said. "It might not be a Bobby
Bland song, but it can be made into a Bobby Bland song."
"Sad Street" features a pair of songs, including the
title track, by George Jackson, who wrote "Down Home Blues, " and a
lot of numbers by the team of Robert Johnson and Sam Mosley.
"George writes good songs with a message, " Bland
said. "Robert and Sam are good writers and good musicians. They're also
on the Malaco label. I don't really write songs, but I have a little
input, usually at the beginning of a recording session."
A new album is in the works.
"It's almost finished, " Bland said. "I have to go back to Mississippi and do a little dusting up and it'll be done."
THE
MUSIC OF BOBBY BLUE BLAND: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF
RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS
WITH BOBBY BLUE BLAND:
Kofi Natambu, editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He has written extensively about music as a critic and historian for many publications, including the Black Scholar, Downbeat, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Detroit Metro Times, KONCH, the Panopticon Review,Black Renaissance Noire, the Village Voice, the City Sun (NYC), the Poetry Project Newsletter (NYC), and the African American Review. He is the author of a biography Malcolm X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: The Melody Never Stops (Past Tents Press) and Intervals (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of Solid Ground: A New World Journal, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology Nostalgia for the Present (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
Bobby "blue" Bland
The Anthology
MCA
2001-06-05
THE
MUSIC OF BOBBY BLUE BLAND: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF
RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS
WITH BOBBY BLUE BLAND:
