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 CLFranklin,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 RoscoGordon 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 Upthe Road, which topped the R&B chart in 1957, but also for its
overheated sleevenotes by "Dzondria 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.
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 LosAngeles, 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.
His
son Rodd, who is also a musician, survives him.
Bobby
Bland (Robert Calvin Brooks), blues and soul singer, born 27 January
1930; died 23 June 2013
Source:
guardian
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