Bobby 'Blue' Bland

Vol. 2-Greatest Hits ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

'3b' Blues Boy ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

After All ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Blues You Can Use ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Dreamer ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Duke Recording 1959-69 ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

First Class Blues ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Here We Go Again ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

I Pity The Fool-Duke Recording ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Just One More Step ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Live On Beale Street ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Long Beach 1983 ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Members Only ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Midnight Run ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Portrait Of The Blues ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Sad Street ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Soul Legend ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Two Steps From The Blues ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Vol. 1-Greatest Hits ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Vol. 2-Best Of Bobby Blue Blan ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Vol. 2-Turn On Your Love Light ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Vol. 3-That Did It!:The Duke ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

Years Of Tears ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

You've Get Me Loving You ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland Album

All Products ~ Bobby 'Blue' Bland

One of the premier rhythm & blues vocalists, Bobby "Blue" Bland is second in stature only to B.B. King as a product of Memphis' Beale Street blues scene. In fact, the two performers have been inextricably linked over the decades, recording and touring together in a friendship that dates back to the early Fifties. Born on January 27, 1930, in the nearby town of Rosemark, Bland had moved to Memphis by age seventeen. He worked in a garage during the week and sang spirituals on weekends. At various times, he also served as a chauffeur for B.B. King and Roscoe Gordon and a valet for Junior Parker. In the beginning, he styled himself after the likes of Roy Brown. After serving a stint in the army, however, Bland spent the latter half of the Fifties maturing into a masterful singer and assured entertainer. His hallmark was his supple, confidential soul-blues delivery. As a singer, Bland projected a grainy, down-to-earth quality, punctuated with guttural growls and snorts that would come to be known as the "chicken-bone sound." Yet his voice was simultaneously smooth as velvet, allowing Bland to bring audiences under his hypnotic spell as he walked a fine line between passionate expression and exquisite self-control. Working with bandleader and producer Joe Scott, Bland recorded straight blues such as "Farther On Up the Road" but subsequently evolved into more of an intimate soul-blues stylist. Bland's painstakingly crafted records featured his deliberate, resolute vocals set over a backdrop of dazzling horn fanfares, supple rhythm parts and Wayne Bennett's T-Bone Walker-style guitar. Beginning with "I'll Take Care of You" in early 1960, Bland released a dozen huge R&B hits in a row, eleven of which made the Top Ten. They included "I Pity the Fool," "That's the Way Love Is" and "Turn On Your Love Light," a song that went on to become an R&B standard. As a measure of his considerable appeal to black audiences, Bland placed an amazing 51 singles on the R&B Top Forty. However, he crossed over into the pop-oriented Top Forty singles chart only four times and never got higher than Number 20 (with "Ain't Nothing You Can Do," in 1964). To this day, Bland remains a fixture on the concert circuit, a hard-working professional who purveys a definitive union of Southern blues and soul.

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