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'Bland' Does Not Describe Bobby Blue Bland

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Early photo of Bobby Blue Bland, from 1974

I’ve done a totally non-scientific, impromptu survey and I’ve found several names that people who say they don’t know anything about the Blues all seem to know: B. B. King makes all of the lists. Georgie Fame is usually there, John Lee Hooker too. There’s J. J. Cale and a few others.

Then there’s Bobby Blue Bland. He’s like the wallpaper, he always seems to be there.

Hiss given name was Robert Calvin Brooks and he was born in 1930 in Rosemark, Tennessee, and grew up in a broken home. Like John Lee Hooker, Bobby Blue Bland missed out on school and remained illiterate throughout his life. At 17, Bobby moved to Memphis with his mother and soon started singing Gospel before discovering Beale Street and diving into the scene that included  B.B. King, Junior Parker and Johnny Ace. Together they formed an informal and amorphous group known as the Beale Streeters.

http://youtu.be/P5mFapKWF54

Bland started recording at the start of the 1950s, but had little success before doing a short stint in the Army, during which he played in a band with Eddie Fisher. Then he returned to Memphis and found an old friend gaining fame. He got work touring with Johnny Ace and then Jubior Parker before signing his own recording contract, being cheated because he could not read, but gaining attention that lead to increasing success.

The peak of Bobby’s career came in the late 1950s and early 1970s and his biggest success was his version of T-Bone Walker’s super-classic “Stormy Monday.”  The late 1960s saw a downturn for Bland and a bout with alcoholism that ended in 1971. Afterward he continued his career with concerts, clubs, festivals, soundtracks and albums carrying Bland through the years, working until near the end of his life in 2013.

An interesting side note is that Bland discovered shortly before his passing that he was the half brother of Blues harp master James Cotton.

http://youtu.be/StdN_CiCNS4

Despite Bobby’s main era being the late 50s and early 60s, frequent revisits to his music, including those by me, have kept him front and center in the minds of Blues lovers.

In 1992, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Bobby Blue Bland, calling him "second in stature only to B. B. King as a product of Memphis's Beale Street blues scene."

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