BOBBY BLAND: THE "3B" BLUES BOY – THE EARLY YEARS: 1952-1959 (1991)
1) No
Blow, No Show; 2) Wise Man's Blues; 3) Army Blues; 4) Lost Lover Blues; 5) It's
My Life Baby; 6) Honey Bee; 7) Time Out; 8) A Million Miles From Nowhere; 9) Woke
Up Screaming; 10) You've Got Bad Intentions; 11) I Can't Put You Down Baby; 12)
I Don't Believe; 13) I Learned My Lesson; 14) I Smell Trouble; 15) Don't Want
No Woman; 16) Further Up The Road; 17) Teach Me; 18) Bobby's Blues; 19) You Got
Me; 20) Loan A Helping Hand; 21) Last Night; 22) Little Boy Blue; 23) You Did
Me Wrong; 24) I Lost Sight Of The World; 25) Wishing Well.
Other than the kinda dumb subtitle, this
collection is a pretty damn good way to get a good picture of Robert Calvin
Bland, a.k.a. Bobby "Blue" Bland, in his formative years, when his
steady coming sets of singles were not yet reworked into LPs on a consistent
basis. There are other compilations on the market as well, and some might be a
little (but not a lot) more comprehensive, but the 25 recordings collected
here capture all of his sides and sub-periods, except for a few of the earliest
recordings that were made for Chess rather than Duke records — so that the rest
is essentially for completists.
The biggest turn-off in Bobby Bland's career is
probably Bobby Bland's own name — whatever sort of singer would want to be
associated with «bland», anyway? — but that bias is pretty easy to overcome
once Mr. Bland gets his anything-but-bland vocal cords operating. Granted, throughout
the 1950s, he wasn't that much of a «genre innovator»: in fact, the earliest
stuff consists of rather generic jump blues, in the tradition of Wynonie Harris
and Big Joe Turner, and then starts drifting towards slow, moody
«blues-de-luxe» with a little bit of soul to it, kind of like a Big Mama
Thornton (in pants), nothing particularly extraordinary in terms of composition
or arrangement — the blues is just the blues, after all.
Two things drag these recordings out of potential
mediocrity. First, the arrangements are sharp and punchy. The first few songs
rely on saxophones and vibraphones for most of the mood, but after Bobby
returns from the Army (an unhappy predicament of his lamented over in ʽArmy
Bluesʼ), the emphasis shifts on to the guitar, and there is some damn fine
guitar playing on these songs — as far as I can tell, B. B. King is not here
(despite being tightly associated with Bobby as one of Memphis' original «Beale
Streeters» circa 1951-52), but Clarence Hollimon, Roy Gaines, and,
occasionally, Pat Hare, all of them fine 1950s players in their own rights, are
just as good, and kick far more ass than is usually expected of a singing
frontman's backers. Already ʽHoney Beeʼ, from around 1955, has a terrifically
tight, concentrated rock'n'roll solo, and it hardly ever stops from there —
Bobby's guitarists play within and around his phrasing all the time, and he is
wise enough to let the recordings transform into duets rather than have the
spotlight permanently occupied by his own persona.
But the main thing, of course, is the singing.
Bobby Bland may be «bland» indeed in that he's no Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf
— no big-time voodoo practitioner, just a full-time popular entertainer, like
his good friend B. B. In that
category, however, the man was essentially peerless already back then. The
first great example is ʽLost Lover's Bluesʼ, where he gets to modulate his
voice at top range, doing the best thing about a 12-bar blues delivery that can
be done — build it up to a climax instead of delivering three interchangeable
verses in a row. Later on, the same psychotic falsetto appears in a couple
dozen more numbers, but he is being careful about not overdoing it, and there
are numerous other emplois tested out — rougher, softer, barkier, croonier,
higher, lower, whatever: the guy was testing out approach after approach,
obsessed with working out his own style, and it is fun to watch him doing that.
(Certainly more fun than sitting through twenty Jimmy Reed songs in a row, no
matter how «cooler» Jimmy's «anti-mainstream» style might seem to British boys
at the time).
Pat Hare, the wonder guitarist of James
Cotton's ʽCotton Crop Bluesʼ fare (hyperbolically called the «first heavy metal
song» by those out on a mission to return the stolen back to its owners, but
still a damn fine track, by the way), is present only on a few songs here — but
he does contribute aggressive, nasty lead guitar to ʽFarther Up The Roadʼ, a number
that we usually know as ʽFurther On Up The Roadʼ, in a sped-up version or
batch of versions performed by Clapton, but yes, Bobby Bland recorded it first,
and here it is in all its primal awesomeness. It was a hit, too, as was ʽLittle
Boy Blueʼ, a slow R&B dance number that eventually whips itself into total vocal
frenzy (a James Brown influence is in the works here), but the rest of the
singles mostly didn't manage to chart anywhere high, which is sort of strange —
this is all definitely Top-10 material for any sorts of blues or R&B charts
— and a little unfortunate, because many of these songs show a rough and tough
side to the guy that would be seriously downplayed in his commercially gold
period.
Random subjective highlights, for me, would also
include ʽI Woke Up Screamingʼ (impersonating lovestruck paranoia is a
particularly successful venture for Bobby), ʽI Smell Troubleʼ, ʽYou've Got Bad
Intentionsʼ... well, just about anything where he gets to unwind that fabulous
waaah-waaah of his. Too bad there are so few fast tunes — just ʽHoney Beeʼ and
ʽLoan Me A Helping Handʼ — but there are also no hyper-sappy ballads (ʽLast
Nightʼ is sort of an exception, but it's not like it's got any strings or
anything), and at the end, there is at least one excellent
«world-at-an-end»-style lament — ʽI Lost Sight Of The Worldʼ, on which Bobby is
accompanied by a frantic flute part rather than guitar. In the end, it is all
probably much more diverse than one could ever hope from a popular entertainer
in the 1950s, and there is not a single reason not to give the collection a
firm thumbs up.
It is not yet the Bobby Bland of ʽI
Pity The Foolʼ's fame, but in some respects, it's actually better.
David Coverdale's Whitesnake covered "Ain't No Love In The Heart Of The City", and turned it into a much requested fan favorite, so perhaps BBB himself is worth looking into.
ReplyDeleteHoney Bee sounds enormously similar to Mean Woman Blues - shows what an awesome vocalist Elvis Presley was because Bland lives up to his name here.
ReplyDeleteFurther up the road is a total gas though; Bland sounds way more powerful and expressive. The guitar solo is also great indeed, so I agree with you that this song is one of the earliest examples of what a powerful voice and an aggressive guitar could bring (yes, JC's Cotton Crop Blues qualifies as well).