BOBBY BLAND: COME FLY WITH ME
(1978)
1) Come Fly With Me; 2) Lady
Lonely; 3) Night Games; 4) To Be Friends; 5) I'm Just Your Man; 6) Love To See
You Smile; 7) You Can Count On Me; 8) This Bitter Earth; 9) Ain't God Something.
Well, apparently, someone thought that Bobby «Bland» was getting a bit too «acid» for
a time that called for more and more mindless entertainment loaded with
positive emotions. So ABC Records called in a bunch of corporate songwriters,
most of whom are a complete mystery to me (R&B stalwart Tyrone Davis is the
only name I recognize on one of the credits), and saddled Bobby with a set that
put his lonely, depressed, soulful persona in the trash bin — calling on the
«ladies' man» persona. Oh well. At least it ain't disco, and at least nobody is
forcing him to switch to the falsetto register.
The record is professional enough not to sound
awful, and Bobby certainly has enough qualifications to play the ladies' man
convincingly — in fact, I'd go farther than that and say that the title track
does have an uplifting funk-pop hook, and that its guitar / brass / flute /
chimes / strings arrangement (no effort spared, so it seems) is very well
done. Nor can I deny the relative catchiness and even occasional seductiveness
of several other songs on here — for instance, the sexy purr of "if you
feel the need, go ahead and cry" of the female backup on ʽLady Lonelyʼ, or
the anthemic chorus of ʽLove To See You Smileʼ, which could almost pass for sincerity, if only it
weren't so utterly dated by its late-1970s formalities.
And yet, no matter how slick, overproduced, or
interchangeable one might have found Bobby's major efforts of the decade, when
the man was in «tragic» mode, he was really on — demanding nothing but the
smokiest from his backing band and playing the broken-hearted card for all it
could be worth. In this here happy-sappy mode, though, no matter how much
professionalism he keeps demanding from his backers, the songs just don't hit
hard enough to merit a comeback — just one more of those albums that is okay
while it lasts, then forgotten in a flash. Maybe the title track and ʽLove To
See You Smileʼ are worth salvaging for anthology packages. But as for the rest,
even the one lonesome gospel number, saved for last (with a somewhat sacrilegious
title — doesn't ʽAin't God Somethingʼ sound just a bit... inappropriate?),
feels more like a local newsreel (he was nailed to the cross and all that) than
a moment of inspiration. In other words, the balance between «soul» and «craft»
is completely upset in favour of the latter. No wonder, then, that the album
has never been released on CD — from this point on, Bobby's records are
becoming increasingly hard to find anywhere except for Ebay and used vinyl
bins, and there is nothing coincidental in this period being marked off by Come Fly With Me.
Part of the increasing scarcity of Bland's records past this period has to do with his label, ABC, going tits up in the summer of '78. All of ABC's biggest selling current and past catalog acts (B.B. King, Steely Dan, Mamas & Papas, James Gang, Steppenwolf) all ended up being reissued on MCA, after that company absorbed ABC in 1980. It's the reason Steely Dan's "Gaucho" was delayed for two years. Bland was evidently not considered worth keeping on by MCA, and his recording career unfortunately became erratic and scarce as a result.
ReplyDeletePlus lots of ABC masters ended up in Japan, where all the $ was at the time. Back Door. Steely Dan went so far as to put an add in Billboard to retrieve items. Lots of ABC has never made it to CD for that reason.No masters.
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