My goodbye to Bobby "Blue" Bland by Rev. Billy c. Wirtz

I’m gonna play the high class joints,

I’m gonna play the low class joints’

And I’m even gonna play the honky tonks.”

From “I’m Gonna Play The Honky Tonks” by Bobby Bland

Further On Up the Road

A Farewell to Bobby “Blue” Bland

By Rev. Billy c. Wirtz

He never became a household name like his best friend and former band mate B.B. King did.

Ask folks on the street and one in fifty might know the name, but one of America’s greatest singers and Blues artists passed away last night (June 23, 2013) at the age of 83.

Bobby “Blue” Bland was born Robert Calvin Bland in January 16, 1930 in the crossroads town of Rosemark, Tenn.

His musical career began like most Black singers of that era in the church. Till the end of his days he would still love the hard driving, impassioned screams of Archie Brownlee and The Original Five Blind Boys Of Mississippi and the transcendent, other-worldly harmonies of the old school quartets  like The Highway Q.C.’s, The Caravans  and The Soul Stirrers (the group that gave us Sam Cooke and Johnny Taylor).

His own career began with The Beale Streeters (a group that included Johnny Ace, Roscoe Gordon and B.B. King!!) in 1952 with I.O.U. Blues.

Back in the early fifties when he first recorded, Blues was still characterized by a coolness and detachment on the part of the singer. Bland brought the fire of the pulpit to the stages of the Apollo, The Howard and a thousand forgotten juke joints along the Chitlin Circuit.

He would go on to record a string of number one hits through the fifties, sixties, seventies and even into the eighties.

As Rock historian Bill Dahl says: “He earned his enduring blues superstar status the hard way: without a guitar, harmonica, or any other instrument to fall back upon. “All Bland had to offer was his magnificent voice, a tremendously powerful instrument in his early heyday, injected with charisma and melisma to spare. Just ask his legion of female fans, who deemed him a sex symbol late into his career.”

(By the way, melisma (muh-liz-muh) is the singing of a single syllable while moving between several notes.)

Melisma is THE essence of Soul music, the old Gospel and Blues singers would call it “worrying” a word.

No one ever worried a word like “Blue,” listen to his version of the classic “St. James Infirmary,” and see if chills don’t run down your spine.

His Style

Bobby Bland’s characteristic “squall” came as result of his devotion to the preaching of Rev. C.L. Franklin whom he listened to Sunday nights on radio station WLAC from Nashville, Tn. back in the day.

Franklin used the squall to dramatic effect on his legendary sermon: “The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest.” Not only Bland, but the legendary Joe Ligon from the Mighty Clouds of Joy would incorporate it into their own styles with great success.

You can hear it on such classics as “Turn on Your Love Light,” “I Pity the Fool,” and “Further on up the Road,” songs that remain as a benchmark by which great Rhythm and Blues are measured.

Bland was not only a talented singer, he was an artistic visionary; his album “Two Steps From The Blues” recorded in 1961, stretched the boundaries of, and brought a sophistication, to a music thought by many, to be a simplistic throwback to the old days and old ways.

The cover itself, with the green Gator kicks, and that million dollar process defined a lifestyle for young Black men in the fifties and sixties. Bland sang the Blues, but he sang them with class.

Later Career

Unlike B.B. King, Robert Johnson, and Muddy Waters, Bland as not often cited by the  Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and the other British revivalists of the sixties as being influential, and around that same time his own hits began to fade.

He struggled along through the seventies and eighties, but managed to hang on long enough to benefit from the second great Blues revival of the late Eighties.

Along with his lifelong fans in the Deep South, he made new ones at major festivals, was inducted into the Rock ‘N’ roll Hall of Fame in 1992, and starred on the weeklong Legendary Rhythm And Blues Cruise in October of 2011.

He passed away Monday at the age of 83.

-Bobby “Blue” Bland:

 -Took the old time country Blues and dressed in a sharkskin suit.

-Took the spirit and fire of Sunday morning and sang it in places that were open on Saturday night.

-He warned us: “They call it Stormy Monday (But Tuesday’s Just as Bad);” a cold shot of reality in the early Sixties world of The Singing Nun.

Legacy:

He made countless great records, singing everything from Country to Pop to  Blues, he delivered them with a feeling, passion and world weariness that told you he’d been there.

The Blues has always been Black America’s street philosophy, from Robert Johnson to Muddy Waters to Bobby Bland; it’s a simple style often masking much deeper truths in the lyrics of everyday life. It’s often called the original music, a universal language, simple and at the same time and profound. Its rhythm reminds us of how wonderful is to be human, and the words, especially when sung by artists like Bobby Bland, help us to make it through another day.