Bobby Bland - Turn On Your Lovelight (The Duke Recordings, vol 2)

The coolest thing about writing this blog is the listening to prepare! Each time one of these guys has totally knocked me out and I'm sitting there thinking 'well what the hell tops that' and I pull up the next item on my list (yeah, there is a list and no I ain't giving anyone a peek) and as soon as it starts to play my grin spreads and I say 'Okay, that will work'.

The amazing thing to me is that I am being very picky about what goes up here and yet there is no issue with material, I could easily maintain this pace for a year without scraping for quality stuff.

I think I mentioned in part one of 3B that I have personally referred to him as The Voice' for a long time. Given the recent posts here I was certain I would be rethinking that moniker as I wrote this one. Well I'm sitting here listening to disc one of this pair and I am not moved to recant a damn thing! This here is one Singin' Mo Fo! Listening to Bobby and Junior Parker (who is up next) I am at a complete loss to explain how neither guy ever crossed over to the white market. They always did well on the Circuit and in the Race Market but despite singing far superior songs that others had hits with, the Pop charts ignored them.

I frankly thought that as I sat here certain tracks would elicit special raves but this stuff is so uniformly excellent that it is hard to single tunes out (I should, however, mention that Stormy Monday is currently kicking my ass). Bobby's band leans heavily on Jazz on many tracks with some absolutely killer trumpet and saxophone solos on the ballads.