Bobby 'Blue' Bland Dreamer (LP, 180gram Vinyl)

Bobby ’Blue’ Bland (1930 – 2013)

• Bobby ’Blue’ Bland is one of the most magnificent Blues and Soul singers of all time!
• His 1974 album ’Dreamer’ is a milestone in Blues and Soul music!
• Recorded in Los Angeles with the cream of the studio musicians!
• New mastering and the original gatefold design.
• Contains subsequent classics such as Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City and I Wouldn’t Treat a Dog (The Way You Treated Me).
• Reissued for the first time on Vinyl (180 grams)!

Bobby ’Blue’ Bland

Bobby ’Blue’ Bland (1930 – 2013) was one of the leading US-American Blues, R&,B and Soul entertainers. He knew how to combine the intensity of Gospel music with the expression of the Blues. His voice sounded as he wanted to bear witness to one's resolve but he was able to let his voice sound soft, sometimes cool but always culitvated so he could also reach the fans of Frank Sinatra and Nat ’King’ Cole with tremendous success. He formed his remarkable style of singing out of many different influences, characteristic and remained solely reserved for Bobby ’Blue’ Bland.

Duke-Label &, ,ABC Dunhill

Blands voice was always the center of attention. After his huge successes during the 1950s and 1960s for the Duke label, he moved to ABC Dunhill when Duke was sold. He could reach a wider white audience in the early 1970s with his two LPs, ’His California Album’ and ’Dreamer’, plus productions together with B.B. King. ’

Dreamer’ was the record company's trial to produce an album in California with the cool Soul appeal of the city of Los Angeles. As a timeless Soul and Blues classic the album 'Dreamer' contains the in recent years often sampled track Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City, one of the musical back bones to one of the favorites by Jay Z. The whole album is a wonderful soundtrack for those lonely nights alone and blue in a sleazy joint trying to forget a lost love in a bottle of bourbon.

Dreamer

’Dreamer’ is the warm velvet cover against cold loneliness with so many great songs like I Wouldn’t Treat A Dog (The Way You Treated Me) and Whose Foolin’ Who?, the bluesy Cold Day In Hell, Lovin’ On Borrowed Time and When You Come To The End Of Your Road. I Ain’t Gonna Be The First To Cry has indeed the lyrical quality of The Thrill Is Gone. The production by Steve Barri and Michael Omartian sounds full and ponderous. ,

The accompanying musicians, guitarists Dean Parks and Larry Carlton, bassist Wilton Felder and drummer Ed Green, ranked as being part in the cream of L.A.'s studio musicians. When ’Dreamer’ was first issued in 1974 a controversial discussion started regarding the production and the arrangements containing a brass section and strings. But now, forty years later, the LP album counts as one of the great masterpieces of its genre and the songs became standards in the repertoires of many Soul and Blues performers. Newly remastered with its original gatefold cover jacket the first real reissue on vinyl after 43 years comes from Bear Family Records!

Grammy® as a lifetime achievement award in 1997

Bobby ’Blue’ Bland was inducted into the ’Blues Hall of Fame’ in 1981 and 11 years later the induction into the ’Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame’ followed. He received a Grammy® as a lifetime achievement award in 1997.

Bobby Blue Bland

Along about 1959, the Duke Records braintrust astutely recognized that Bobby 'Blue' Bland had serious potential to cross over into the pop realm and make a much bigger splash than he already had in the blues and R&B arenas. The Rosemark, Tennessee native's melismatically enriched vocal style always got him over very well with the ladies, despite his not being a particularly agile presence onstage. Thanks to his wonderfully warm pipes, he didn't need to be 

It had taken Bland awhile to break through to the big time. He'd been recording for Duke since 1952, when it was still located in Memphis and before Houston entrepreneur Don Robey took the imprint over. Bland's impassioned wails and Duke's scorching house band had combined to cut some spectacular swinging blues sides, but Bobby didn't crack the R&B charts until 1957 with Farther Up The Road (see Disc Five).  Bland's artistic focus was steadily evolving, thanks to Duke in-house trumpeter/arranger/A&R man Joe Scott, who served as his mentor.

"He was just a gift from God, Joe Scott, because he taught me and everybody that was around the Duke label," says Bobby. "Joe Scott picked some good stories for me to tell, because he saw that I was a good storyteller if I had the lyrics. Not the long, drawn-out lyrics. Just make 'em short and to the point and leave some opening for ad-libbing, whatever your idea would be. 

Bobby's high-flying vocal range deepened when he underwent a tonsillectomy. "I wasn't able to hit a falsetto type like I had been singing in earlier years, after the operation with the tonsils. So it kind of lowered my voice," says Bland, who adopted a favorite vocal move of a famous singing preacher as his new trademark. "I was listening to 'The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest' by the Rev. C.L. Franklin, and I heard the squall in there. So I worked on it for about four or five days and developed it. It gave me a different Bobby Bland." He utilized that squall unforgettably on his spine-chilling 1958 hit Little Boy Blue.

When Bobby crooned Brook Benton's sedate ballad I'll Take Care Of You and blasted up to #2 on the R&B hit parade in early '60, it appeared he was leaving the blues behind. But Bland happily reverted to his roots on I Pity The Fool, a loping mid-tempo blues punctuated by Wayne Bennett's stinging guitar and a six-piece horn section led by Scott (Bobby's rhythm section consisted of pianist Teddy Reynolds, bassist Hamp Simmons and drummer John 'Jabo' Starks). The song was waxed on November 12, 1960 in Chicago, while Bland's contingent was on tour. Originally credited to Robey under his Deadric Malone sobriquet but probably written by Houston singer Joe Medwick Veasey, who also co-penned Farther Up The Road (Robey was in the habit of buying songs outright), I Pity The Fool catapulted to the top of the R&B charts and made a solid #46 pop showing.

"Joe Medwick, he did some hell of a writing when he did all those tunes," says former Duke house guitarist Texas Johnny Brown.

"Joe (Scott) found that, really," says Bobby. "It was a good change. I always had some good writers after I got my first record out there, and writers started pinpointing on what would be good for Bobby Bland: 'I'm going to write this particular tune.' It was a big thing for me."

Bland was by now a leading luminary on the R&B circuit with major pop appeal and would remain so on Duke into 1972. His non-stop litany of smashes included the gospel-fueled Turn On Your Love Light (1961) and Yield Not To Temptation (1962) as well as a lights-out '62 revival of T-Bone Walker's Stormy Monday Blues and the pop-oriented double-sided 1963 smash That's The Way Love Is b/w Call On Me. 

Bill Dahl
Chicago, Illinois 

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