The Anthology [2 CD]

Those who have gotten “blue” over Bobby’s previous packages will thrill to this one, the first to include all 25 of his Top 10 R&B hits: Farther up the Road; That’s the Way Love Is; I Pity the Fool; Don’t Cry No More; Turn On Your Love Light; I’ll Take Care of You; Stormy Monday Blues; Call on Me , and more. 50 songs on 2 CDs-over 155 minutes from across his entire career!Over the 1952-82 time-span covered here, Bobby “Blue” Bland united tough-as-pavement blues singing with heartbroken Southern R&B, and helped to create chitlin-circuit soul as we know it now. Too raw for most oldies radio, Bland was a major presence in his time: 30 of these 50 songs hit the pop charts, and almost all of them were significant R&B hits. The first disc-and-a-half documents his long-running Duke Records collaboration (in Chicago, Texas, and Nashville) with trumpeter Joe Scott, who wrote ambitious arrangements that ran from tender love-man pop to howling, honking blues terrorism, but usually gave Bland a chance to emote harder than his microphone could handle. The remainder finds Little Boy Blue on his own in L.A. in the ’70s, spicing up smoother blues-inflected soul (and even a stab at light disco, “It Ain’t the Real Thing”) with the famous squall in his voice. –Douglas Wolk

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