bobby bland two steps from the blues rapidshare premium

The fact that Bland never found the sustained pop success that his talents (and bank account) so richly deserved is unfortunate, and largely an accident of circumstance. As another great blues singer might remind us, love is a serious business. ' Lead Me On' and ' I'll Take Care of You' are ballads whose stark minor-key settings subvert their themes of devotion, Bland's voice dwelling in the anguish of ambivalence.

The first side alone boasts three consecutive tracks-' Cry Cry Cry,' ' I'm Not Ashamed,' and ' Don't Cry No More'-that wring the act of weeping for every potential meaning you can think of, and more that you can't. Like most full-lengths of its era Two Steps From the Blues was actually a collection of Bland's previously released singles for Houston's Duke Records from the late 1950s and early 1960s, but the LP boasts such perfect sequencing and thematic cohesion that, taken in its entirety, it plays like a multi-tiered musical essay on love, lust and loss. He was a prolific performer whose career began in 1947 and begat a formidable body of work, but anyone seeking a point of entry might start with his towering 1961 LP, Two Steps From the Blues. When he passed away in his hometown on Memphis this past Sunday at the age of 83, Bland took with him one of the great voices of the 20th century and left a legacy that surpasses even his considerable name recognition. His best performances make a word like 'soul' seem woefully insufficient.īig Cars Are Killing Americans Angie Schmitt The sides that Bland cut for Duke Records in the 1950s and 1960s unfold like riveting dramas Bland could cycle through entire complex economies of emotion in a three-minute recording, bending notes, phrases, and whole songs to his will. Like Sinatra, Bland boasted such an extraordinary combination of technique, charisma and musical intelligence that his vocal performances were themselves an act of songcraft. But as comparisons go, one could suffer worse. He was called 'the Sinatra of the blues,' a nickname that rankles a bit in its equivocating imprecision: Bobby Bland was, first and foremost, the Bobby Bland of the blues. Bland may not have been the greatest blues singer of them all (though he's certainly in the conversation), but he was arguably the most complete, melding the urbane smoothness of the pop crooner to the ferocious ecstasy of the gospel tradition. Jimi Hendrix once described the blues as 'easy to play, but hard to feel ' Bobby 'Blue' Bland made the blues as complex as a modernist novel, and effortlessly easy to feel.

Bobby bland two steps from the blues rapidshare premium