Search - Bobby Blue Bland :: Blues at Midnight

The 73-year-old soul-blues master returns to form with this CD, recorded in Malaco's Jackson, Mississippi, studios and at Alabama's famed Muscle Shoals Sound. The playing is right and tight, from the graceful guitar fills of session aces Reggie Young and Jimmy Johnson on "My Sunday's Comin' Soon" to the Hammond B-3 organ tones that permeate the album. But what's best, of course, is hearing Bland tear into good tunes penned by a who's who of modern deep-soul songwriters including George Jackson ("I Caught the Blues from Someone Else") and Rue Davis ("I've Got the Blues at Midnight"). There's also a re-make of Z.Z. Hill's "I'm a Blues Man" that splits the difference between Delta dust and throbbing funk, with its acoustic Dobro intro giving way to pumping bass and a burst of loud, sweet electric slide. But most of these numbers stick to the kind of textbook arrangements Bland helped perfect with albums like his 1961 classic Two Steps from the Blues. And when Bland sings, "I'm an original, one of a kind," there's no disputing him. Despite the loss of his high falsetto to a tonsillectomy years ago, he's retained the ability to sculpt his warm low and mid-range notes so precisely that his phrases float along with Cadillac-style luxury and grace. --Ted Drozdowski