The Anthology
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