Bobby Bland Greatest Hits Vol. 2: The ABC-Dunhill/MCA Recordings
Bobby Bland's uptown, brass-and-strings-drenched blues kept him on the charts long after gut-bucket kings such asHowlin' WolfandMuddy Watershad dropped from black-radio airwaves. The artistic successes chronicled on this second volume of his greatest hits shouldn't come as a surprise, then, despite the frequent input of ultracommercial producer Steve Barri, who'd crafted AM hits for acts as diverse as theGrass Rootsand the post-MotownFour Tops. Even with some accommodations to trends (the disco beat of "The Soul of a Man," chicken-scratching guitars here, there, and everywhere), Bland kept on being Bland, cutting country songs ("Today I Started Loving You Again") and blues standards ("Goin' Down Slow") and investingDan Penn's "I Hate You" with a unique pungency. This disc performs a valuable service in lifting the veil from an often-overlooked period in the career of one of American music's most important interpretive singers.--Rickey Wright