Bobby “Blue” Bland, one of the last great, iconic soul and blues singers of the 20th century, died Sunday at his Memphis home. He was 83. In the late 1940s, Bland was part of the group of young Memphis musicians who banded together to form the Beale Streeters, a collection that also included such up-and-comers as B. B. King, Johnny Ace, and Junior Parker. But where most of his colleagues, and fellow titans such as Ray Charles, were singers who also had also mastered some instrument they could fall back on, Bland did it all with his voice. He earned the sobriquet “the Sinatra of the blues” for his emotionally rich performances and his taste for lush arrangements, and he actively courted the comparison by striking a Sinatra-esque pose—sunglasses, his coat thrown over one shoulder—on the cover of his best-known album, Two Steps From The Blues. Released in 1961, it brought together his earliest major hits, recorded for Duke between 1956 and 1960, with newer work, including “Cry Cry Cry,” “I Pity The Fool,” and the definitive blues horror story, “St. James Infirmary.”
Bland served a long apprenticeship, struggling to find his voice and perfect a style he could call his own on early sides produced by Sam Phillips for Chess Records in 1951, and taking an enforced break from building his career to serve a stint in the U. S. Army. In the mid-50s, he endured the indignity of serving as valet and chauffeur to Junior Parker, while doubling as Parker’s opening act. (He hadpreviously served the same function for B. B. King, whose vocal style he imitated in his early years.) He began to have hits of his own with “Farther Up The Road,” which went to number one on the R & B charts and crossed over to the middle reaches of the pop charts. But his real artistic breakthrough came a year later with “Little Boy Blue,” a smooth but emotional number with gospel underpinnings, which showed the acknowledged influence of Rev. C. L. Franklin, or, as Bland referred to him, “Aretha’s daddy.”