A blue, blue Christmas
All the Christmas that I need
We heard Bland at the now knocked down Astoria on Soho’s Charing Cross Road in a production put on by Jon Dabner, the famed, sometimes controversial, London jazz promoter who started the Jazz Cafe when it was based in Stoke Newington before its move to Camden Town and who later ran the upmarket jazz supper club the Rhythmic over on Islington’s Chapel Market later in the 1990s.
That was where we saw people like vibes god Bobby Hutcherson and even soul jazz flautist Bobbi Humphrey in the flesh. In 2008, Mick Hucknall released his first solo album Tribute To Bobby, a homage to Bland, a star of Memphis’ blues scene in the 1950s and 1960s. Watch the documentary, above, where Mick explains his thinking.
Spoken word intro and smooth jazz sax
We’re suckers for spoken word monologue introductions and the great ‘Turn on Your Love Light’ and ‘Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City’ singer does not disappoint on ‘You Are My Christmas’ in a treatment that, once you’ve taken your jazz snob digit out of fundamental interstellar regions, “daringly” – trigger alert – has some smooth jazz sax on it.
Bland Wore His Lovelorn Heart On His Sleeve In Performance
But it all goes to underline yet again you have to overlap genres when great artists are involved, the blues bleeding into soul and saying hello to land close enough to jazz and even a still, gospellised reverie, especially on passages found on an album such as the late-period compilation Blues & Ballads.
Ooh, that hides the glow of a rose’
– from Clyde Otis’ ‘This Bitter Earth’
See you farther on up the road
Catch up on the latest marlbank reviews.
