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The Bobby Bland Songbook

Luther Kent

2014

Veteran New Orleans singer Luther Kent gets to pay his homage to one of his idols on his new Vetter Communications disc, "The Bobby Bland Songbook." Kent has been a devotee of Bland since as a 13 year old he caught Bland backed by the Joe Scott at a Baton Rouge club. The influence Bland had on him was reflected by him when talking about Bland and one of Kent’s greatest memories being on a Riverboat Cruise with B.B. King and Bland during a 1980s JazzFest.

Kent has always included a few songs from Bland and his contemporaries such as Little Milton in his set list for decades, but this disc is devoted solely to Bland’s music. Kent and Don Chesson have assembled a big band with the Creole Beethoven, Wardell Querzergue doing the arrangements and conducting the band.

Kent has selected a dozen of Bland’s more famous recordings from the period that is arguably his greatest period, the late fifties and early sixties recordings he made for Duke which includes such classics as "Who Will the Next Fool Be," "I Pity the Fool," "Stormy Monday," "Cry, Cry, Cry," "St. James Infirmary," "Don’t Cry No More," "That’s the Way Love Is," and "I Wouldn’t Treat a Dog." The performances are styled after Bland’s originals, in this sense he doesn’t reinvent them as much as Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall did on his own recent tribute, "Salute to Bobby." - Jazz & Blues Report (Issue 319, August 2009)

The Bobby Bland Songbook
The Bobby Bland Songbook