Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, January 28, 1994                   TAG: 9402030003
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER and MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BLUESMAN BOBBY BLAND HAS EARNED HIS STRIPES

Not exactly the typical performer to play Pulaski.

But Bobby "Blue" Bland is indeed playing Pulaski, at Ellery's Blues & More for two shows Saturday at 8:30 and 11:30 p.m. "We've got one of America's blues legends," said Ellery's owner George Penn.

Indeed they do.

Bland was born in a small town about 20 miles northeast of Memphis, Tenn., where he has said the major activities were picking cotton and hanging around the grocery store. He turned 64 Thursday.

Musically, he listened to country singers like Roy Acuff and Ernest Tubb on the radio growing up, and then found the blues when his family moved to Memphis in 1944. There, he was influenced by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Sonny Boy Williamson and other blues artists.

He formed his own R&B band in high school. At the same time, he sang with a gospel group, the Miniatures. He worked as a driver for bluesman Roscoe Gordon and as a valet for B.B. King, early on in King's career. (Ellery's also is working on a B.B. King date.)

Bland moved on to work in a Memphis R&B group, the Beale Streeters, that featured another future R&B pioneer, Johnny Ace. Bland also caught the attention of Ike Turner, later of Ike and Tina Turner fame, who produced some demos of Bland for Modern Records.

However, it was Duke Records that finally signed Bland after its talent scouts caught his show at a weekly amateur night showcase in Memphis. It was then that he picked up the moniker, Blue.

In 1957, he scored his first major R&B hit, "Farther Up the Road," and followed with more: "Cry, Cry, Cry," "I Pity the Fool," "Stormy Monday," "Call On Me" and "That's the Way Love Is." He remained a R&B fixture through the mid-1960s and all in all placed more than 40 songs on the R&B charts. Only James Brown, Fats Domino and Ray Charles can claim more.

As a bluesman, Bland is uniquely known for his uncluttered and contained style. He says blues ballads and love songs are his specialties, and it is this distinction that has earned him his other moniker, the Frank Sinatra of R&B.

In more recent years, Bland has recorded for the Malaco label in Jackson, Miss. His most recent album is titled, appropriately, "Portrait of the Blues." In 1992, he was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame for his "considerable influence on modern soul music."

Appropriately, Ellery's owner Penn said of Bland's stop in Pulaski: "It's an event." Also on the bill: Frankie and the Blue Lights will open the first show. Power Force will open the second show.