Robert Calvin “Bobby” Bland

Robert Calvin “Bobby” Bland (January 27, 1930 – June 23, 2013), né Brooks, also known professionally as Bobby “Blue” Bland, was an American blues singer.
Bland developed a sound that mixed gospel with the blues and R&B.[1] He was described as “among the great storytellers of blues and soul music… [who] created tempestuous arias of love, betrayal and resignation, set against roiling, dramatic orchestrations, and left the listener drained but awed.”[2] He was sometimes referred to as the “Lion of the Blues” and as the “Sinatra of the Blues”;[3] his music was also influenced by Nat King Cole.[4]
Bland was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1981, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.[5] The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame described him as “second in stature only to B.B. King as a product of Memphis’s Beale Street blues scene”.[3]