Bobby “Blue” Bland was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1981, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2012. He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. 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”.
The late American blues singer Robert Calvin Bland, who is known professionally as Bland developed a sound that mixed gospel with the blues and R&B. 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.” He was sometimes referred to as the “Lion of the Blues” and as the “Sinatra of the Blues”. His music was also influenced by Nat King Cole.
Bobby “Blue” Bland siblings: Meet James Cotton
James Cotton was born James Henry Cotton and he was an American blues harmonica player, singer, and songwriter, who performed and recorded with many fellow blues artists and with his band. He also played drums early in his career. Cotton began his professional career playing the blues harp in Howlin’ Wolf’s band in the early 1950s.
Cotton was born in Tunica, Mississippi on July 1, 1935, to Mose Cotton and Hattie Cotton. He became interested in music when he first heard Sonny Boy Williamson II on the radio. He left home with his uncle and moved to West Helena, Arkansas, finding Williamson there. For many years Cotton claimed that he told Williamson that he was an orphan and that Williamson took him in and raised him, a story he admitted in recent years is not true.
Cotton died of pneumonia on March 16, 2017, at the age of 81, at a medical center in Austin, Texas, and was buried on July 11, 2017, in Texas State Cemetery in Austin.
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Source: celebfaqs.com
