Dreamer

A great blues singer too often preserved in amber as a figure of the ’50s and ’60s by trad-minded critics, Bobby Bland was still at the top of a long-plateau stretch of greatness when he cut a nearly decade-long string of excellent records for ABC in the ’70s. Dreamer is where his spark ignited the brightest in this era, its almost complete lack of crossover (#172 on the Billboard 200, but #5 on the R&B albums chart) belying just how easy to love it is. Backed by a murderer’s row of L.A. session vets, Bland sounds weathered but not worn-out, his raw from-the-gut intensity run through with a sardonic sadness few could really match — not even Jay-Z, who for all his besieged-by-bullshit frustration, sounded carefree by comparison when he rapped over “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City.” Copping this on its “as heard on The Blueprint” rep will reward you far further than that; it’s a tour de force from that opening cut all the way through the 3-a.m. bleariness of the title track. And being that front-loaded (see also: “I Wouldn’t Treat A Dog (The Way You Treated Me)”, “When You Come To The End Of Your Road”, and “I Ain’t Gonna Be The First To Cry”) only means that you have to flip the LP over to go from devastating to merely impressive.