Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall covers Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland

Bland has always been difficult to pin down. A chameleon, he moved with ease between hard Memphis R&B, Basie-type arrangements, quintessential soul of both the post-doo wop and early '70s wah-wah variants. Many would label Bland silky-smooth, but that wouldn't take into consideration the early sides on Chess and Duke Records (his label from 1952 to 1971), which retain a South Side growl (listen to 1952's "Good Lovin' " and the final howl). Indeed, Bland never lost that serrated edge on which an exquisitely held note balances with his even vibrato, only to end in a subtle rasp.

He absorbed such wide and varied influences as Billy Eckstine and Big Joe Turner, Ray Charles and Clyde McPhatter. So ubiquitous is Bland's sound (heard in some of the finest male singers of the last 50 years -- Van Morrison, Lou Rawls, B.B. King, Al Green, for example) that the spotlight has shifted away from the source.

Mick Hucknall wants to correct that.

Is anyone better suited to cover the Bland repertoire than Hucknall, no less a chameleon than Bland? Hucknall began as a distinctive blue-eyed soul crooner lost in the party of mid-'80s pop. No one could mistake that voice, so radio-friendly, so obviously a star in the making ("If You Don't Know Me By Now," "Holding Back the Years," "Money's Too Tight to Mention"). But then Simply Red took a detour down the shameful Euro pop path to performances in Monaco and similar Vegas-styled venues, performing bloodless soul-pop with a sense of enervation more indigenous to public television's pledge-drive zombie resurrections than Manchester beer halls.

This album reinstates Hucknall's credibility. It's a simple conceit that works perfectly. By showcasing the repertoire of prime influence Bland (and gaining his imprimatur for the project), Hucknall has once again shown us what he is capable of himself.

"Look at the people," he sings in one of the album's stronger tracks, "I Pity the Fool." "I know you're wondering what they're doing/They're just standing there/Watching you make a fool of me."

Maybe we all made a fool of Hucknall for too long, because on songs like "I'm Too Far Gone (To Turn Around)," in which Hucknall explores the full extent of his range, from his resonant baritone to the upper-altitude blues shouter, there is no question that singer, material and style have found a match.

But it is the album closer, the ballad "Lead Me On," with its heart-breaking close-harmony strings, in which everything comes to a brilliant evocation of devotion. Hucknall underplays it perfectly, and he has to: The original from 1960 stuns with similar strings (see if Joe Scott's arrangement doesn't bring you close to tears), a flute and a searching gospel-inflected vocal. It's a sleeper in the Bland canon and the bonafide masterpiece of "Tribute to Bobby."

The production is bright, though abundant. Occasionally, there is a bit too much wide-screen stereo breathiness in the backups, and it sounds like keyboard samples are dropped in à la Pro Tools, distracting when so much else sounds organic. But the horn charts are greatly supportive, like on "Stormy Monday Blues," and when the band falls into a '70s Al Green groove on "I Wouldn't Treat a Dog (The Way You Treated Me)," it's a perfect backdrop for the main event -- Hucknall's voice.

-- Casey Dolan

Photo by Andy Fallon