6. “Turn On Your Love Light,” Bobby “Blue” Bland, 1961. Joe Scott, Duke-Peacock’s in-house conductor/arranger /music director, epitomized the word “sublime.” There’s never so much as a sixteenth-note out of place in his creations, and “Turn on Your Love Light” is a flawless example. The uptempo gospel-drenched rave-up erupts out of the blocks with a trumpet fanfare over drums and Teddy Reynolds’s prominent piano riff; seconds later Wayne Bennett’s electric guitar interlocks with Reynolds’s keyboards and Bland comes swooping in with his alternately scratchy and silken baritone, singing blue words that don’t jibe with the joyous abandon of the music: “Without a warnin’, you broke my heart, you took it darlin’ and you tore it apart.” At about the one-minute mark, all falls away save for the sanctified funky beats of not one but two drummers who pop and crash away as Bland, by now pleading, croons that he gets a little lonely in the middle of the night, and he needs you, darling, to make things all right. An impeccable sax solo leads into Bland’s trademark “squall,” and he roars, redeemed on the fade-out “I feel alright!” Rarely can two minutes, 40 seconds be better spent. – J.N.L.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 00:53:30 +0000