- JUSTIN FOX BURKS
- Bobby “Blue” Bland at the Memphis Music Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
It didn’t have the star power it might have, with living inductees such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Al Green, B.B. King, and Mavis Staples not among the night’s performers, but Thursday’s inaugural induction ceremony at a roughly half full Cannon Center for the Performing Arts was still a nice, if occasionally wordy and slightly overlong, celebration of the breadth of Memphis music.
And when 82-year-old, Beale Street-bred soul-blues titan Bobby “Blue” Bland took a seat on stage and sang his classics “Goin’ Down Slow” and “Stormy Monday Blues,” this alone was, as they say, worth the price of admission.
Bland’s voice was worn but still graceful, with a range that went from his deep “yeah” to quavery high notes. He was helped to the stage and to a chair. When an early bit of feedback disrupted the beginning of his first song, Bland smiled and said “That’s my fault.” And then he dug into “Goin’ Down Slow,” adding extra gravity to the lines “Somebody please write my mother and tell her the shape I’m in/And tell her to pray for me and forgive me for all my sins.”