Billy Bland

“Bland” is probably not the best surname to have if you’re an entertainer, and yet there were two Blands who were, more or less, pop stars. Bobby Bland was the heavyweight, and he has his own post.

Billy was the lesser light, having had only one real hit record, plus 3 additional top 100 singles that didn’t make it higher than 90.

The collection that I have doesn’t have any of those 3 obscure songs, and I have no way of knowing what kind of collection this is, whether it’s really a “collection” at all or just an abridged version of some LP he may have released, or what. I found it on a series that’s somewhat difficult to describe – an Italian language numbered series, some featuring one artist, some featuring several. And because I don’t read Italian, I could not read the liner notes. So I am probably less informed than I could be about this.

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Billy Bland:

• Sweet Thing – Not the Van Morrison song. No kidding. Nursery rhyme lyrics with high pitched girls singing along, slightly reminiscent of Chubby Checker, who barely existed yet.
• I Spent My Whole Life Loving You – Revenge is sweet. He sounds like Dee Clark on this one (and some others, now that I think of it). And who plays that organ?
• Busy Little Boy – “…trying not to lose my mind….”
• Steady Kind – Finally, going with the happy angle…
• Cross My Heart – Morbid. Why would you hope to die? Bobby Vee did something similar, and Phil Ochs sang “cross my heart and hope to live…”
• Mama Killed The Chicken – A tale of Mama gone bad. Sounds like Hully Gully. “You’re a little bitty chicken, but you gotta die…” Honest.
• Let The Little Girl Dance – Our hero is about to relieve the little girl of her never-having-danced status. It’s all vertical. This loss-of-innocence tale was Bobby’s only real hit, in the spring of 1960.
• You Took My Love For Granted – Always a problem..