Over the 1952-82 time-span covered here, Bobby "Blue" Bland united tough-as-pavement blues singing with heartbroken Southern R&B, and helped to create chitlin-circuit soul as we know it now. Too raw for most oldies radio, Bland was a major presence in his time: 30 of these 50 songs hit the pop charts, and almost all of them were significant R&B hits. The first disc-and-a-half documents his long-running Duke Records collaboration (in Chicago, Texas, and Nashville) with trumpeter Joe Scott, who wrote ambitious arrangements that ran from tender love-man pop to howling, honking blues terrorism, but usually gave Bland a chance to emote harder than his microphone could handle. The remainder finds Little Boy Blue on his own in L.A. in the '70s, spicing up smoother blues-inflected soul (and even a stab at light disco, "It Ain't the Real Thing") with the famous squall in his voice. --Douglas Wolk