Soul of the Man: Bobby "Blue" Bland

Epilogue

261 epilogue 262 Soon after the release of Mick Hucknall’s tribute album, in early July 2008, Bobby began having trouble breathing. His breath became so labored that Willie Mae had no choice but to rush him to the hospital again. The doctors diagnosed the problem as pneumonia, exacerbated by Bobby’s chronic diabetes and hypertension. It took a few days for the medical staff to stabilize the situation , but thanks to Willie Mae’s nursing background and patient persistence and Bobby’s unrivalled resilience, the bluesman was soon on the mend, and, after a brief stay in a rehabilitation unit, able to return home by July 29. Wolf Stephenson called him the next day to wish him well. “How you doing ?” he asked. “Better? Good. Ready for me to send in the dancing girls? Not yet. Well, let me know. You’re sounding better. Give Miss Willie my best and thank her for taking a switch to those doctors. Okay, chief, take care of yourself. I’ll check on you later.”1 By August 4 Bobby was talking about going back to work again,2 and by August 8, when Latimore visited him on his way to the annual Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival in Clarksdale, Bobby was rehearsing the band for a show the next night, only a few minutes from his home, at the DeSoto Civic Center in Southaven, Mississippi, where he would headline the annual Tri-State Blues Festival, with his old friends Willie Clayton, Bobby Rush, J. Blackfoot, Theodis Ealey, and relative newcomers Floyd Taylor (Johnnie’s son), Sir Charles Jones, and Sheba Potts-Wright.3 On August 19 Bobby and the band were out of the Delta and in Alexandria, Virginia, to perform the show at the Birchmere that had been postponed because of Bobby’s health problems. According to the Washington Post, “When he arrived at the club . . . he looked frail and fatigued as he moved, with the help of an aide, to a seat at center stage.” But apparently once the performance began, it didn’t take long for Bobby to warm to the crowd. When a fan shouted, “Turn up the heat, Bob,” Bobby smiled slyly and answered, “I can’t heat up anymore.” And then went on to “sustain a slow burn onstage,” proving once again that his “soulfulness remains undiminished.”4 Two days later the band was in New York City to perform at B.B. King’s Blues Club and Grill, 263 epilogue “lending some authenticity to this Times Square club,” according to the New Yorker.5 They were booked next into the Freddie King Blues Fest, with Hubert Sumlin and the Wanda King Blues Band, at the Grenada Theater in Dallas on August 31. And when the new $14.2 million B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretative Center opened in Indianola, Mississippi, on September 13, Bobby and Willie Mae made the trip down from Memphis. Bobby even joined B.B., Robert Cray, Keb’ Mo’, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd on stage to sing a bit. “He came down for that,” B.B. King said. “I had invited him, but he didn’t tell me he was coming. I looked up at this black tie affair and there he was. I was so surprised and happy. Any time we meet, we have this special camaraderie. He’s such a great artist and just a very good person.”6 Then, on November 4, 2008, Barack Hussein Obama was elected the fortyfourth president of the United States, as the country where Bobby Bland and so many others had fought their way out of racial segregation and rural poverty chose its first African American chief executive. Soon after “Sweet Home Chicago” blared over an exuberant crowd of tens of thousands in Chicago’s Grant Park, Obama began his emotional victory speech with these words: “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our fathers is still alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.” Amid the throng stood a graying Jesse Jackson, the leader of Chicago’s Operation Breadbasket, where Bobby Bland’s longtime guitarist Wayne Bennett had volunteered some forty years before. As Jackson listened to Obama echo the words of Sam Cooke, like others there and throughout America, tears of...