Bobby "Blue" Bland (January 27, 1930 – June 23, 2013) – If Love Ruled The World (1970)
A powerful message song that still speaks to us today, written by Joe Veasey who also wrote Bland's first hit, the blues classic "Farther Up The Road."
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Bobby "Blue" Bland was a titan of the blues whose records were mainstays of the R&B charts, with 23 of his albums charting from 1962-1993.
Robert Calvin Brooks was born in a small town in Tennessee and moved to Memphis with his mother at age 17, where he began singing with local gospel groups. He soon started hanging out with the musicians who frequented nightclubs on Beale Street including B.B. King and Junior Parker.
He was discovered by Ike Turner in 1951, who was at that time a talent scout. Bland signed a contract with Houston-based Duke Records in the mid-fifties that paid him just a half-cent a record, instead of the industry standard of two cents. He could not read the contract to realize he was being cheated because he was illiterate, having left school in the third grade to help support his family by picking cotton.
From the late fifties through the early eighties, Bland’s records were seldom off the R&B charts, which contained a jaw-dropping 54 of his singles between 1957-1982.
An additional five of his records made the pop charts during 1963-65, the brief period when Billboard did not publish R&B charts, including his biggest crossover hit, “Ain't Nothing You Can Do,” which peaked at #20 in 1964. Eleven of these singles were top-five R&B hits, and 25 of them reached the top-ten.
In 1970, Bland recorded the masterpiece “If Love Ruled The World,” a powerful message song whose words reverberate today in light of all the problems division and hatred continue to create.
The single was released the same year on Duke, and written by Joe Veasey, best known for writing the blues classic “Farther Up The Road” (aka “Further On Up The Road”). That previous song was Bland's first big hit, recorded and released in 1957, which went to #1 on the R&B charts.
Just like on "Farther Up The Road" and other songs he wrote for Bland, Veasey was forced to share the songwriting credit on “If Love Ruled The World” with Don Robey, the shady owner of Duke Records and the nation's first Black owner of a successful record company. It was co-credited to Veasey and “D. Malone,” or Deadric Malone, the frequent copyright alias used by Robey to collect royalties from the records released on his label.
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