Here’s the Man!!!, Bobby Bland’s second full LP on the Houston-based Duke label, was loaded with the kind of first-rate blues and R&B that made Bland such an idol in his time. In common with other blues LPs of the era, the music wasn’t produced at an album session but was assembled primarily from singles recorded at different dates—in this case, in Chicago, Los Angeles and Nashville in 1961 and 1962 under the direction of master arranger Joe Scott. Highlights include a sterling rendition of “Stormy Monday Blues” that brought T-Bone Walker’s 1940s classic “Call It Stormy Monday” back to prominence, featuring a famous Wayne Bennett guitar solo; “Your Friends” and other exemplary slow blues; the urgent “Ain’t That Loving You”; and one of the hottest dance rave-ups ever, “Turn on Your Love Light.” Even the fanfare-fueled spoken introduction is a classic—“Here’s the man! I mean the man! The sensational . . . the incomparable . . . the dynamic . . . Bobby, Bobby Bland!”
The liner notes, co-written by the legendary, promotion man and journalist Dave Clark of later Malaco Records fame contain nuggets as well, like the little-publicized revelation that Bland and future celebrity Eddie Fisher served in the army together. Bland is billed both on the cover and the vinyl label as Dynamic Bobby Bland, and indeed he was.