The journalist Phil Hardy introduced me to Bobby Bland, playing me Two Steps from the Blues and other early Duke albums repeatedly until I was his No 1 fan. Accordingly, when the singer came to London in 1982, Phil sent me to see him – not for a proper review but to get a few quotes for the ongoing partwork The History of Rock.
I found him stuck in a cramped hotel room in Hammersmith, miserable as sin. Here was the man, the idol of millions, with his long, tapering, varnished fingernails, his silky bouffant and voice to die for – trapped by circumstance. He didn't know where he was, his wife had a bad cold, and he'd had nothing to eat for a day. He was topping the bill at the nearby Odeon (now the Apollo), but the management had not seen fit to provide and he seemed singularly unworldly.
I was dismayed and asked what he wanted to eat. The answer was simple: American food. I said I'd provide. I returned with bags of fried chicken and all the trimmings, plus a bottle of hot sauce, and his face was a picture. He wanted to pay me but I refused. If I can't feed Mr Blue Bland, I said, what kind of blues lover am I? He told me he sang falsetto originally and his voice only lowered after he had his tonsils removed; it was after this that he listened to the Rev CL Franklin, studying his famous recorded sermon The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest, to develop his trademark "squall".