Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Mojo | (favorable) |
| Rolling Stone | |
The album was released on January 1, 1961, and became a commercial and critical success. Especially Bland's strong and emotional voice and Scott's thoughtful arrangements were praised by critics. Stephen Thomas Erlwine from Allmusic called the album, "one of the great records in electric blues and soul-blues." Furthermore, "it's one of the key albums in modern blues, marking a turning point when juke joint blues were seamlessly blended with gospel and Southern soul, creating a distinctly Southern sound where all of these styles blended so thoroughly it was impossible to tell where one began and one ended." Geoff Brown commented in Mojo: "no song is wasted and hardly a note sounds false as Bland's blues-wearied voice, driven to anguished screams, grapples with the vicissitudes of life and love, his torment echoed and bolstered by Joe Scott’s memorable horn arrangements."
Rolling Stone gave the album five stars. Downbeat Magazine listed the album on "50 Top Blues Albums Of The Past 50 Years" at number 5, the compiler of the list noting that ""Bland's outstanding voice, whether tough or tender, is set to Joe Scott's arrangements on 'I Pity The Fool', 'Cry, Cry, Cry' and other priceless tracks... Among the stellar sidemen are guitarists Clarence Holloman and Wayne Bennett", and Rolling Stone on "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" at number 217. The album was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame at the 1997 W. C. Handy Awards.
Read more about this topic: Two Steps From The Blues
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)