The Robert Cray Band and Robert Cray

Robert Cray is the natural successor to practically every blues legend there is. Who may owe his career to the likes of Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, and Freddie King but is a touchstone in his own right, and a trailblazer for the modern day likes of Gary Clark Jr, among many others. Cray picked up the guitar in his early teens and, inspired by the legends that he would regularly see perform in the blues clubs of his native Georgia, Cray decided to form a band when he was 20 years old. His first band cut their teeth playing house parties and frat houses all the way up and down the west coast anywhere that would have them. It wasn’t until in the late seventies that Cray felt that he had the experience necessary to strike out on his own, and he did just that by forming the Robbie Cray Band.

The new project hit the road immediately and started building up a devoted local following. A following that even led to a brief, non-speaking appearance in John Belushi’s comedy classic “National Lampoon’s Animal House” as a bass player in the fictional band Otis Day and the Knights. However, true success wouldn’t knock on Cray’s door until 1982, when he secured a record deal with Mercury Records, shortly after the release of his debut album “Who’s Been Talkin’”. His first couple of albums there tided him along fine, but it was his 1986 album “Strong Pretender” that broke him into the mainstream with a top 15 placing on the Billboard 200, a crossover hit in the form of “Smokin’ Gun” and a Grammy nomination the very next year.

Having proved that he could take the blues to the upper end of the charts, Robert Cray has had no obligations since, and has just produced some of the best and most truthful soul-blues of the late eighties and nineties. He’s opened for Clapton. He performed “Sweet Home Chicago” with the one and only Stevie Ray Vaughn at the great man’s last ever concert before his tragic death in 1990. To this day, every studio album of new material he’s released since 1995 has debuted in the top five of the Billboard Blues charts. Needless to say, Cray is a man who’s done it all, and still leaves it all onstage night after night after night, because his passion for the blues burns just as bright as it did when he started. Highly recommended.