Songoftheday 5/7/15 - I get a constant busy signal when I call you on the phone, I get a strong uneasy feeling you're not sitting there alone...

"Smoking Gun" - The Robert Cray Band
from the album Strong Persuader (1986)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #22 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 6

Today's SOTD comes from blues singer and guitarist Robert Cray, who formed his blues band and started releasing albums in the 80s, with a couple of successful albums before his pop breakthrough in 1987. With his album Strong Persuader, Cray proved that pure, soulful blues had a place on pop radio, and selling over two million records, it was the genre's shining star that year. The first single from the set, "Smoking Gun", was as accessible as it was emotional, and the tale of the cuckold landed Robert in the top-40...

"Smoking Gun" became Cray's sole top-40 pop hit in April of 1987, while climbing all the way to #2 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart. His Strong Persuader album won the Grammy for best blues album.

A year later, Robert released his follow-up album Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark. The title track climbed to #4 on the rock chart, was his last pop hit at #74, and even crossed over to England at #50. He'd place a few more singles on the Mainstream Rock list, with "Just A Loser" his most recent in 1992. A collaboration with blues mentor John Lee Hooker, "Baby Lee", was a minor hit in England in 1996. Cray was inducted into the Blues Hall Of Fame in 2011.

Strong Persuader was the first blues record I owned, and this song remains personally special to me ever since.

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Cray was a favorite of David Letterman, appearing on his show numerous times. Here's his TV debut in 1987...

...and on a live TV appearance in Holland that same year..

...and from a recent radio appearance a few years back...

Up tomorrow: A British band with some fatal vision.