Robert Cray’s third album is where the blues stopped being a museum piece and started breathing again. Tight, soulful, and recorded with the clarity of a band that had been playing these songs in clubs for years, it’s the sound of a genre waking up to the 1980s without selling out.
The first track on Bad Influence doesn’t fade in—it just starts, like someone hit record a quarter-second late. That’s Robert Cray’s guitar, clean and mean, playing the riff from the title track as if he’s daring you to call it blues.
Nobody called it blues in 1983. Not really. The genre was still wearing polyester leisure suits in Vegas lounges, or hiding behind Albert Collins’s icepick tone. Cray was from the Pacific Northwest, not Chicago or the Delta. He had a voice that could go soft as Sunday morning or sharp as a broken bottle. And his band—Richard Cousins on bass, David Olson on drums, with Peter Boe on piano—didn’t play twelve-bar so much as they played tension.
“Bad Influence” was recorded at Capitol Studios in Hollywood, the same room where Sinatra had crooned and where the Wrecking Crew had laid down hundreds of sessions. But the sound engineer, Dennis Walker (who also co-produced with Bruce Bromberg), treated the room like a club. No reverb that wasn’t already in the wood. The drums were close-mic’d but the snare was allowed to ring. Cray’s guitar—his ’64 Strat through a blackface Fender Twin—was recorded with a single SM57, off-center, exactly like you’d hear it from the second row.
The album’s second cut, “Where Do I Go From Here?”, is where you hear what the fuss was about. Cousins plays a bass line that’s part Memphis soul, part West Coast cool. Olson hits the hi-hat like he’s sprinkling salt. And Cray sings about a woman leaving him, but the catch in his voice isn’t the usual blues moan—it’s a man who’s out of moves. Harmonica player Jimmy Moore sits in on three tracks, blowing through a bullet mic that (according to Bromberg’s session notes) was running directly into the board, no amp.
“I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues” isn’t the Elton John song—it’s pure Cray, with a minor-key riff that sounds like a slow-motion car crash. The solo on that track lasts exactly eleven seconds. Cray gets in, says his piece, and gets out. That’s the whole record: no wasted notes, no ten-minute jams. Every song is under four minutes except the closer, “So Emotional,” which stretches to five-twelve, mostly because Olson’s ride cymbal takes a while to settle down.
The best listen isn’t with headphones. It’s on speakers in a room with hardwood floors and a low ceiling. You want the snare to smack off the walls. You want Cray’s voice to sit slightly behind the guitar, like he’s singing from the other end of the bar. If you have a tube amp, even a modest one, this record will remind you why your grandfather told you not to sell the stereo.
“Waiting for the Tide to Turn” is the quietest cut. Cray plays single notes on the Strat, nothing but a little reverb, while Boe’s electric piano holds down a chord so simple it feels like a two-note prayer. The lyric is a conversation with a waterfront: “I watch the water wash away my cares / But I’m still standing here.” It’s the kind of song that makes you suspect Cray had read a few novels he wasn’t telling anyone about.
Bad Influence didn’t sell millions when it came out. It didn’t even crack the Billboard 200. But it got passed around by musicians and collectors like a secret handshake. Eric Clapton heard it. So did John Lee Hooker. Within two years, Cray would be opening for Clapton and headlining Montreux. The blues revival of the late ’80s—the one that put Stevie Ray Vaughan on Saturday Night Live and gave us the Crossroads soundtrack—starts with this record.
You can hear why. The whole thing sounds like a band that has been driving a van for six years and knows exactly when to step on the gas and when to take the turn without braking.
Why is Robert Cray considered important to the blues revival of the 1980s?
Cray brought a younger, song-oriented approach that pulled blues away from nostalgia. He wrote original material about modern relationships and used a clean, Strat-based guitar tone that owed as much to Curtis Mayfield as to B.B. King. His success opened doors for other acts on the club circuit.
Was 'Bad Influence' his first album?
No, it was his third. The first two — *Who's Been Takin' My Sweet Time?* and *Too Many Cooks* (released 1980 and 1983, respectively) — were rough, self-produced efforts. *Bad Influence* was the first with major-label distribution (through Hightone/Mercury) and the first to get serious radio play.
What gear did Robert Cray use on this record?
His main guitar was a 1964 Fender Stratocaster with standard single-coil pickups. The amp was a blackface Fender Twin Reverb, likely a mid-1960s model. He used a Dunlop Cry Baby wah on select solos but otherwise ran straight into the amp. No chorus, no delay, no pedals except a Boss tuner.