Bobby Bland has one of the most ironic names in show business. His voice is a natural wonder of the blues world, with its colorful, resonant tones, superbly controlled phrasing, and sheer power. It has worked a potent spell on audiences since he helped create the template for blues-soul singing with his late-’50s/early-’60s hits. Those include the Mr.-T-inspiring "I Pity the Fool," the Eric Clapton–covered "Farther On Up the Road," the aching plea of devotion "I’ll Take Care of You" (covered by Screaming Trees/Queens of the Stone Age singer Mark Lanegan), the wounded and vengeful "Cry, Cry, Cry," and the ballad of regret "Two Steps from the Blues."

Bland’s gig at Scullers this Sunday is part of a rare tour of the Northeast, but his name remains revered among the mostly middle-aged-and-up African-American audience that eagerly awaits the albums he makes every few years for Mississippi’s Malaco Records; another, Blues at Midnight, is due this March. And his performances at major festivals draw tens of thousands of fans, of all ages and colors: hipsters who know why the great vocalist’s name is usually spoken with the word "Blue" inserted between the Bobby and the Bland.

"Well, it’s a new day now," Bland says over the phone from his Memphis home. "But my style of blues is always going to be around. When I came up, the musicians who were playing blues were concerned about it, and you did what you could to take care of your craft. That’s why we made records that have endured, and why I’ve gotten into the hall of fame with the big guys." Indeed, Bland was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. And his chart history is almost as impressive as his voice. According to Joel Whitburn’s Top R&B Singles, Bland is one of the top R&B-charting artists, with 61 recordings that won slots, and he ranks #4 among the "Top Artists of the ’60s." The statistics on the romances and pregnancies his voice has inspired haven’t been tallied, but they’re probably even more impressive.

Although Bland’s light-molasses tenor as it appears on hallmark albums like 1961’s essential Two Steps from the Blues (MCA) changed decades ago after a tonsillectomy, he has remained capable of floating a vibrato-drenched melody as if it were a feather descending to earth, then following it with a lion’s guttural growl. That deep-from-the-belly roar has become as much his signature as the falsetto that marked the first half of his career. "I felt I had to develop that after I lost my high voice," Bland, who turns 73 on January 27, explains. "I learned that from the Reverend C.F. Franklin, who would use that little growl during his sermons. He was one of the greatest." (Not only was Franklin a best-selling artist for Chess Records, which pressed his weekly sermons as LPs and shipped them across the country, but he fathered Aretha and her sisters.)

Bland attributes his durability to his training. "I listened carefully to B.B. King, Lowell Fulson, Roy Brown, Big Joe Turner, Amos Milburn, T-Bone Walker, and Jimmy Witherspoon when I was starting out, and I learned a lot of my diction from Nat King Cole. I had God’s gift of a voice when I started recording with Duke Records in the ’50s, but I didn’t know what to do with it. Joe Scott, who was the arranger there, took me under his wing. He taught me how to phrase, when to lay back and to push. He said, ‘Your best bet is to sing behind the beat. You can tell the story much, much better that way. And you’ll never be afraid that you’re gonna miss your spot if you learn how to count time and handle this.’ From then on, it was a matter of doing whatever I had to do to develop my skills. After a while it’s like Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods — you learn your craft better than anybody else."

Bobby "Blue" Bland plays Scullers, in the DoubleTree Guest Suites Hotel, 400 Soldiers Field Road in Allston, this Sunday at 7 and 9 p.m.; call (617) 562-4111.