Bobby Rush

Rush’s latest two albums, this year’s Grammy nominated funk-infused Decisions and last year’s Grammy nominated and Blues Music Award winning album Down in Louisiana is the work of a funky fire-breathing legend, both exhibiting one of his many unique layers. The latter’s 11 songs revel in the grit, grind and soul that’s been the blues innovator’s trademark since the 1960s, when he stood shoulder to shoulder on the stages of Chicago with Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter and other giants.??

Of course, it’s hard to recognize a future giant when he’s standing among his mentors. But five decades later Down in Louisiana’s blend of deep roots, eclectic arrangements and raw modern production is clearly the stuff of towering artistry.??

"This album started in the swamps and the juke joints, where my music started, and it’s also a brand new thing,” says the Grammy-nominated adopted son of Jackson, Mississippi. “Fifty years ago I put funk together with down-home blues to create my own style. Now, with Down in Louisiana, I’ve done the same thing with Cajun, reggae, pop, rock and blues, and it all sounds only like Bobby Rush.”??

At 77, Rush still has an energy level that fits his name. He’s a prolific songwriter and one of the most vital live performers in the blues, able to execute daredevil splits on stage with the finesse of a young James Brown while singing and playing harmonica and guitar. Those talents have earned him multiple Blues Music Awards including Soul Blues Album of the Year, Acoustic Album of the Year, and, almost perennially, Soul Blues Male Artist of the Year.

Bobby Rush says that he is crossing over, but not crossing out. It is this mindset and growth in his career that has as of lately encompassed a first-ever collaboration with his long-time friend Dr. John, Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame inductee and 6-time Grammy winner. Rush says about the song they did together “Another Murder in New Olreans”, “when my friend Carl Gustafson first approached me about singing this I was leery about it because I didn’t want to sing a song that would make people think bad about Louisiana, but when I listened to the lyrics and the story I changed my mind … wherever senseless violence happens, that’s your New Orleans. You could be in the country, a small town, or Timbuktu …” After signing on, they called Dr. John, aka Mac Rebennack to see if he would be into singing and playing on it, and he immediately signed on. The meaning and message of the song hit home for him and standing up for the cause was something he felt he had to do. The song was subsequently licensed to national non-profit Crimestoppers for their New Orleans chapter and the artists became ambassadors for the cause.

The album Decisions by Bobby Rush with Blinddog Smokin’ came out on his friends label Silver Talon Records on April 15, 2014 preceded by the single and music video for “Another Murder in New Orleans”. The album premiered on USA Today and music video on The Wall Street Journal. It was nominated for the 57th Grammy Awards for his second consecutive Grammy nomination for Best Blues Album, it was awarded Best Soul Blues Album at the Blues Blast Music Awards, and is in the running still with 4 nominations in the Blues Music Awards. This year Rush’s late-career emergence continued with an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon alongside Dan Aykroyd performing James Brown’s “I’ll Go Crazy” together and Rush doing his own “Handy Man” with The Roots. Additionally, Rush is a co-star in feature film Take Me to the River alongside Terrence Howard, Mavis Staples, Snoopy Dogg, Charlie Musselwhite, Frayser Boy, the late Bobby “Blue” Bland, and others. A soundtrack for the film came out on Stax Records/Concord Music Group along with the film in theaters worldwide in the fall of 2014.

After more than sixty years of recording and touring, Rush is still doing over 200 shows a year from Mississippi to Japan and California to Los Angeles, and headlining major festivals and concerts for upwards of 20,000 people a night. Rush’s stage show is built around big-bottomed female dancers, ribald humor and hip-shaking grooves have made Rush today’s most popular blues attraction among African-American audiences. With more than 100 albums on his résumé, according to Rolling Stone magazine he’s the reigning king of the Chitlin’ Circuit, the network of clubs, theaters, halls and juke joints that first sprang up in the 1920s to cater to black audiences in the bad old days of segregation. A range of historic entertainers that includes Bessie Smith, Cab Calloway, B.B. King, Nat “King” Cole and Ray Charles emerged from this milieu. And Rush is proud to bear the torch for that tradition, and more.

?“What I do goes back to the days of black vaudeville and Broadway, and — with my dancers on stage — even back to Africa,” Rush says. “It’s a spiritual thing, entwined with the deepest black roots, and with my latest releases, I’m taking those roots in a new direction so all kinds of audiences can experience my music and what it’s about.”?

Rush began absorbing the blues almost from his birth in Homer, Louisiana, on November 10, 1935. “My first guitar was a piece of wire nailed up on a wall with a brick keeping it raised up on top and a bottle keeping it raised on the bottom,” he relates. “One day the brick fell out and hit me in the head, so I reversed the brick and the bottle.??“

I might be hard-headed,” he adds, chuckling, “but I’m a fast learner.”??

Rush quickly moved on to an actual six-string and the harmonica. He started playing juke joints in his teens, wearing a fake mustache so owners would think him old enough to perform in their clubs. In 1953 his family relocated to Chicago, where his musical education shifted to hyperspeed under the spell of Waters, Wolf, Williamson and the rest of the big dogs on the scene. Rush ran errands for slide six-string king Elmore James and got guitar lessons from Howlin’ Wolf. He traded harmonica licks with Little Walter and begin sitting in with his heroes.

??In the ’60s Rush became a bandleader in order to realize the fresh funky soul-blues sound that he was developing in his head.??

"James Brown was just two years older than me, and we both focused on that funk thing, driving on that one-chord beat,” Rush explains. “But James put modern words to it. I was walking the funk walk and talking the countrified blues talk — with the kinds of stories and lyrics that people who grew up down South listening to John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and bluesmen like that could relate to. And that’s been my trademark.”

??After 1971’s percolating “Chicken Heads” became his first hit and cracked the R&B Top 40, Rush’s dedication increased. He then received his first Gold-Certified record for “Chicken Heads” in 1971, followed by “Sue” in 1981, and “Ain’t Studdin’ Ya” in 1991. After the success of “Chicken Heads” he relocated to Mississippi to be among the highest population of his core black blues-loving audience and put together a 12-piece touring ensemble. Record deals with Philadelphia International and Malaco came as his star rose, and his performances kept growing from the small juke joints where he’d started into nightclubs, civic auditoriums and, by the mid-’80s, Las Vegas casinos and the world’s most prominent blues festivals. Rush’s ascent was depicted in The Road to Memphis, a film co-starring B.B. King that was part of the 2003 PBS series Martin Scorsese Presents: The Blues.??

In 2003 he established his own label, Deep Rush Records, and has released nine titles under that imprint including his 2003 DVD+CD set Live At Ground Zero and 2007’s solo Raw. That disc led to his current relationship with Thirty Tigers, which distributed Raw and his two more recent albums, 2009’s Blind Snake and 2011’s Show You A Good Time (which took Best Soul Blues Album of the year at the 2012 BMAs), before signing him as an artist for Down in Louisiana.??

As Rush continues to be inventive in his music with latest releases Down in Louisiana and Decisions, he still has a big desire to cross over and further expand his audience. “But no matter how much I cross over, whether it’s to a larger white audience or to college listeners or fans of Americana, I’ll never cross out who I am and where I’ve come from,” Rush promises. “My music’s always gonna be funky and honest, and it’s always gonna sound like Bobby Rush.”