He left behind farm work to perform on the road with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, and as “Bobby Rush”-a name he took on out of respect to his father, a minister-he toured the jukes and clubs of Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi before settling in Chicago in the 1950s. You’d go out on Saturday night to the juke joints, but then on Monday morning you’d go back into the cotton fields to work for your bossman.” The blues, Rush recalls, provided “an escape from the cotton fields. He built his first guitar on the side of the family’s house out of broom wire, nails, bottles and bricks. grew up on his family’s farm picking cotton, tending to mules and chickens, and living in a home without electricity nor indoor plumbing. That story began in rural Homer/Haynesville, Louisiana, where Rush-born Emmett Ellis, Jr. Over the last several years he’s won a second Grammy, re-recorded his 1971 hit Chicken Heads together with his old friend Buddy Guy and young blues star Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, and written a critically acclaimed autobiography, I Ain’t Studdin’ You: My American Blues Story. Rush’s busy schedule includes headlining European festivals with his band and solo programs at venues including Jazz at Lincoln Center, and he just recorded an album of brand new material, All My Love For You, coming out via his own label Deep Rush Records in collaboration with Nashville-based Thirty Tigers. I laugh about it, but I’m so blessed and I surely never thought I’d be making a living doing what I’m doing. “I was 83 years old before I won a Grammy, but it’s better late than never. “I never thought I would be here this long,” says Rush. It’s a move you might expect at a contemporary R&B show, but it’s downright shocking when you realize that Rush is in his late 80s. During his renowned stage show BOBBY RUSH frequently jumps high into the air, arms spread and legs tucked, only to land gracefully and return without a hitch to his dazzling routine.
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