Bobby Rush- “Recipe for Love.”
Interview conducted on Aug. 01, 2019
by Mary Andrews
Bobby Rush has had the privilege of being a student and a contemporary alongside the most revered American blues legends ever and he lives to tell about them. Bush is a blues harp stylist and a guitarist who is still performing 200 shows per year and is still writing songs and cutting records on his own record label. Rush was awarded his first Grammy Award two years ago for his blues album, Porcupine Meat, after 60 years as an entertainer.
Rush recorded his first certified gold record with his self-penned record “Chicken Heads” in the early 70s for Vee-Jay Records. The record would re-enter the Billboard charts some 30 years later after it was used on the soundtrack of the feature film Black Snake Moan.
Rush’s new album release is in August and he graciously agreed to speak with Unrated Magazine. The interview was much like a walk through the history of the blues and here is what he had to say.
Mary Andrews: You have a new album release coming up August 16 called Sitting On Top of the Blues.
Bobby Rush: That’s right. It is my 394th recording I’ve done in my career. I believe it is my seventh or eighth CD. The rest of them are singles going back to the day when there weren’t CDs.. Instead there were 45s, 78s, and 33s.
What is different about this record verses the last recording you did?
Well, this one is new. The other one is old now. You know, when you are awarded a Grammy or any other award, it is always hard to beat your own self out. Sometimes you beat yourself up trying to beat yourself out. You have to compete with your own self. Coming off a Grammy two years ago with Porcupine Meat, I tried to come up with the same kind of songs that relates in that direction yet do it better. It’s hard to come up with something new because everything’s been sung. Everything was, is, and everything is, was. But that is a horse of another color. I found it so hard to compete with myself. I tried to come up with the kind of songs like the first song on the new album is “Hey, Hey Bobby Rush” conveys I’m a blues singer and I want you to know I’ve been singing the blues from a long time ago. The blues is the only thing I know.
Even with my daddy being a preacher, the pastor of a church, I would go to church with my father, Sunday school, and the service and the whole bit, but I always had blues on my mind. There was no doubt in my mind of what I wanted to do since I was seven years old. I wanted to be a blues singer, not a gospel singer not a religious singer. I just wanted to be a blues singer. I consider my blues having a funky rhythm and a story that is the same thing as Muddy Waters does. We talk about the same story but I put more of a funky or energized kind of a beat, but overall I’m talking the same talk. I’m talking about being in love, falling in love, up, down, good, bad, ugly, pretty. I’m covering all those types of things.
The album is outstanding. Everything from the mix to the musical performance is stellar. The harp, vocals, guitar, everything has a clean, beautiful sound. Were you playing guitar during the sessions?
Yes, I played guitar along with Vasti Jackson. He played most of the guitar on the record. I write with my guitar. A lot of times when I’m writing I put other people on it so it won’t sound so much like Bobby Rush. That way I won’t repeat myself. Other guys will play my line and it won’t sound like me over and over again. The lines are pretty much my lines. Vasti Jackson will play my lines as well as he adds my line to his lines. He is a great creator. He’s a great engineer. I wasn’t trying to do the same thing with the new album, but I was trying to be just as good in my writing and my production.
We have another song on the album that I’ve been playing around with for a long time called “Bowlegged Woman.” I’ve been playing around with that song for 20 or 25 years. This time it’s a little bit different. “Slow Motion” and then, of course, there is the “Bobby Rush Shuffle “ on the album. It’s an instrumental with the harp thing. It has the energy thing I’m talking about.
The humor and the honesty of your performances are infectious. Your shows are an all-round good time.
Thank you. We try really hard. I’m one of the few black men now that has the show thing going, plus the traditional thing going, the funk thing going, and the rhythm thing going. I also do a lot of acoustic shows by myself. I do a lot of things with the band and I’ve got the girls on the side too. I have crossed over, but I definitely haven’t crossed out. I am so thankful that I am accepted for doing what I do and who I am. I try to be good at what I do. That’s my motto, be good at what I do. You don’t have to like me. You can say ‘I don’t like Bobby Rush, but damn he’s good.’ That’s all that matters.
You mentioned that your daddy was a preacher.
Right, my daddy was a preacher. He was a pastor of a church. He was a harmonica player and a guitar player. When I look back, he wasn’t that good. To me, as a seven-year-old boy, anything he played at all was good. My daddy was my best friend, my fan. He elevated me more than anyone ever at that time. With him being a preacher, I respected him so much for what he stood for and what he was doing as an upright man. He never told me to sing the blues and he never told me NOT to sing the blues. That was a green light for me. I came from an era where the attitude was that the blues was the devil’s music, but in my household, there was no such thing as ‘devil’s music.’ My father may not have liked what I was doing. I don’t know whether he did or didn’t, but he never showed me he didn’t approve of me.
It sounds like he was a very realistic preacher.
I think he was. One day he said, “Bring that guitar here and let me play it for you.” I didn’t know my daddy knew I had a guitar but you find out your parents know everything (laughs). So I brought it to him and he said, “Let me sing a song I used to sing to the girls when I was a little older than you.” And I wanted to hear about this cause I just knew it was going to be about my mother. It was either one of the gospel songs like “Glory, Glory Hallelujah” but it wasn’t about my mother and it wasn’t “Glory, Glory Hallelujah.”
He went to sing a song to me, “Me and my gal went to Chinquapin hunting; she fell and I saw something.” I thought ‘wow, my dad being a preacher! Somebody falling down and he saw something.’ Well, I wanted my daddy to tell me what he saw but I couldn’t find words to ask him. So I said, “Sing it again.” I thought if he sang it again, the second verse would be talking about what he saw. I was about seven years old. By that time, my mother was in the kitchen cooking and she cleared her throat, “Don’t sing that kind of song to that boy.” So he went to sing it again and I said, “Daddy, what did she have on?” And he said, “Nothing but a dress.” I said, “How big was she?” He said, “Well, she was about 350 pounds.” Now in my little mind, a woman that weighs 350 pounds, she had nothing on but a dress and she fell down and her dress went up. Wow! I could just see that in my mind and that’s a lot to see! (Laughs). And my dad being a preacher, writing this kind of song it was too much for my mind! And he went to sing it again and my mother was coming up. “Me and my gal went to Chinquapin hunting,” and I said, “Daddy, Daddy,” in a low voice. “Here comes Mama.” And he looked around and he said, “Me and my gal went to Chinquapin hunting; she fell down and I kept running.” (Laughs). I never knew what my daddy saw. I could only imagine in my mind what my daddy saw. I wanted him to tell me more about it. That started my writing. You can hear it all in my songs, things like that or similar to that. He was my first introduction to writing songs.
I love Little Jordan cause he talks about chickens, horses and cows and I love Howlin’ Wolf because he was so different. I love Muddy Waters cause he was so dap. I love Little Walter cause he was such a great harmonica player. I love Sonny Boy Williamson cause not only could he play, but he was also a great storyteller. There are so many guys that I looked up to when I was young that I relate to now. I loved so much of what they had done and they taught me so much. Now, me and Buddy Guy are the oldest black guys left.
You mentioned that you fell in love with the blues when you were seven years old. How did that come about as a seven-year-old child?
I lived around a record shop. I heard the blues on the radio WLAC at Randall’s record shop. There were a couple of radio stations around Little Rock, Arkansas at that time. They had a late-night radio show. We had this old record player that we had a battery with a cord that ran through the floor under the house that hooked to the battery. My dad would listen to the fights. Joe Lewis was fighting back then. We would sneak and listen to the blues on WLAC. We could hear Muddy Waters, the John Lee Hooker Jamboree and stuff like that. We couldn’t listen for more than 15 or 20 minutes, that that was how it got started. There was another guy in my neighborhood called Twitch and he played fiddle like country-western. He was a black guy. I’d go by there and he would put the fiddle under his chin and play. Man when I heard that I said, ‘This is it.’ I knew this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life until the end of the world.
My cousin gave me a guitar when I was about seven years old. I had made me a guitar with a diddley bow up against the wall. My cousin was between 12 and 15 years old. I wasn’t allowed to play his guitar until the girls came around. I’d go around the neighborhood and gather up all the girls I could so they would come to talk to him. While they talked to him, he would let me play his guitar. Finally, he gave it to me. I hid it in a loft because I thought my daddy didn’t want me to have it. You know the preacher. I always wanted to sing the blues. That’s how I started.
It sounds like you had a calling.
I think you are right. I think you can teach a man or a woman how to play the guitar or how to play any instrument. But you can’t teach them how to do what I do because you have to be born to do that. I am a born entertainer.
I have to agree with you on that. You moved to Arkansas when you were a teenager.
I was born in Louisiana. I moved to Arkansas in 1947. I moved up because I had met Little Walter and Muddy Waters. And Elmore James was playing in Pine Bluff, Arkansas where my father had moved us. Elmore James took me up to Memphis Tenn. That’s where I got to meet B.B. King and all the guys. Little Walter convinced me to come to Vicksburg where Willie Dixon was. Willie Dixon was already living in Chicago. I headed to Chicago in the early 50s to record with Chess Records. When I went there, Muddy Waters. John Lee Hooker, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Reed, Little Walter, and Smokey Hall were there. In 1953, Jimmy Reed went over to Vee-Jay Records. It wasn’t Vee-Jay then. It was C-Jay Records. Later on, in 1954, Vivian Carter got married to a guy named Gary and he had Jimmy’s Record Shop. They changed the name to Vee-Jay Records that was named after Jimmy and Vivian. I was recording at Chess. I think now that I am the only remaining, oldest alive that recorded at Chess. The next one left would be Buddy Guy. There is no one else left. They’ve all past and gone.
It seems like a golden age for blues music back then.
Oh, it was! Buddy Guy didn’t come to Chicago until 1957. The same year that Etta James came. She came down on the bus. I picked her up at the bus station and brought her to Ralph Bass who was the A&R man of Chess Records in June of 1957.
She was a youngster back then wasn’t she?
Oh, God yes! She was young and good looking,’ singing well and happy, free and happy whichever comes first.
You returned to Mississippi in the 1980s. Is that right?
1983 is when I returned to Mississippi. In 1975, I went to Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. They were great producers and started Philadelphia International Records. I went to Granville White who was working at CBS Records. He introduced me to Gamble and Huff and Quincy Jones. Quincy Jones had moved on to do his thing. They were at 309 Broad Street in Philly. I went there to record with them and they really liked what I was doing. They took me under their arm and Huff took me by his house personally. I had a hotel room but he took me to his house. He made me feel so good and so welcome. He molded me and groomed me. We got to know each other very well. We cut a bunch of songs.
The next album that we went to cut, He had gotten so attached to me that he thought that I wanted to produce myself. With the next album, they were getting in trouble financially. He said to me in the studio one day, “Bobby Rush, I’m going to leave you an engineer and here are all the musicians. You can hire who you want to. Go ahead and produce your record.” I was working on a song called “T & A.” He trusted me so much and liked what I was doing. He left the studio and he said, “I’m going to leave for the weekend. You just do what you want and all of the musicians are at your disposal. Do it.” And he left me there. That wasn’t what I wanted. I look back on it now. I had so much respect for him and I wanted to look over his shoulder and steal from them. That’s what I wanted to do. Once they left me by myself, I thought I might as well have stayed in Chicago than do this. I didn’t go there to do it by myself. I came there to watch and learn how to do what they were doing. They had Harold Melvin, Patti LaBelle, the O’Jays, all of the hit guys.
They forced me to be creative, but I said ‘I can’t do this. If I’m going to do this, let me go to Mississippi, where I’m like a one-eyed man in a blind house. I’ll go where there is no competition.’ All the competition I had then was Johnny Taylor, Tyrone Davis, and Lucas Sell in Mississippi. I could be my on my own and stick out like a sore thumb in Mississippi. That’s exactly what I did. I didn’t have any bad feelings or a bad taste in my mouth regarding what I had done. I just picked up my hat and walked.
I always will say Leon Huff and Kenny Gamble did so much for my career. They took my head to a certain point that that is why I’m doing what I’m doing now. Between Leon Huff, Kenny Gamble, and my father, they really put me on the right road. I came to Mississippi and started recording from that history.
Your first gold record was “Chicken Head” right?
Yeah I wasn’t writing like I am now. Calvin Carter who was with Vee-Jay Records asked me to bring him a song. I said I’ve got a good song. He said, “What’s the name of it?” I said my record is called “Chick Head.’ He said, ‘We can’t record any record called Chicken Head! We can’t put out a record like that.” He said, “Where are you from?” I responded, ‘I’m from down south.’ He said, “Y’all used to eat chicken heads down south. How does the record go?” I said the record goes like this, (singing)”Daddy told me on his dying bed, You lose your heart, but don’t lose your head, You came along, girl, what did I do? I lost my heart and my head went too.” Of course, that had nothing to do with a chicken. He said, “Oh yeah, that’s great.” I saw that I had two guys who knew nothing about what I was talking about. He said, “We need a ‘B’ side.” I said ‘I’ve got a B-side. The name is “Mary Jane.” He said, “I know Mary Jane, she did me wrong” I wasn’t talking about no girl at all. I was talking about reefer, getting high. Here I had a guy who didn’t know what I was talking about chicken head and getting high. I went on and cut the record. He thought it was a joke, but the record went on to number one across the board. That year James Brown had a number two record. Bill Withers had the number three. I had number one. James Brown and Bill Withers were hard to beat out. I beat them out for the number one spot.
You’ve been named the King of the Chitlin’ Circuit.
Let me tell you how proud I am of that. They probably think that the King of the Chitlin Circuit is less than something else. It was supposed to be a downstroke. My little granddaughter, (she’s thirty-six years old now), at the time she was just a little kid, was sitting at the table one day and one of the guys from the TV station was about to interview me about being the King of the Chitlin’ Circuit. Before I could open my mouth to get into the conversation, my little granddaughter wanted to know something from me. I excused myself from the interview to find out what my granddaughter wanted. She said, “Granddaddy what do I look like (she had just lost her front tooth)?” I said, ‘You look like Bugs Bunny.’ She laughed about it. She thought it must be something good because my granddaddy said it. I resumed the interview and they asked about the Chitlin’ Circuit. I said to the interviewers ‘Yeah I’m a Chitlin’ Circuit artist. In fact, I am the King of the Chitlin’ Circuit. I am proud to be the King of the Chitlin’ Circuit.
So now they can’t say what they want to say about the Chitlin’ Circuit because I’m upholding it and so proud to be a Chitlin’ Circuit artist. They said, “You are proud of it? I said, ‘Sure I am proud of it because my granddaughter was proud of looking like a rabbit, I am proud of being a part of the Chitlin’ Circuit.’ I went on and explained to them about the
Chitlin’ Circuit. The Chitlin’ Circuit was created because they fed you chitlins. I was so good in 1951-62 around Chicago, Illinois. I used to get four chitlin plates every night. I would sell them for 25 cents per night. I would get four hamburgers and sell them for 25 cents apiece. I would make $1.75 per night. I was only getting paid for $5.50. I was paying Muddy Waters $6.50 per night. That’s what we were making a night. I’m making $5.50 plus $1.75 on my hamburgers. I’m then making $7.25 and maybe $8 a night with tips sometimes. That was money back in the day. J. B. Lenorville was another gentleman who introduced me to my second gig in a suburb of Chicago. I used to work in these little clubs in that area where we had to play behind a curtain for a white audience. We played behind a curtain every night where they wanted to have the music, but they didn’t want to see our faces. Those days we didn’t play openly. Everything changes but remains the same. Thank God I have crossed over, but I have not crossed out. I’m one of the few entertainers left that has both audiences, black and white. I’m so thankful.
If you hadn’t been an entertainer, what would you have done?
I would probably be a carpenter. I don’t have anybody do anything to my house. I can do anything that needs to be done at my house. I can lay bricks, do concrete, fix cabinets, plumbing, whatever it is. I can do everything but electricity. I don’t like it. It’s too close to getting shocked. I don’t like to do electricity, move or cut yards. I don’t have much yard work to do because I poured concrete all around my house. I’ve got a lot of artificial grass.
Are you married now?
Yes, I’m still with the family. I’ve been married twice. I’ve been with my present wife for about 50 years. We’ve had our ins and outs and ups and downs. We’ve had kids and grandkids. One son has four children. He lives in the same neighborhood as me. I’m gone all the time, on the road 90% of the time. I’ve done 200 dates a year for the last 60 years.
That’s amazing. Do you still jump during your performances?
(Laughing) I don’t know how high but I’m still jumping. I’m still pretty active you know. I get beat down to the ground because I think most of the things that get me down, not the public, but the people around me who still don’t believe I’m worthy of what I do. You don’t need the negativity, but sometimes it happens. I have a bunch of people who have been with me for a very long time. I appreciate everybody who is with me. They are good people, but they don’t know the kind of hardship I go through trying to keep them working. I keep myself motivated to keep everybody working. I try to keep money coming in to put in everybody’s pocket. It’s sometimes a hard job.
People describe country music as three chords and the truth. Is that true for the Blues as well?
Oh, yeah! I don’t know about how many chords, but it could be three or less. There are a few songs that I’ve sung in my life that weren’t the truth. I’ve sung about I wouldn’t sleep with a fat woman and I lied about that. I often joke about it because I talk about my woman left me for the garbage man. It wasn’t the garbage man, but she did leave me. (Laughing). The only thing is, gone is gone.
What did you learn from Elmore James?
Oh, everything! There was a man called Boyd Gilmore who was the first cousin of Elmore James. He introduced me to James. He said he taught Elmore James everything he knows. James confirmed that. He was a couple of years older than James. I knew him first. He came to my band first before Elmore James.
What did you learn from B.B. King?
I learned anytime a man does what he did and never wavered one way or the other, never changed anything he did from the time I met him until he passed. That may be because he didn’t know anything else to do. I thought it was refreshing not to change a thing. Whatever B.B. King did in 1950 is what he did when he passed. He always talked about that he couldn’t play and sing at the same time. He didn’t try to keep up with the style. He didn’t try to change with the disco movement. He didn’t try to go with the Joneses. He just stayed B.B. King. That’s what I liked about B.B.
What did you learn from Muddy Waters?
Muddy Waters was a dresser. He was a schemer. He really knew how to deliver a song. Especially when it came down to a trashy kind of a thing. He’d sing a song of being in love with someone who you shouldn’t be in love with. He would talk about how a woman had him hooked. He was different and he was good.
What about Little Walter?
I loved him because of his swiftness with the harmonica. He had energy. Sonny Boy Williamson didn’t have that energy but he had the vocal thing and the story. Little Walter didn’t have the story and he couldn’t tell the story like Sonny Boy could tell it.
What did you learn from Jimmy Reed?
I learned everything from Jimmy Reed. He was a hell of a writer. Reed was a guy who thought I was the best thing that ever happened to Jimmy Reed. He wouldn’t let anybody play his guitar but me in the studio when he got drunk. I would help him get drunk as fast as I could. I would go to the store every time he would want me to go to the store with a dollar and 25 cents. I would buy the cheapest whiskey I could find. I would put water in half of the bottle in one pocket and the next time he wanted me to go to the store, I would already have the whiskey there. Every other time, it would be my dollar and a quarter. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry about that, but every other time it was my dollar and a quarter. I would have to do that ten times a day. He was an alcoholic.
I had my first beer with Muddy Waters and the last one. He was out there.
You’ve got this new album coming out in August are you following it up with a tour?
Yes, it’s coming out August 17 and I will follow it up with a tour. I’m starting out the end of August, going to Phoenix, AZ. Then we will go to Newark, NJ and New York City. I’ll be playing at the Rhythm Room in Phoenix. We’ll stop in New Mexico while we are out west. I do perform an acoustic show, just me and my guitar.
After Rush thanked me for doing the interview, the interview was finished. Be sure to experience one of the two remaining blues legends alive when he comes to your area of the country.
You must be logged in to post a comment.