![]() ![]() She was the granddaughter of a powerful white landowner in the area. “He was a kind man, and he was everything to me.” Love is a healer of all things.” His father, a preacher, was his mentor. “When I was a child, we were poor and we had no money, but we had love. He grew up in a household filled with plenty of love and spiritual grounding. Songs come to him often at odd times “I will write on toilet paper if I have to.” “You write what you know about,” and Rush knows the blues. When things are tough, he says he grabs his guitar and writes songs. (his given name) would never have gotten through those doors.” “Music gave me some opportunities that I never would have had as a Black man I would never have gotten through those doors. However, he pushed forward with over 350 recordings and a career where he plays over two hundred dates per year. He has felt disrespected many times in his lifetime. Rush was once called “King of the Chitlin Circuit,” a title he didn’t like and would have never given himself. All the members of the Blues Hall of Fame that were present at the awards got on the stage. Rush (second from left) and well-known harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite (third from right) take a bow at the 36th Blues Music Awards held in Memphis at the Cook Convention Center in 2015. ![]() He has smooth skin and an even smoother voice. I’d laugh about myself and about the garbage man stealing my wife.”Īt eighty-three, he was honored with a long-overdue Grammy. I found a way to make that funny I was funny from behind the curtain. “I didn’t want anyone to know I was hurting. He tells stories of playing music for cheeseburgers on the Chitlin Circuit and having to play behind a curtain because the white audience that came to hear his music didn’t want to see his black face. It didn’t mean he was always treated right. However, getting through the door wasn’t always something to laugh about. He recalls as a young child, being a clown, he learned quickly, “I had a gift that could get me through the door. “I take a chance and do things other guys wouldn’t dare to do,” Rush recently said about his sometimes-racy performances. Rush isn’t just a bluesman-he’s a comedian and the ultimate showman. Entertainer and at age eighty-eight, Mississippi bluesman Bobby Rush will say or do just about anything to make his audience laugh. He sings about being in love with big, fat women, being henpecked and broken-hearted, about cheating women, chicken heads, and porcupine meat. He has faced much adversity in his life and feels he can be a good role model he has succeeded in spite of it all and believes others can as well. In January 2021, Rawer Than Raw was nominated for Blues Music Awards for Album of the Year and Acoustic Blues Album.Written and photographed by KAREN PULFER FOCHTĪ musical journey well-travelled Bobby Rush, an octogenarian from Mississippi is proud to be a two-time Grammy Award-winning artist. In December 2019 – January 2020, the album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album and for a Blues Music Award for Best Soul Blues Album. What’s more, Bobby’s newest album Sitting on Top of the Blues on his own Deep Rush imprint (distributed by Thirty Tigers) promises to further spread the news that this revered legend, well past 80 years of age even if his stratospheric energy level belies the calendar, is bigger and badder and bolder than ever. He won a long-overdue 2017 Grammy for his spectacular album Porcupine Meat and consistently tours the globe as a headliner. ![]() After decades of tearing up the chitlin’ circuit on a nightly basis with his sweaty, no-holds-barred funkfests, Bobby has thoroughly broken through to the mainstream. King Entertainer of the Year, and makes a cameo in the Netflix Original ‘Dolemite Is My Name’ Starring Eddie Murphy. Grammy winning blues legend, Blues Hall of Famer, 12x Blues Music Award winner, B.B. ![]()
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