Otis Rush

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Born April 29, 1934, in Philadelphia, MI; son of O. C. Rush (a farmer) and Julia Boyd. Played first job, under name “Little Otis,” 1954; first hit record on Cobra label, 1956; signed with Chess Records, 1959; recorded for Vanguard label and toured Europe with American Folk Blues Festival, 1966; played concerts throughout America, 1969-72 and 1980s; toured Japan and recorded live album for Delmark label, 1975; released album Ain’t Enough Comin’ In, 1994. Addresses: Agent—Rick Bates, 714 Brookside Ln., Sierra Madre, CA 91024.

Guitarist, singer

A stinging guitar vibrato and gospel-like voice are the definitive trademarks of bluesman Otis Rush. One of the founders of the Westside Chicago blues sound in the 1950s, Rush fused deep Mississippi blues with modern urban styles to produce a formidable guitar combined with vocals capable of agonized high falsetto shouts. During the blues revival of the 1960s, Rush emerged as a mentor for musicians from Mike Bloomfield to Eric Clapton. For three decades, Rush has continued to record and tour, bringing audiences throughout the world his fierce brand of electric blues.

Born one of seven children in Philadelphia, Mississippi, on August 29, 1934, Rush was raised on a farm by his father O. C. Rush and mother Julia Boyd. While he occasionally sang in the church choir, Rush remained drawn to the country blues sounds of Tommy McClen-nan and Lightnin’ Hopkins. Although he began to pick up the guitar at age eight, Rush recalled in the liner notes to Chicago/The Blues Today that "as a kid I just liked the looks of guitars, but I didn’t play." Instead, Rush began to teach himself harmonica.

In the winter of 1948 Rush went to Chicago, where he stayed at the home of his sister. Working in the Chicago stockyards, he continued to play harmonica. Finally, inspired by the live performances of Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers, he began to study the guitar in 1953. Within a year, Rush fronted a band under the name of "Little Otis," playing his first job with Arkansas-born guitarist Bob Woodfolk. Introduced to the guitar playing of T-Bone Walker and B. B. King, Rush incorporated modern phrasing and rhythmic ideas into his deep Mississippi sound. "I can remember when Otis was playing just like Muddy Waters," explained Luther Tucker in Blues Guitarists."T-Bone Walker was pretty hot at that time and he gave Otis some ideas. He kept the Muddy Waters feel but added little more modern chord progressions."

The Birth of the West Side Sound
In the mid-1950s, Rush’s maturing style caught the attention of bassist Willie Dixon. As Dixon explained in his autobiography I Am the Blues, "I found Otis Rush down on 47th Street and I knew he was good but Leonard Chess thought he sounded too close to Muddy Waters." Consequently, Dixon signed Rush with Eli Tascano’s newly established Cobra label in 1956. At Tascano’s Westside studio, Rush’s guitar was brought to the forefront of the band. Accentuated by a driving horn section, his solos exhibited a drive and volume unknown to earlier Chicago bluesmen.

Cobra’s Westside blues guitarists like Rush and Buddy Guy drew upon the influences of jazz, rhythm and blues, and the horn-based ensemble of B. B. King to produce a modern urban sound. Written and engineered by Dixon, Rush’s first Cobra recording, "I Can’t

Quit You," became the label’s only national hit. From its tormented vocal introduction, "I Can’t Quit You" was an eerie slow blues, augmented with brilliantly phrased guitar fills. Rush’s next single was "My Love Will Never Die," a powerful minor-key slow blues which set the trend for Rush’s unique West Side sound. Two more excellent examples of this style were the blues masterpieces "Double Trouble" and "All Your Love (I Miss Loving)," which later became a guitar standard for young bluesman Eric Clapton. "’All Your Love,’" wrote blues historian and critic Paul Oliver in his Blues Records, "shows Rush in top form, harboring insane pockets of energy released into an atmosphere of tense expectation." Incorporating Latin and straight shuffle rhythms, the song features odd, minor-inflected chord breaks and searing single note passages unsurpassed in the modern electric blues idiom.

At this period in Rush’s career, his back-up musicians often included guitarists Dave and Louis Meyers, drummer Odie Payne, and Dixon on acoustic bass. In 1958, Rush hired Arkansas-born Willie D. Warren who played electric bass on the bottom three strings of his guitar. The addition of Warren brought further attention to Rush’s band, for it marked the introduction of the electric bass into blues music. In an interview with Contemporary Musicians, Warren emphasized the importance of this event: "There wasn’t any electric basses back then. There was only upright bass fiddles like Willie Dixon played. After joining Otis I met Little Walter, Magic Sam, and Buddy Guy. They wanted me to teach their bass players what I was doing." Thus, Rush’s band earned a reputation as a first-rate ensemble which helped set the trend for the development of modern electric blues.

After Tascano’s death and the departure of Warren in 1959, Dixon brought Rush to Chess Records. That same year, Rush recorded "So Many Roads So Many Trains," an excellent single reminiscent of his finest Cobra material. Following this session, however, Rush experienced numerous setbacks. Without commercial success on the Chess label, he signed with Duke which resulted in the release of one single, "Homework," in 1962. Active primarily in the local Chicago club scene, Rush performed at occasional out-of-town shows with such artists as T-Bone Walker and Little Richard.

The Great Blues Revival
In 1966, Rush appeared on Vanguard’s Chicago: The Blues Today, the first recorded blues anthology directed toward a young white folk/rock audience. Participating in that year’s American Folk Blues Festival, he played concert dates throughout Europe—the exposure brought him a devout following among musicians in both England and America. Between 1969 and 1972, Rush played before large crowds of enthusiastic listeners at the annual Ann Arbor Blues Festival.

While Rush’s songs were being covered—and often directly imitated—by bands from Paul Butterfield to Led Zeppelin, he struggled to eke out a living in small Chicago clubs. Plagued by inadequate back-up bands, he failed to produce an album equal in quality to his earlier work. His 1971 release Mourning in the Morning, though it contained moments of brilliance from Rush, suffered from over-production and poorly selected material. In 1975, after years of personal and career problems, Rush’s spirits were lifted when his band was greeted at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport by thousands of fans who covered the runway with flowers. "I never saw so many flowers before in my life," commented Rush in Down Beat. "They had our baggage covered in flowers, the car we were in was full of flowers, at the gate people were standing around me with flowers."

Unfortunately for Rush, his successful Japanese tour represented only a brief moment in a career marked by setbacks and financial problems. Disillusioned, he quit performing for two years in the early 1980s. But when the blues experienced a second revival during the middle of the decade, Rush found a new audience among young musicians, including Texas guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughn who paid tribute to him by naming his band Double Trouble after Rush’s 1958 Cobra recording.

King of the "Singing String"
Despite his quiet and congenial disposition offstage, Rush remains a powerful performer. Employing a left-handed upsidedown guitar technique, Rush bends notes that are reminiscent of slide guitar tones and inflections. "I practiced to get that sound without using a slide," explained Rush in Blues Guitar. "I’m still trying to develop it." By imitating the slide sounds of Robert Nighthawk and Earl Hooker, he developed a lyrical string vibrato, colored by full chords inspired by the recordings of jazz guitarist Kenny Burrel.

Despite many years of hardships, Rush has remained optimistic that he will attain rightful recognition for his work. His 1994 release Ain’t Enough Comin’ln featured the production team that brought recent commercial success to friend and Chicago blues guitarist Buddy Guy. Critical of many second-generation bluesmen, Muddy Waters often commended Rush for possessing a "deeper" blues sound than most of his contemporaries. A true exponent of the deep-blues tradition, Rush remains a guitar legend, one of the last living giants of Chicago blues.

Selected discography
(With others) Chicago/Blues Today!, Vanguard, 1966.(With others) American Folk Blues Festival, 66’, L&R, 1966.Mourning in the Morning, Atlantic, 1969.So Many Roads, Delmark, 1975.Cold Day in Hell, Delmark, 1975.Lost Blues, Alligator, 1977.Live in Europe, Isabel, 1977.Ain’t Enough Comin’ In, Mercury, 1994.Albert King/Otis Rush: Door to Door, Chess.(With others) The Best of Duke-Peacock Blues, MC.The Classic Recordings, Charly R&.Cobra Alternates, P-Vine.(With others) The Cobra Records Story, Capricorn.Groaning the Blues: Cobra Sides 56-58, Flyright.Otis Rush 1956-1958, Paula.Otis Rush and Magic Sam—The Other Takes, 1956-58, Flyright.Right Place, Wrong Time, Hightone.Screamin’ and Crying, Evidence.This One’s a Good Un, Blue Horizon/Polydor.Tops, Blindpig.

Sources
Books
The Blackwell Guide to Blues Records, edited by Paul Oliver, Basil Blackwell, 1989.
Blues Guitarists: Collected From the Pages of Guitar Player Magazine, Guitar Player Productions, 1975.
Blues Guitar: The Men Who Made the Music, From the Pages of Guitar Magazine, edited by Jas Obrecht, Miller Freeman Books, 1993.
Cohn, Lawrence, Nothing But the Blues: The Music and the Musicians, Abbeville Press, 1993.
Dixon, Willie, with Don Snowden, The Willie Dixon Story, Da Capo, 1989.
Palmer, Robert, Deep Blues, Viking, 1981.
Rowe, Mike, Chicago Blues: The City and the Music, Da Capo, 1975.

Periodicals
Down Beat, April 7, 1977.
Guitar Player, November 1993.
Additional information for this profile obtained from liner notes by Samuel Charters to Chicago/The Blues Today!, Vanguard, 1966.

• Genres: Blues

Biography

Breaking into the R&B Top Ten his very first time out in 1956 with the startlingly intense slow blues "I Can't Quit You Baby," southpaw guitarist Otis Rush subsequently established himself as one of the premier bluesmen on the Chicago circuit. Rush is often credited with being one of the architects of the West side guitar style, along with Magic Sam and Buddy Guy. It's a nebulous honor, since Rush played clubs on Chicago's South side just as frequently during the sound's late-'50s incubation period. Nevertheless, his esteemed status as a prime Chicago innovator is eternally assured by the ringing, vibrato-enhanced guitar work that remains his stock in trade and a tortured, super-intense vocal delivery that can force the hairs on the back of your neck upwards in silent salute. If talent alone were the formula for widespread success, Rush would certainly have been Chicago's leading blues artist. But fate, luck, and the guitarist's own idiosyncrasies conspired to hold him back on several occasions when opportunity was virtually begging to be accepted.

Rush came to Chicago in 1948, met Muddy Waters, and knew instantly what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. The omnipresent Willie Dixon caught Rush's act and signed him to Eli Toscano's Cobra Records in 1956. The frighteningly intense "I Can't Quit You Baby" was the maiden effort for both artist and label, streaking to number six on Billboard's R&B chart. His 1956-1958 Cobra legacy is a magnificent one, distinguished by the Dixon-produced minor-key masterpieces "Double Trouble" and "My Love Will Never Die," the tough-as-nails "Three Times a Fool" and "Keep on Loving Me Baby," and the rhumba-rocking classic "All Your Love (I Miss Loving)." Rush apparently dashed off the latter tune in the car en route to Cobra's West Roosevelt Road studios, where he would cut it with the nucleus of Ike Turner's combo.

After Cobra closed up shop, Rush's recording fortunes mostly floundered. He followed Dixon over to Chess in 1960, cutting another classic (the stunning "So Many Roads, So Many Trains") before moving on to Duke (one solitary single, 1962's "Homework"), Vanguard, and Cotillion (there he cut the underrated Mike Bloomfield-Nick Gravenites-produced 1969 album Mourning in the Morning, with yeoman help from the house rhythm section in Muscle Shoals). Typical of Rush's horrendous luck was the unnerving saga of his Right Place, Wrong Time album. Laid down in 1971 for Capitol Records, the giant label inexplicably took a pass on the project despite its obvious excellence. It took another five years for the set to emerge on the tiny Bullfrog label, blunting Rush's momentum once again (the album is now available on HighTone). An uneven but worthwhile 1975 set for Delmark, Cold Day in Hell, and a host of solid live albums that mostly sound very similar kept Rush's gilt-edged name in the marketplace to some extent during the '70s and '80s, a troubling period for the legendary southpaw.

In 1986, he walked out on an expensive session for Rooster Blues (Louis Myers, Lucky Peterson, and Casey Jones were among the assembled sidemen), complaining that his amplifier didn't sound right and thereby scuttling the entire project. Alligator picked up the rights to an album he had done overseas for Sonet originally called Troubles, Troubles. It turned out to be a prophetic title: much to Rush's chagrin, the firm overdubbed keyboardist Lucky Peterson and chopped out some masterful guitar work when it reissued the set as Lost in the Blues in 1991.

Finally, in 1994, the career of this Chicago blues legend began traveling in the right direction. Ain't Enough Comin' In, his first studio album in 16 years, was released on Mercury and ended up topping many blues critics' year-end lists. Produced spotlessly by John Porter with a skin-tight band, Rush roared a set of nothing but covers, but did them all his way, his blistering guitar consistently to the fore.

Once again, a series of personal problems threatened to end Rush's long-overdue return to national prominence before it got off the ground. But he's been in top-notch form in recent years, fronting a tight band that's entirely sympathetic to the guitarist's sizzling approach. Rush signed with the House of Blues' fledgling record label, instantly granting that company a large dose of credibility and setting himself up for another career push. It still may not be too late for Otis Rush to assume his rightful throne as Chicago's blues king. After another decade performing and recording albums, Live and in Concert from San Fransisco was released in 2006. ~ Bill Dahl, Rovi

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