“Ain’t many people that can go from one side of the fence to the other side of the fence like that. “I can play with the band or without the band, there’s just a few people that can do that and be successful and be good at it and I’m a blessed man to be able to do both sides of the fence because last night Mavis Staples and I played in Austin and I did an acoustic set and tonight I’m doing a band set,” he mentioned. I mentioned those two guys because I think now I am the oldest blues singer in this category living. King was living, we always talked about those kinds of things he could not do because he couldn’t play by himself. I’m a blessed man that can be able to do that because when B.B. I can play with a band or without the band during the acoustic dates - sometimes with a band or a smaller band and sometimes even by myself doing close-up acoustic stuff. Rush said his style of music – and particularly the acoustic songs he’s spotlighting from Rawer Than Raw – give him a performance advantage. The pandemic came in and made us be off for a couple of years, maybe three years, and slowed it way down, but we’re getting to go back to work somewhat now, you know?” Up until the pandemic hit, I did work on 285 shows a year for about 65 years and that kept me going and kept me selling records, because I could sell records off the bandstand,” he added. Your bandstand is your record shop now,” he said. “You know, we’ve got to get out here and bump our head against the wall and try to sell some records because you know, the record shop don’t sell that many records anymore because it’s all just downloads. He said that’s part of the reason he’s still on the road at 88. That Grammy-winning album was released in 2020 and Rush has been eager to bring the music to live audiences. A Blues Hall of Fame Museum artist, multi-Grammy winner and the author of more than 400 recordings over nearly 70 years in music, his latest record, Rawer Than Raw, is an all-acoustic showcase of the genre’s rich Mississippi Delta history. Rush has built an avid following of fans over more than a half-century in music, listeners attracted to his unique sound forged in locales from Louisiana to Arkansas to Illinois and finally Mississippi. You can take that any way you want,” he said with a laugh. As we learned in our chat – and as we already knew from Rush’s long, Grammy-winning, no-signs-of-stopping career – he is simply the gift that keeps on giving.įor instance, when we led with this, our follow-up was to ask Rush, 88, if he has any special Christmas memories to share with readers. In a phone interview with Rush this week, we suggested he might even be a Christmas present for some folks, their stockings happily filled with tickets to his Saturday night set. The album just won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album, his second Grammy Award and sixth nomination.Legendary blues artist Bobby Rush touches down this weekend at Continental Club, a week before Christmas. With the release of his 2020 album Rawer Than Raw, an all-acoustic effort that pays tribute to the rich blues history of Mississippi, Rush has cemented his reputation as one of the preeminent bluesmen in the world, one of the last living links to the music’s glorious past, and an inspiration for its future stars. In 2003, he starred in “The Road to Memphis,” an episode of the Martin Scorsese-produced documentary series The Blues. Rush has finally started getting his due this century. After finding success in the '70s, Rush established his reputation as "King of the Chitlin’ Circuit" ( Rolling Stone) in the '80s, playing a minimum of 200 shows a year. He has recorded for more than 20 labels, from Checker/Chess and ABC to Philly Int’l and Rounder/Concord. Rush is one of the last Black bluesmen from the class to emerge out of and triumph in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. Blues Hall of Famer Bobby Rush has been making records for nearly 70 years.
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