Bobby Rush's remarkable journey continues with another Grammy, a new memoir and more music

Due to expected rain, the Bobby Rush show at the Levitt Shell at Overton Park, originally scheduled for July 1, has been moved to July 2. The concert will still start at 7:30 p.m. 

Bobby Rush is a big believer in the law of averages. 

“I’ve lived long enough, cut enough records and did enough good things in my life for some good things to come back to me,” says the octogenarian blues legend. 

Over the last decade or so the Mississippi-based Rush, who’s been performing since he was a teenager in the early 1950s, has enjoyed a series of late-career triumphs. 

“This year will be 70 years of recording for me, I’ve made 297 records. I been up for a Grammy six times, won two of them; been up for a blues award 31 times and won 13 of those," says Rush. "So I’ve made a pretty good batting average, especially considering I’m a bluesman and a Black man.” 

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Rush — who will cap African American Music Appreciation Month with a sold-out headlining show at Levitt Shell at Overton Park on July 2 — was quarantined and ill, dealing with a COVID-19 scare last year, but notes that he’s now in excellent health and ready to return to the stage. “I feel good, my health is good. Of course I’m old… but it’s good to get old,” he says. “Only reason you don’t get old is you die young.” 

This week marked another milestone for Rush as Hachette published his memoir, titled “I Ain’t Studdin’ Ya: My American Blues Story.” The book, co-authored with Herb Powell, is something Rush has been pondering for some time.  

“It might look like to the public it’s something that happened overnight, but I been thinking about this for close to 20 years. Some of the people I was going to talk about in the book were still living, so I was concerned with that. I waited because I felt it was important for me to just be able to tell the whole story and tell it like it is.” 

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'I Ain’t Studdin’ Ya: My American Blues Story'

The story is that of Rush, born Emmett Ellis Jr. in tiny Homer, Louisiana, somewhere between 1934 and 1940 (he is still unsure of his actual birthdate). The son of a preacher, as a kid Rush worked the cotton fields and would learn to pick out tunes on a "diddley-bow" — a kind of homemade guitar — and tune into Nashville's powerhouse station WLAC, where he'd listen to DJs like Bill "Hossman" Allen spin the latest blues, gospel and R&B sides.

The book vividly transports readers to the Deep South of Rush’s youth in the 1940s, chronicling the penury and racism that he and his family faced. Ultimately, it unfolds as an epic tale across seven decades and many cities, recounting his journey from scuffling young musician to “King of the Chitlin' Circuit” (as Rolling Stone once crowned him). The book also reveals anecdotes about music icons from Muddy Waters to James Brown, all while detailing various personal tragedies, near-death experiences and “every bit of the good and the bad I've experienced,” as Rush puts it.  

“I’ve lived so much life, that I felt like the hardest part would be to condense it into one book,” says Rush. “There’s many things I’ve never talked about, and I’m talking about it all in the book. I’m telling on myself, and people I was involved with and people who was around me.” 

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Bobby Rush: From Memphis to Chicago to Jackson

Rush also recounts his first visit to Memphis and to Beale Street in “I Ain’t Studdin Ya.” “I came up to meet Rufus Thomas, B.B. King. They were like old men to me, and they were only like 28 or 29,” he recalls. “I was just a teenager. I wasn’t old enough to be in the club. So I had a mustache drawn on my face. My daddy being a preacher and pastor, I wasn’t supposed to be there.

“I was trying to do the hambone on the street to make some money. I made four dollars and change. That was enough money for me to get a ticket for St. Louis — East St. Louis, actually. Once I was there, I got a little more money and I made it to Chicago.” 

Rush arrived in Chicago in the early ‘50s, where he would remain a club fixture for the next three decades, until moving back south to Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1980s. As a young guitarist, Rush would play and pal around with some blues giants: Windy City legends like Willie Dixon, Little Walter and Jimmy Reed. 

Rush began cutting his own solo sides in the early 1960s. His voluminous catalog would touch on every style of R&B over the years, from deep blues to propulsive soul to comic funk, as he developed what would become his signature sound and stage show.  

“A lot of the blues guys I respected and came up with, they never changed what they was doing,” says Rush. “See, I was aware of the times. I tried to upgrade myself to new things that was going on. I was either real smart or real crazy. Not sure which one.” 

In more recent years, Rush has gone back to a kind of raw, often acoustic Delta blues, which has earned him belated recognition from the music industry establishment, as he's racked up multiple Grammy nominations and a pair of trophies for 2016’s “Porcupine Meat” and 2019’s “Rawer Than Raw.” 

He’s just completed another album worth of material cut during the pandemic. “Yeah I been recording, finished 12 songs,” he says. “I’m on fire about it. I got so much music in the can that I want to get out there.” 

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He’s also readying a return to the road, once he’s sure that post-pandemic touring will be a safe proposition. “I want to see what the next 90 days is like,” says Rush. “If [COVID numbers] don’t fly back up, then I got about 80 or 90 shows I’m going to book.”  

Rush has been pondering a touring reunion with his old Chicago pal and fellow blues vet Buddy Guy. “Hopefully, he and I can team up now,” says Rush. “We about the last two Black bluesmen living.” 

Even into his 80s, when most artists — if they’re still around — are slowing down, Rush remains full of enthusiasm for the music, for performing and for what the future may hold.  

“I don’t know what keeps driving me. Whatever it is, it’s a gift,” he says. “A man can live a long time without food and water, but it’s hard to live without hope. And I still have hope. I mean, I was 80 years old when I won my first Grammy. The good news is God has allowed me enough time on this earth to see some of these things come through and I’m so grateful.”