Otis Rush was born near Philadelphia, Mississippi on April 29, 1934 during the Great Depression, the son of sharecroppers Julia Campbell Boyd and Otis C. Rush. He was one of seven children and worked on the farm throughout his childhood. His mother regularly took him out of school so that he could add to the family income when the cotton was high and white landowners wanted extra labor.
Music was young Otis solace. He sang in gospel choirs and taught himself to play guitar and harmonica, playing on street corners. “This is where my soul came from. This is where my faith started.” He said of Neshoba County.
Determined not to spend his life in the cotton fields, he moved north to Chicago in 1949 at the age of 14, working in stockyards and steel mills and driving a horse drawn coal wagon, hanging out in the city’s blues clubs at night.
After being inspired by watching Muddy Waters, he worked on his craft and made a name for himself playing in blues clubs on the South and West Sides of the city, initially using the name Little Otis.
Willie Dixon caught his act and signed him to Cobra Records, a local independent label. From 1956 to 1958, with Dixon producing, Cobra recorded and released eight tracks, the songs that made him famous, including “Double Trouble”, “All Your Love (I Miss Loving) and Three Times a Fool,” some featuring Ike Turner or Jody Williams on guitar. Otis’ first single, the frighteningly intense “I Can’t Quit You Baby”, was a national hit in 1956, reaching number six on the Billboard R&B chart. It stayed on the chart for six weeks. Cash Box Magazine named his next release, “My Love Will Never Die” their Award of the Week and in a 1957 Cash Box poll, the nation’s R&B disc jockeys voted him The Most Promising Up and Coming Male Vocalist.
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.
Now, as a big drawing, hot act in Chicago’s clubs with his fiery guitar work and passionate vocals, he toured nationally as part of r&b and rock and roll package shows with Little Richard, Buddy Holly, The Crickets, Carl Perkins and The Drifters playing at top venues like the Apollo in New York City. He got tired of touring and went back to Chicago, playing clubs again and drawing good crowds though, for the most part, his Cobra sides didn’t chart nationally despite their excellence.
On his recommendation, Cobra recorded Magic Sam in 1957 and Buddy Guy in ’58 with Otis playing rhythm guitar on Buddy’s first Chicago recording. In 1959, Cobra went bankrupt.
After Cobra closed up shop, Rush’s recording fortunes mostly floundered. He followed Dixon over to Chess in 1960, cutting another classic (the stunning, emotionally drenched “So Many Roads, So Many Trains”) before moving on to Duke.
Unhappy with Chess’ tightfisted control, he signed with Duke Records. While Chess didn’t do much for him, Duke did less. They recorded him in only one four song session and issued only one single, “Homework” backed with “I Have to Laugh”, which Vocalion released in the UK in 1963, his first overseas release.
In 1965, he recorded five tracks for a Sam Charters’ project, Chicago/ The Blues/ Today! for Vanguard including a fine version of “I Can’t Quit You, Baby” and his haunting version of B.B. King’s slow blues, “It’s My Own Fault”. These recordings are included on the label’s compilation album Chicago/The Blues/Today! Vol. 2 which introduced him to new, white audiences. Rush began playing in other cities in the United States and in Europe during the 1960s, earning a place with the American Folk Blues Festival touring Europe and securing several years of bookings at the Ann Arbor Blues festival.
In 1967, unofficial recordings from the 1966 University of Chicago Folkfest were released together with recordings by Little Walter. In 1969, Cotillion Records, an Atlantic Records subsidiary, released his first full album, Mourning in the Morning. Michael Bloomfield and Nick Gravenites, then with the band Electric Flag, recorded and produced the album at the FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. They incorporated soul music and rock, something new for Rush. Many critics panned the album but it has since developed a cult following.
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. He purchased the masters from them and through Dick Sherman’s efforts, the album was finally issued five years later on P-Vine Records in Japan and on Bullfrog Records in the United States. The album has since gained a reputation as one of his best works. But it took another five years for the set to emerge on the tiny Bullfrog label, blunting Rush’s momentum once again. 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.
The album was popular with critics and the public and is one of his best but the blues industry came upon hard times in the late ’70’s due to disco’s huge popularity and it became difficult to record a blues record. Despite that, he was able to tour overseas and make some recordings for European labels most of which are now available stateside though he was unable to release any new material in America for a number of years. By the end of the decade, he refused to tour, and he had stopped performing and recording.
He made a comeback in 1985 with a U.S. tour and the release of a live album, Tops, recorded with a tight West Coast band at the San Francisco Blues Festival to favorable reviews. The following year, he performed with Eric Clapton at the Montreux Jazz Festival.
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 through a set of nothing but covers, but did them all his way, his blistering guitar consistently to the fore.
It was his first studio album in 16 years, introducing him to a new generation of fans and topping many blues critics’ year end lists. The next year, he opened for Pearl Jam at Chicago’s Soldier Field. and his album Any Place I’m Goin’ followed in 1998 earning him a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album.
Despite his popularity overseas and the release of his European studio recordings in the U.S., he declined or missed bigger opportunities. He turned down an invitation from the Rolling Stones to record and tour with them. He backed away from Johnny Winter’s offer of potentially reviving his career as he did for Muddy Waters by producing a record for him on Winters’ Blue Sky label and, recording with Carlos Santana, who adored him, never worked out.
Being on the road unnerved him, and though he felt more at home in familiar neighborhood joints in Chicago, the late hours and low pay wore on him. Acutely sensitive to conflict, he shied from the violence that could flare up in those places. He was haunted by an incident he witnessed from the stage of the Alex Club in which the club’s owner was killed when he tried to break up a fight on the dance floor between two nurses from a nearby hospital who were armed with surgical blades. Rush’s minor-key sense of foreboding deepened further when his ex-wife’s son was shot to death in 1974.
Serially let down and denied his due, Rush also let opportunities go by untaken. He canceled important tours, and during gigs he would lapse into rambling confessionals or sleepwalk through endless guitar solos.
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 remained in top-notch form, fronting a tight band that was 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. However, his touring and recording were brought to a halt following a debilitating stroke in 2003. His album Live… and In Concert from San Francisco was released by the Blues Express label in 2006, having been recorded in 1999.
In 2002, he was featured on the Bo Diddley tribute album Hey Bo Diddley – A Tribute!, which Carla Olson produced, performing the song “I’m a Man.” In the 2005 movie, Devil’s Rejects, he performs “I Can’t Quit You Baby” from the 1962 American Folk Blues Festival. The director of the film, Rob Zombie, an Otis fan, used the original Cobra recording for the soundtrack. His next album Live and in Concert from San Francisco from 1999 was released by Blues Express Records in 2006. Video footage of the same show was released on the DVD Live Part 1 in 2003.
In June 2016, Otis made a rare appearance at the Chicago Blues Festival in Grant Park. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel honored him for “a lifetime of genius” declaring June 12 as Otis Rush Day in Chicago. He was unable to play because of ongoing health problems but he was there with his family.
On September 29, 2018, Otis Rush died from complications arising from a stroke; he was 83 years old.
Tributes:
• 1999 Grammy Winner Best Traditional Blues Album – “Any Place I’m Going.”
• Otis Rush elected to the Blues Hall of Fame in 1984.
• In 2007, the Mississippi Blues Commission erected the Otis Rush marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in Philadelphia, Mississippi at the old train depot (Welcome Center) on West Beacon Street, State Route 21, where he boarded a northbound train in 1948.
• In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked him number 53 on its 100 Greatest Guitarists list.
• The Jazz Foundation of America honored Rush with a Lifetime Achievement Award on April 20, 2018 “for a lifetime of genius and leaving an indelible mark in the world of blues and the universal language of music.”
• 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. As a blues singer, guitarist and songwriter who’s been long revered as one of the creators of modern Chicago blues and though he was respected and praised, the success he sought eluded him while others profited from what he created and his career never reached the heights that he deserved.
• As a performer, Otis was unique. He had an intense and powerful tenor voice that grabbed your attention and he had big hands so he could make unusual chord inversions on the guitar which he said he got from Charles Brown, the jazz blues piano player, an acknowledged influence. Also, he played his guitar upside down and backwards. Albert King, who Otis borrowed licks from, Jimi Hendrix and Eddy “The Chief” Clearwater played the same way though Otis’ sound was other worldly. He had the low strings adjusted very low, and the G, B and high E strings adjusted for slightly higher action so that he could curl his left pinky under the low strings and pull them down, sometimes two and three at a time. Music critic Lester Bangs wrote in one of his last articles that it was the sound of “being mugged by an iceberg”.
• Otis Rush influenced a generation of blues and rock musicians including Carlos Santana, Michael Bloomfield, John Mayall, Peter Green, Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan, who named his band after Otis’ 1958 hit “Double Trouble.”
