Otis Rush

• Born: April 29, 1934
• Birthplace: Philadelphia, Mississippi
• Died: September 29, 2018

American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist

Rush was a gifted blues guitarist whose innovative guitar technique strongly influenced many later blues artists as well as rock bands of the 1960s and beyond who drew on the distinctive Chicago blues sound.

The Life

Left-handed blues guitarist and singer Otis Rush was born in Philadelphia, Mississippi. He taught himself to play guitar while growing up on the family farm, developing a technique on an inverted guitar that left the bass strings closest to the floor and that gave his playing a distinctive wailing quality. At age fourteen, he moved to Chicago, where he absorbed the sounds of Muddy Waters’s amplified urban blues over the radio and worked as a truck driver and meatpacker in the stockyards.

Promoting himself as Little Otis, Rush played clubs on the city’s West Side, and he became a key creator of the West Side guitar style. By 1958 he had released three of his best-known songs—"I Can’t Quit You Baby," "All Your Love," and "Double Trouble"—on Cobra Records before that company’s bankruptcy in 1959. He subsequently recorded with both Chess Records and Duke Records, though his previous successes eluded him. His recording career further deteriorated into the 1970s when Capitol Records chose not to release the virtuosic Right Place, Wrong Time album; critics expressed their frustration in 1975 by awarding Rush the Down Beat magazine International Critics Award for Rock-Pop-Blues Group Deserving Wider Recognition.

Rush toured nationally and internationally for the next two decades, and he enjoyed belated career success with the 1994 Mercury Records album Ain’t Enough Comin’ In and 1998's Any Place I’m Going, for which he received the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album. The bluesman suffered a stroke in 2003 that prohibited further regular public performances. He did appear at the 2016 Chicago Blues Festival, prompting Chicago to declare June 12 as Otis Rush Day, though he did not perform at the event. Ongoing complications from the stroke led to Rush's death on September 29, 2018.

The Music

Rush’s music represents a convergence of gospel singing and urban and country blues music with the wide-scale developments in amplification and recording technologies after World War II. Inspired by B. B. King, Rush embraced a blues that was more urbanized and seamless than the largely acoustic Delta blues and its electrified counterpart, South Side Chicago blues. The West Side sound that he embodied along with performers such as Magic Sam and Buddy Guy incorporated elements of rhythm and blues (R&B) and became highly popular in urban nightclubs.

Rush developed a fluid, distinctively voicelike guitar technique. His sound was influenced by Albert King and T-Bone Walker, particularly in his ability to bend full chords and to create the rapid vibrato characteristic of slide guitarists. Despite his gifts and technical superiority, however, Rush’s recording history reflects a musical unevenness that was righted only late in his career.

"I Can’t Quit You Baby." Originally written by bluesman Willie Dixon, this tune became Rush’s first hit for Cobra Records when it landed at number six on the rhythm-and-blues charts in 1956. The session also included harmonica virtuoso Walter Horton, guitarist Wayne Bennett, pianist Lafayette Leak, and Dixon himself. "I Can’t Quit You Baby" is notable for its powerful vocals rather than expert guitar playing, as Rush had yet to develop the distinctive timing and clean technique that would mark his later recordings. The direct simplicity of Rush’s singing secured the recording’s popularity and heralded the talented young bluesman’s professional arrival. The song was later popularized by the British rock band Led Zeppelin, one of the many rock groups influenced by the innovations of Chicago blues.

"So Many Roads, So Many Trains." This is Rush’s only successful recording with Chess Records. Released in 1960, it shows a mature, confident guitarist with a clear sense of phrasing and dramatic timing. Unlike "I Can’t Quit You Baby," Rush shines here in an extended solo passage that wails with mourning and loss and forecasts the advent of 1960s blues-steeped soul ballads. The song’s mystical nature is heightened by characteristic Chess echo and reverb elements and Rush’s edgy high vocals.

Right Place, Wrong Time. The prescient nature of this album’s title foretold its fate: Although Rush recorded it for Capitol Records in 1971, it was not released until the independent label Bullfrog Records acquired the rights in 1976. The recording is widely regarded as Rush’s best work. His solos on "Easy Go" and "Take a Look Behind" offer a clear representation of his mature musicianship.

Ain’t Enough Comin’ In. Disillusioned by the Capitol debacle, Rush performed and recorded on a limited basis for the next fifteen years. Ain’t Enough Comin’ In became his first studio album in more than fifteen years. The 1994 album showcases Rush’s instrumental and vocal prowess in equal measure as he covers songs associated with B. B. King, Ray Charles, and Sam Cooke. The title track, the album’s sole original composition, was composed by Rush.

Any Place I’m Going. Produced in Memphis with the guidance of producer Willie Smith, Any Place I’m Going offers a blending of soul with Chicago blues, and it sheds light on the degree to which guitarists such as Eric Clapton were influenced by Rush’s playing. Like its immediate predecessor, this album is enhanced with saxophone, keyboards, and trumpet. It earned Rush his first Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album in 1999.

Musical Legacy

Along with Buddy Guy, Magic Sam, Luther Allison, and others, Rush shaped the electric, jazz- and R&B-influenced Chicago West Side guitar sound. His vibrato-laden, string-bending playing style and gospel-inspired vocal delivery greatly influenced musicians such as Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Rory Gallagher, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Jeff Beck. He achieved widespread recognition during the last two decades of his career as one of the most influential and distinctive blues artists of his era.

Principal Recordings

albums:This One’s a Good Un, 1968; Mourning in the Morning, 1969; Door to Door, 1970 (with Albert King); Screamin’ and Cryin’, 1974; Right Place, Wrong Time, 1976; Cold Day in Hell, 1975; Live in Europe, 1977; Lost in the Blues, 1977; So Many Roads: Live in Concert, 1978; Troubles, Troubles, 1978; Groaning the Blues, 1980; Tops, 1985; Live at the Chicago Blues Festival, 1993; Ain’t Enough Comin’ In, 1994; Live in Japan 1986, 1994; Live and Awesome, 1996; Any Place I’m Going, 1998; Live and in Concert from San Francisco, 2004; All Your Love (I Miss Loving): Live at the Wise Fools Pub, Chicago, 2005; Otis Rush and Friends: Live at Montreux 1986, 2006 (with Eric Clapton and Luther Allison).

singles: "I Can’t Quit You Baby," 1956; "All Your Love (I Miss Loving)," 1958; "Double Trouble," 1958.

Bibliography

Friskics-Warren, Bill. "Otis Rush, Influential Blues Singer and Guitarist, Is Dead at 83." The New York Times, 29 Sept. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/arts/music/otis-rush-dead-chicago-blues-singer-guitarist.html. Accessed 19 Nov. 2018.

Harris, Sheldon. Blues Who’s Who: A Biographical Dictionary of Blues Singers. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1979. This source, with 571 concise biographies of blues singers, has a valuable listing of Rush performances from the 1950s to the late 1970s.

Kienzle, Richard. Great Guitarists. New York: Facts On File, 1985. Musicologist Kienzle provides a biographical portrait of Rush and a musical analysis of his playing technique and music.

Obrecht, Jas. Blues Guitar: The Men Who Made the Music, from the Pages of Guitar Player Magazine. San Francisco: GPI Books, 1993. This resource includes interviews from 1987 and 1993 with Rush by Obrecht, the senior editor of Guitar Player magazine, in which the bluesman discusses his early years in Mississippi and Chicago, his personal playing style, and the album Ain’t Enough Comin’ In.

Obrecht, Jas. Rollin’ and Tumblin’: The Postwar Blues Guitarists. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 2000. Obrecht contextualizes Rush’s music and stature within blues history and the extended blues community.

Palmer, Robert. Deep Blues. New York: Penguin, 1981. Palmer’s blues primer traces the social, musical, and cultural histories of the blues from their Mississippi Delta origins to the clubs of Chicago. Rush is discussed as a distinctive talent among contemporary blues guitarists.