Artist of the Year - Bobby Rush

" The undisputed king of independent music "

Ross Gohlke

Seven reasons why Bobby Rush is BlueSpeak's 1997 Artist of the Year:

1) Bobby Rush has been making music professionally for 45 years. By his own reckoning, he is the only black entertainer under 60 who can say that.

2) Though the music he currently makes fits better in the category of contemporary R&B than in the blues, Rush is a bluesman of the highest caliber.

3) Between his earliest days in New Orleans in the '50s, a good 30 years living in Chicago and a lifetime of touring the Delta, Rush has worked for or worked with just about everyone in the blues universe, from B.B. King to John Lee Hooker to Elmore James to Little Walter to Buddy Guy.

4) If the original meaning of D.I.Y. (do-it-yourself) - the aesthetic behind the punk movement and more recently the phenomenon known as indie music - still has any cash value, Rush is, practically speaking, the undisputed king of the genre. An industry unto himself, Rush has remained largely outside the meddling grasp of the music industry and has maintained sole control over every aspect of his musical direction and career, from booking to recording to promoting. Although he is currently signed to Waldoxy, a subsidiary of Malaco Records, his business card displays his home phone number.

5) The name Bobby Rush is a household phrase in just about every black neighborhood in the South.

6) Live, Rush puts on as refined, outrageous and engaging a performance as anyone working in music today.

7) In person, Rush is down to earth, personable, kind-hearted, generous and supremely conscious of his own achievements.

So why have you never heard the amazing story of Bobby Rush? Quite simply, if you're white, look no further for a reason.

It's a sunny, crisp weekday - late morning - when I get to Jackson, Miss., where Bobby Rush has made his home for the last 12 years. Time is important. According to Rush, his window of availability is small. Already today he has appeared on a local morning radio show. In two days he has a huge anniversary gig, celebrating 45 years of professional musicianship, slated here in his adopted hometown. There's still lots of preparation to be done. The request for this interview came close enough to ground zero that any average superstar (technical definition of average superstar: limo-driven, lush-livin', bon-bon eatin', larger-in-his-own-mind-than-human-life-can-be prima donna) would have said to call back in the spring when his new record comes out.

But Rush is not your average superstar. And he's got his own motives for saying yes.

I call from a pay phone off the interstate. He gives me directions to such-and-such an intersection, meets me there and leads us back to his house. I'm expecting an abode of palatial proportions, probably on the outskirts of town. Instead we end up in a middle-class residential neighborhood, in front of a house whose only distinguishing characteristic is a bas-relief harmonica protruding from the front brick wall. Despite the time crunch, Rush wants to show off his house.

When Rush and his wife of 35 years bought this house 10 years ago, it was a two-bedroom building. When they finish the current wave of renovations - hopefully sometime next year - it will have 19 rooms, including eight bathrooms. By the time the project is done, almost every square inch of the lot will be enclosed.

To say Rush is a self-made man doesn't even come close to telling the whole story.

"I'm a licensed bricklayer and concrete finisher by trade," he says as we step through a studio-turned-guestroom, a living room with bar, a sun room, several bedrooms and more. "I poured this foundation myself," he explains. Rush draws his own blueprints as well, and understandably, any architect would be professionally offended by a hodgepodge project like this. Which is not to say it's a shoddy job. All the cabinetry in the new rooms is the work of master craftsmen from as far away as California; Rush is building a walk-in cedar closet in the master suite upstairs to hold hundreds of outfits, more than 200 pairs of shoes and an album collection. He still listens to the records.

The plan is to enclose the above-ground pool and the rest of the backyard (which becomes a workout gym for Rush and a short basketball court for the grandkids) with a glass dome. The sides will be removable Plexiglas, ideal for the summertime.

If this doesn't sound like the homestead of a superstar, would the fact that Rush owns most of his block impress you? The houses that surround his home also belong to him. Various family members of varying relation live in them. Though obviously proud, Rush shares this information matter-of-factly, as if it were no big deal. It is simply a concrete manifestation of the power of a self-made man.

He spends a good half-hour rummaging through his desk looking for photographs. His office is a large converted closet. As he looks for good pictures, he talks about his experiences in Europe. He has only been twice, in 1994 and in 1997.

Speaking of his first trip: "I went to Amsterdam and got booed. They thought I was dirty," he says. "They billed me as a straight blues guy." I chuckle. Despite his life-long association with the blues, one of Rush's greatest points of pride is that he has never been just another blues guy.

An audience can only drum up so much enthusiasm for great guitar-playing. But hip-hugged dancing girls, a rapping black cowboy, a tight-grooved band and Bobby Rush can drive several thousand people (especially the women) into a downright frenzy. Though he is a talented multi-instrumentalist ("I was a bass man for 20 years"), with harmonica being his preferred instrument, Rush's stage presence is not that of a musician. He is an entertainer in the classic, endangered sense of the word.

Still, it is understandable that if you don't know what you were getting, you're not from the Deep South, and you're not black, Bobby Rush might displease you. But not before he offends your most fundamental sensibilities. Rush's songs elevate sexual innuendo to dizzying heights. He makes men jealous and women weak-kneed. His dancers shake their front and back ends with a ferocity that would make Pamela Anderson Lee, Sharon Stone or even the most self-objectifying girl-power-monger blush... twice. He sings about getting injured in bed by a big fat woman who likes to be on top. And at the height of his show-stopping prowess, he likes to bend down and croon to a dancer's big booty. While it's shaking.

In short, Bobby Rush is a man who is proud to be black, who knows where he comes from, who could leave it behind if he wanted but chooses to stay, who celebrates his culture through his music.

Doesn't Rush know he's contributing to a degrading image of women, getting them to dress and dance provocatively? Doesn't he realize that even though this is how they do it where he comes from, it's not acceptable for mass consumption? Doesn't he realize the disservice he is doing to the black community, prancing around on the stage like a pimp? What sort of impression does that leave? Why can't he play along like the rest of the musicians he started out with in the beginning? Doesn't he realize he'll never get famous this way? Doesn't he realize he could have been as big as B.B. King?

Actually, Rush seems to implicitly understand all of this, and he's still not apologizing or stopping. Quite to the contrary, he's proud of his achievements. In his car on the way to lunch he becomes animated as he talks about what he does.

"I try to have some of the three in one, which would be the entertainment, the music and having the charisma to reach people. Because if you notice when I'm onstage, people watch me to see what I'm gonna do, what I'm gonna say. And I think that's come in because there's something else about me that I have nothing to do with, and that's God gift that he give me: that people watch me like they watch a preacher in church."

His father, still alive, was a preacher for decades.

I explain to Rush that I find his showmanship new and refreshing.

"I don't think there's many people left like me," he says. "I'm not saying there's no one left, but my kind of performing and entertaining, there's not many left.

"It's new to the younger people. I think the older heads saw it early with the Jackie Wilsons, with the Elton Johns, with the Elvis Presleys. He was a good entertainer. Beyond the singing to you, he entertained you. And I think everybody wants to be entertained to, not sung to. Most of the time people want to be made happy, or laugh, or have fun. Whatever it takes to make that come about, then I think you're on your way. I think I stayed around this long because I was an entertainer, not because I was a singer."

Where does his history in the blues tradition play into his style?

"In the early days, you take a Little Walter, a Howlin' Wolf, a Muddy Waters. These guys were great entertainers. Because what happened, the whites didn't get into them till they were old men. But I can remember when they was 25, 30 years old. Man, Howlin' Wolf would come out and cut a hole in the floor."

Rush offers an example, when pressed, for a Howlin' Wolf story.

"Martin Luther King came to Chicago to speak at a rally. Early '60s. They had some racial problems in Cicero, Illinois. He came with Jesse Jackson. They had Marvin Gaye, Little Milton, myself, Bobby Bland, Smokey Robinson, and Howlin' Wolf. So they said, 'Since this is a big show, the house is packed, who gonna be the first one to go up?' So everybody wants to be the star, nobody wants to be the first one to go up. So someone said, 'Well let that old man go up, that blues singer,' talking about Howlin' Wolf. I was sittin' there. I said to Little Milton, 'Milton, they don't really want that.' They didn't know what we was talking about. Marvin Gaye and them was big guys and they didn't know Howlin' Wolf. He finally spoke up, 'Let me go on up and get out of your way. The old man'll be gone.' Sure enough, they let the old man go up.

"They call him on like this, 'Ladies and gentlemen, before the speaker of the night, we got the old man Howlin' Wolf.' I never saw Howlin' Wolf do this. He pulled his coat off. I said, 'You going out without your coat on?' He said, 'Not only that, just watch me, blood.' He called me blood. He pulled his shirt off. He put his overalls back on. He said, 'Hubert!' That was the guitar player's name. 'Bring me my hammer and my saw.' He put the hammer in his pocket and the saw in his hand. Finally he got on his knees and crawled out the dressing room on his knees to the stage. And the house went up in smoke. Here he come out with the spotlight on him crawling. And he come out singin' 'I'm a tail dragger...' And man, the house went up. And for 30 minutes after he got off the stage you could not hear anything or anybody.

"Martin Luther King was gonna speak. He came out to the stage and said, 'Who is this?' You know, they'd heard of him, but everybody wanted to know. And for 30 minutes they couldn't even do the speech. Nobody wanted to go up behind that. He almost demolished the speech for Martin Luther King.

"That's the kind of thing that influenced me. Being the underdog. I know I'm an underdog in the business. And I know a lot of times, when I'm in the picture, even at the [Beale Street Music] Fest, even at the (W.C.) Handy Awards, I knew I was the underdog, but I'm the overdog. And you can't do it with a cocky attitude. You do it with a humble attitude. But you can't be so humble that you'll be laid out. You got to know how to be pushy and when to be pushy. You be a nice guy, but you got to know when to bristle out."

To his credit, Rush has remained the industry underdog only because he refused to go the way of most of his contemporaries.

"I don't really think they know how they got there," Rush explains, speaking of people like Bobby Bland, B.B. King and other artists who left the South as soon as they had the chance. "It's not intentional. They just did what was best to do. But sometimes you gotta do what's best for others. Because I know selling out would have been the easy thing to do, and there would be more money for me and my family.

"I was too independent. I was so independent I wouldn't let management take me across where I wanted to go. Now it's good to be there, but it's not if you don't want to be there on that basis. I didn't want somebody ownin' me. I happen to know the situation with a lot of people I could call names, but I don't call names, but they're there by some other people's choices. I'm crossing at my own pace. I know it could have been faster if I had let someone take me across, but nevertheless, I'm crossing. Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf were big crossover artists, but at the time when they were recording, they weren't recording for the crossover, they were recording good music. That's what I've done. The reason why is because I've recorded what I want. I'll be an old man, dead and gone, but my music's gonna cross because it's true to what I'm doing. Because the saddest thing I ever saw was at a festival a few years ago. I saw 15 to 20 black artists, and 15 of them, the first song they played was 'Sweet Home Chicago.' I saw these black entertainers bought by a price."

By now we have arrived at Bully's Soul Food, a neighborhood cafe owned and operated by some longtime friends of Rush's. It's mid-afternoon, so the lunch rush has passed. Rush politely asks Bully to turn down the TV on my behalf, explaining that his restaurant will end up in the article. Bully willingly complies.

Slowly, talk about "crossing over" has crept into Rush's language. And why not? It's not that Rush never wanted mass appeal. What entertainer wouldn't want his or her name on the tip of every tongue in the land? Rush has just been patiently enduring - and waiting for a chance to do it his way.

"What I was told that I had to do (to make it big) I refused to do it. Now, I've been confronted with big money and big opportunities if I do this. If you put on your cap and your cowboy boots and you do this, and you do what Lonnie Brooks would do.

"The reason I wanted to do it the way I did is because I chose to know who I was and to be forming what I do with my own people first. You got to know where you stand. For too long, we as a people haven't got our own stuff together. Why should you depend on someone else? I could make a living singing in the back of the railroad tracks. But one thing's for sure. The black folk know who I am. And I never forgot who I am."

And now that he is almost 60 years old, Rush seems poised to crash the industry party; not as a wave generated by a machine in an artificial pool, but as a mighty river which has outgrown the levee. After decades of sticking to what Rush himself calls the Chitlin' Circuit, because he was convinced his act wouldn't work elsewhere, he is ready to cross over. And the people seem ready for him - if they know what they're getting.

The second time he went to Amsterdam, "The same people who booed ate me up. Now they want me back again." It's the same situation here in the States: "At first the white clubs didn't accept the dancing women and me. Now the same clubs are asking me back," he explains. "A baby start from a crawl to a walk. And this is where I started from. When I started to cross over I started in a small club with no money. The guy didn't want to give me $2,000. He gave me $1,000. Made no difference. But I know that same guy that offered me $1,000 is going to offer me $10,000 two years from now. Not that I'm worth it. But I'll be worth it."

If and when Rush makes it to the big time, don't expect him to change his act. "I think that I won't have to change what I do, even with a drum machine (like many contemporary R&B acts, Rush usually uses a drum machine on recordings), if I add to what I really want to do most and best."

And don't expect Rush to stop doing things the way he's always done them, by himself. "It's gonna be a little harder on me than it is most guys because of the knowledge I have of where I'm going. No record company in their right mind would want to record me. Because first of all, I don't want no Cadillac car, I don't want no woman, I don't want no diamond rings. I got all of that. What could they offer me?" The only thing he needs is the only thing a record company can't give him - a larger audience.

And where do you suppose that comes from? Now you know why Rush has been so accommodating throughout the interview.

"What's going to make the difference is what white people write about me.

"If a black paper wrote about me being a superstar, so they wrote about it. But if you write about it, they accept it for being what it is: 'He must be a superstar.' If the black people say, 'Hey, Bobby Rush, he's got a nice show.' Big deal. When a black person say that, big deal. If 10 white people say that, then it means something."

This initially sounds odd, but then begins to makes more sense. Here is a man who has worked 45 years in a market the rest of the world doesn't even think exists anymore. He's not making social commentary, he's just stating a fact - the white press has never even noticed him.

By now we have finished our lunch, and besides feeling pleasantly stuffed, I'm trying to synthesize in my head everything Rush has been saying. Without so much as a word about all the stuff he had to get done today, he takes me home the long way. He makes it seem like he's showing me around, but I can tell he's running errands he had to take care of this afternoon. We stop at a red light, and a couple of black women, probably in their mid-20s, start waving. Rush rolls my passenger window down and waves back. "Hey, Bobby," one of the women says, "We'll be there this weekend." Rush thanks them for their support, rolls the window back up and shrugs at me. He doesn't know who they are. They're his fans.

I can't help feeling like all afternoon Rush has been speaking in hyperbole: longest at this, played with all them, best at that. But he saves the biggest for the end.

"I make the difference for a lot of people and they don't even know it. I make the difference for my race and they don't even know it. I make a difference for Buddy Guy, but he don't know it. I'm the threat to the whole system here. Because I dare not to do what they do. I don't play nothing that ain't suitable to me. If I break through this door this way, it's also gonna make opportunities for other blacks to do something other than the blues."

Whoa! Is this skinny white kid getting taken for a bigger ride than the one back to his car?

It's not until a few days later, back in Memphis, that I can answer my own question: If Bobby Rush doesn't talk about all the things he has accomplished, who will?