Otis Rush Jr. (April 29, 1934 – September 29, 2018)[1] was an American 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. (Everyone called him Otis, or Mr. Rush.) 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.[2] Music writer Lester Bangs wrote in one of his last articles that it was the sound of “being mugged by an iceberg”.
Otis ran his amps in such a way that he could sustain his notes. He liked to wring out every sustainable note from his guitars. The term "slow burn" is an accurate description of the way he approached his dark and mournful slow blues. Amplifier technology changed drastically during the decades following his beginnings where, in the 1950s, players usually used what was on the venue's bandstand. During the early years of the electric blues ascent, many of the older performers used Masco P.A. head amps, older Ampegs or beat up Fender amps that were badly in need of new tubes or other repairs. Through the '80s and '90s, he preferred Mesa Boogie Amps. One of his favorites was the Mark 2B channeled into a variety of speaker cabinets.
While Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, his predecessors on Chicago's South Side, popularized an amplified update of the bare bones, down home sound of the Mississippi Delta where the sound of the band was the focus, Otis listened to piano and horn players which gave him his unique phrasing. He also loved T-bone Walker. He said T-bone Walker was one of the best guitar players because he was a great rhythm guitarist as well as a great soloist. Otis always felt that if you couldn’t play rhythm guitar very well and you were just a soloist, you weren’t a complete guitar player. He and his modern variations, along with Magic Sam 's and Buddy Guy's, were more lyrical and more rhythmically complex and are credited with bringing the guitar out front in what came to be known as the West Side sound because it was prevalent in nightclubs on that side of town, influencing 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."
Citing Otis as one of the deepest of deep blues men, Muddy Waters commented to critic and author, Robert Palmer in his book, Deep Blues, “He’s so good, man.”
Early life
Otis Rush was born near Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1934 during the Great Depression, the son of sharecroppers Julia Campbell Boyd and Otis C. Rush,.[3][4] He was one of seven children and worked on the farm throughout his childhood.[4] 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 his solace. He sang in gospel choirs and taught himself to play guitar and harmonica, playing on street corners.[4] "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 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.
Career
Otis moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1949[4][5] and, after being inspired by watching Muddy Waters, 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.[4]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.[2] Cobra's and Otis' first single, "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.[5]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.[6][2][7]
Otis Rush performs at the 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festival, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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. Rush followed Dixon to Chess Records and signed a recording contract with them in 1960.[2] He recorded eight tracks for the label, though they only released four, two singles, including the blistering, emotion drenched classic, "So Many Roads". Chess eventually released all eight tracks on the album Door to Door in 1969, a compilation that included their Albert King recordings.[8] 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" [9] 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.[10] In 1967, Unofficial recordings from the 1966 University of Chicago Folkfest were released together with recordings by Little Walter.[11] 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.[2][12] In a Living Blues article by Jim O'Neil, its co-founder, Otis' friend, blues historian and producer, Dick Sherman said, "Neither the road nor the studio agreed with him and sometimes the tension around a new release and touring seemed to make things worse."
"Rush is a 'good singer' with a 'good instrument'—sweet, penetrating, slurred—but the words aren't where his soul goes. It goes into the form itself. Like B.B. King's, only less predictably by now, his solos expand upon the Chicago verities in almost jazzlike flights without ever transgressing against them."
In 1971, Otis recorded the album Right Place, Wrong Time in San Francisco for Capitol Records though Capitol did not release it. 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 soon after.[2] The album has since gained a reputation as one of his best works.[14][15]
The Chicago based Delmark label released two albums including his inspired So Many Roads - Live in Concert recorded in Japan where he has a huge following. Live performances of the blues were a new and rare event in Japan when Otis went there in 1975. 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.[2]
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.[16] The following year, he performed with Eric Clapton at the Montreux Jazz Festival.
Rush performing in 2002
In 1994, Mercury released Ain't Enough Comin' In using the same production team and core musicians featured on Buddy Guy’s Feels Like Rain album. 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.[2][7] 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. He didn't record a new studio album after 1998 though he continued touring and performing until 2003 when he suffered a stroke.
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 .[2] Video footage of the same show was released on the DVD Live Part 1 in 2003.[17]
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.[18] A video of him belting out his 1956 breakthrough hit “I Can’t Quit You Baby” was interspersed with recorded testaments from Carlos Santana, Steve Miller and Buddy Guy. A tribute concert followed in which Lurie Bell sang “My Love Will Never Die', Jimmy Johnson sang “So Many Roads” and “Three Times A Fool," Ronnie Earl fronting his band, The Broadcasters, gave a heartfelt and captivating set that included a respectful performance of “Double Trouble,” and Eddy Clearwater, “The Chief”, gave a razor sharp performance of “All Your Love (I Miss Loving),” Blues and soul great Otis Clay was scheduled to perform, too, but passed away before the festival began.[19]
"He was one of the last great blues guitar heroes. He was an electric god," Gregg Parker, CEO and a founder of the Chicago Blues Museum said of Otis.[20] Writing in The New York Times, Bill Friskics-Warren acknowledged that Otis was "A richly emotive singer and a guitarist of great skill and imagination, Mr. Rush was in the vanguard of a small circle of late 1950s innovators, including Buddy Guy and Magic Sam, whose music, steeped in R&B, heralded a new era of Chicago blues."[21]
Awards
1978 Nominee Grammy Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording - "Right Place, Wrong Time
1980 Grammy Nominee Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording - "So Many Roads."
1995 Grammy Nominee for Best Traditional Blues Album - "Ain't Enough Comin' In
1999 Grammy Winner Best Traditional Blues Album - "Any Place I'm Going."
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.[23]
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."[24]
Death
Otis Rush died on September 29, 2018, from complications of a stroke. He was 84 years old. His wife, Masaki, announced his death on his website.[1] A celebration in his honor was held at Space in Evanston, Illinois, on April 24, 2019.
