Young women, their female assets straining to break loose from scantv, skin-tight outfits, gyrate to the music.
An emcee chants his name like a mantra. "Bobby Rush…Bobby Rush…Bobby Rush…"
Tension builds as the crowd waits expectantly.
Then Bobby Rush takes the stage, grinning broadly, eyes flashing mischievously. Stage lights sparkle off the rhinestones on his wide belt and reflect smoothly off his sIicked-back curl. He takes the microphone and begins to sing.
The crowd shouts and whistles in response, and you realize you're not seeing the typical blues performance.
Rush holds nothing back. Sexuality and the human body are openly celebrated, both in the dancers and the songs, which include tunes like "Booga Bear," a reference to temptations of the female anatomy.
Rush is more than a bluesman. He's an entertainer. He was chosen by Living Blues magazine as the Best Live Performer in both 1995 and 1997, and nominated for two W.C. Handy Awards this year for Best Blues Entertainer and Best Soul/Blues Album, Lovin' a Big Fat Woman
(Waldoxy).
Unlike many of his contemporaries like Luther Allison and Buddy Guy, who played primarily for white crowds, Bobby Rush has spent many of the last 40 years playing the Chitlin'' Circuit, black-owned clubs mainly in the South. It's just been the past few years where he's "crossed over" to play for white crowds in a big way.
"It's no difference to me now, because I have a track record as to what I do as an entertainer," Bobby says. "But I do want to clear that up. I'm crossing over, but I don't want to cross out. There's too many blues singers that have crossed over, and yet they've crossed out. Because as a black blues singer, you can easily sell out... See, I'm not doing anything to get me across. I'm just doing good music."
Rush says he's one of the few blues performers today that can draw black fans and white fans equally as well.
Rush was born in Louisiana more than 60 years ago (he does not like to give his exact age). He learned to play guitar from his father, a preacher, but his parents did not approve of his playing the blues. When his father would return to church on Sunday afternoon, the kids would stay home.
"There was a guy called Tootch," Bobby remembers, "He sold moonshine, so the older kids, my older brothers and I, would sneak down and get a little moonshine. Oh, man, I'd be playing music for them. At that time there was a country road, and we could see the dust comin'. Couldn't tell who it was, but you could see the dust. And we would be play-ing, and we'd look up and see dust, and we'd kind of watch it for a long time. We'd be playing, "Oh, Baby Please Don't Go,' and soon as we'd see it was my daddy, and we'd go, "Amen, Amen'."
Like many young bluesmen in the 1950s, Rush moved to Chicago, where he played bass and led his own band. At One time, his band included a very young Freddie King. Luther Allison also played with him off and on for about six years.
But on his biggest hit record, "Chicken Heads," recorded in I968, Rush was playing lead guitar. He had only about a half hour in the studio with musicians he had never played with before. Unknown to Rush, the tape was running while he was trying to show the guitarist how to play the song. That take became the record, which went on to sell more than 800,000 copies.
Nowadays, Rush plays harmonica. He says he was inspired to play by his friend, harp virtuoso Little Walter, who was his back-door neighbor in the early 1950s. Once Rush went with Walter to a gig at a bar. Rush says Walter bought the ladies a round, and then told him, "Come, blood, go with me, I've got to go get some more money."
"He went to the trunk, "Bobby says. "He raised the trunk, and this is Gods truth - the trunk was full of money! It was five dollars, one dollar bills, maybe a ten. It couldn't have been more than a thousand dollars, but it looked like a million to me. I said, what-ever I do, I'm gonna play harp, because I never saw this kind of money before in my life!"
Bobby's harp playing is influenced by Little Walter's licks, and some of his songs are based on Little Walter hits like "Last Night" and "You're So Fine." However, the resemblance stops there. Bobby Rush is like nobody you ever heard - or saw - before.
Bobby Rush's music ran only be fully appreciated in a live performance. The music, the flashy costumes and the dancers, combined with Rush's charismatic personality, make his show a one-of-a-kind experience.
