Otis Rush Jr. (April 29, 1934 – September 29, 2018) was an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter. His distinctive guitar style featured a slow-burning sound and long bent notes. With qualities similar to the styles of other 1950s artists Magic Sam and Buddy Guy, his sound became known as West Side Chicago blues and was an influence on many musicians, including Michael Bloomfield, Peter Green and Eric Clapton.
Rush was left-handed and played as such; however, his guitars were strung with the low E string at the bottom, upside-down from typical guitarists. He often played with the little finger of his pick hand curled under the low E for positioning. It is widely believed that this contributed to his distinctive sound. He had a wide-ranging, powerful tenor voice.
Otis Rush was born near Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 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 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. "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.
Otis moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1949 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. 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. Cobra 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. Cash Box 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 ihe Most Promising Up and Coming Male Vocalist.
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 and The Crickets, and Carl Perkins and The Drifters, playing at top venues such as 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 did not 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. 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. 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 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. 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."
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. The album has since gained a reputation as some of his best work.
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 recording a blues record became difficult. 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 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. The next year, he opened for Pearl Jam at Chicago's Soldier Field, and his album Any Place I'm Goin' in 1998 earned 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 did not 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 . Video footage of the same show was released on the DVD Live Part 1 in 2003.