Otis Rush

In 1956 southpaw guitarist Otis Rush crashed the R&B Top Ten on his debut outing with the fiercely charged slow blues “I Can’t Quit You Baby,” quickly earning recognition as one of the standout blues performers working the Chicago scene. He shared credit with Magic Sam and Buddy Guy for shaping the West Side guitar approach, though the distinction remained imprecise given how often he appeared in South Side clubs while that sound was taking shape in the late 1950s. His lasting reputation as a Chicago innovator rested on the shimmering, vibrato-rich tone that defined his playing and on a strained, fiercely concentrated vocal style capable of raising gooseflesh. Had ability been the sole requirement for broad acclaim, Rush would have stood at the forefront of the city’s blues artists; instead, circumstance, chance, and his own quirks repeatedly blocked paths that seemed open.

He arrived in Chicago in 1948, encountered Muddy Waters, and immediately recognized the direction his life would take. Willie Dixon heard him perform and placed him with Eli Toscano’s Cobra Records in 1956. The same shattering “I Can’t Quit You Baby” became the first single for both the artist and the label, climbing to number six on Billboard’s R&B chart. The Cobra recordings made between 1956 and 1958 stand as a remarkable body of work, highlighted by Dixon’s productions of the minor-key masterpieces “Double Trouble” and “My Love Will Never Die,” the hard-edged “Three Times a Fool” and “Keep on Loving Me Baby,” and the rhumba-inflected classic “All Your Love (I Miss Loving).” Rush reportedly composed the latter number while driving to the company’s studios on West Roosevelt Road, where he recorded it backed by the core of Ike Turner’s band.

Once Cobra shut its doors, Rush’s recording prospects largely stalled. He moved with Dixon to Chess in 1960 and cut another landmark track, the powerful “So Many Roads, So Many Trains,” before brief stops at Duke, where he issued the lone 1962 single “Homework,” and then Vanguard and Cotillion. At Cotillion he made the underappreciated 1969 album Mourning in the Morning, produced by Mike Bloomfield and Nick Gravenites and supported by the Muscle Shoals rhythm section. A striking example of his misfortune was the fate of Right Place, Wrong Time, taped for Capitol in 1971 yet left unreleased by the label despite its quality; the album finally appeared five years later on the small Bullfrog imprint and later through HighTone. During the 1970s and 1980s he kept his name visible with the solid if uneven 1975 Delmark release Cold Day in Hell and a series of strong live recordings that shared a comparable sound.

In 1986 he abandoned a costly Rooster Blues session featuring Louis Myers, Lucky Peterson, and Casey Jones after deciding his amplifier sounded wrong, ending the project. Alligator acquired the rights to an earlier overseas Sonet album originally titled Troubles, Troubles; when the company reissued it as Lost in the Blues in 1991, the label added keyboard overdubs by Lucky Peterson and removed portions of Rush’s guitar work. In 1994 the Chicago blues figure’s career finally moved forward with the Mercury release Ain’t Enough Comin’ In, his first studio album in sixteen years. The set, produced cleanly by John Porter with a tightly rehearsed band, consisted entirely of covers that Rush delivered in his own manner, his searing guitar placed prominently throughout.

A fresh round of personal difficulties once more jeopardized the long-delayed resurgence. Nevertheless he continued to perform at peak level, leading a compact ensemble well attuned to his fiery style. He joined the newly formed House of Blues record label, instantly lending it credibility and positioning himself for renewed momentum. A stroke in 2003 ended his touring and recording activities. The album Live... and In Concert from San Francisco, captured in 1999, appeared on the Blues Express label in 2006. On September 29, 2018, Otis Rush passed away at age 83 from complications related to the stroke.