Exposing The Man Behind The Blues' Most Risque Revue By Scott Jordan

Bobby Rush owns a 5-foot-wide pair of panties, but they aren't for his personal use. The quintessential entertainer occasionally brings out the massive undergarment in the most sexually charged and riotous stage show in contemporary blues. Rush knows the same truism Robert Johnson and Elvis Presley followed and that Little Richard, Madonna and the artist formerly known as Prince still subscribe today: If music is the universal language and sex is the universal obsession, then combining the two makes for a powerful intoxicant.

What separates Rush from other performers is his equal-opportunity eroticism. Women love Rush for his lean good looks, his cat-like athleticism on the bandstand, and his self-depreciating jokes about male foibles. Rush's voluptuous female backup dancers keep the men enthralled, not to mention his insightfully funny observations on the often-hapless male quest for female companionship. And when Rush enlists his dancers to help demonstrate his references-leaving little to the imagination-the audience is always blushing and laughing, seeing themselves in Rush's sexual comedy of errors. The strength of Rush's bawdy performances has earned him W.C. Handy nominations in multiple categories, including Entertainer of the Year.

The uninitiated may think that Rush is a novelty ace, but nothing could be further from the truth. In recent years his popularity had risen dramatically, in large part because of the exposure he's garnered on the festival circuit. However, the multi-talented Rush is no overnight success. His chiseled face, curly shoulder length hair and good looks belie the fact that he is "over 60 years old," once hired Elmore James to play in his band in Mississippi, and earned a living for decades playing music in Chicago while peers Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters defined the blues of the Windy City.

"I tell you one thing: When people see me, then they know that I've been around for a while," Rush said recently after a show in Biloxi, Miss. "I see people detect that when I walk on the stage. You can't learn to walk onstage like I do, or a few other artists do, overnight. A real pro, you can tell how long they've been in the business, just approaching the stage. It's an automatic thing. I can't tell you where it come from, but I guess it comes from old times."

Rush was born in Homer, La., and his love for music-and double-entendres-cme from courtesy of his father, who was a minister. "I thought I was the greatest harmonica player in the world, and the greatest guitar player in the world," Rush remembered. "Now he couldn't play but two notes, but to me, he was a fabulous guy." One day Rush's father sang him a song about roosters and hens playing in the chicken pen, and the youngster realized the song's true meaning. "Now what's funny about that is that my daddy being a minister and saying something like that-at first that was devastating to me that he would say that. The I said, it must be OK to say something like that," Rush said.

The Rush family moved to Pine Bluff, Ark., and Rush spent his teen-age years there playing guitar, bass and harmonica. In the early '50s, he moved to Chicage, drawn by the lure of increased work opportunities. Rush quickly ingratiated himself to the club owners, as evidence in a story he relates of an unusual performing engagement:

"I remember in '59 or '60, I was playin' a little club called the Havana Club in Rock Island, Ill.," Rush remembered. "This gentlemen wanted a comedian, and he was paying $50 for a comedian. So I knew a gentlemen called Pretty Bob in Chicago, and I said, 'I'll get Pretty Bob to do this.' Pretty Bob promised me honestly that he was going to it with me Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, which $150. At that time, that was a lot of money; comedians were getting more money than band-leaders. So I said OK, I made the deal with the guy, and at the last minute Pretty Bob says, 'I can't go.' Now my neck is stuck out on a limb. Now how can I tell this man I don't have this comedian?

"So I go to the club, and I bought me an old suit that was raggedy, and I put it on top of these clothes that I had. And at that time, I didn't wear a mustache, so I bought me some stick-on mustache. I put the stick-on mustache on, went out and told jokes, and just cracked the house up, because I'm really a born comedian. Then I'd say, 'Ladies and gentleman, now the star of the show, Bobbbby Rush!' Then I'd run back and pull the old clothes off, come back onstage, and I'm Bobby Rush. I worked the club for five months, and the man never knew it. I was gettin' paid twice. When the guy finally found out, he said, 'Man, you're too slick. I tell you what you do. Let's not tell anybody. Keep workin'.' That's how I got my changin' clothes bit. It's a style I have."

The resourceful and friendly Rush also became close to Little Walter and Muddy Waters. When Rush saw Little Walter open the trunk of his car one night to reveal a suitcase full of money he had earned from his harp playing, Rush saw his calling. Besides leading his own bands, Rush became a reliable resource for the local studios, playing and helping out no matter what the situation. He ghosted on some sessions and cut a few singles (with Wayne Bennett on guitar and Big Moose John on piano) that have yet to surface from the Chess vaults.

I remember at Vee-Jay Records with Jimmy Reed, I was the kid who did the run-nin, got the coffee, and played the notes and sang the lines. But that's the way it goes. It was myself and Jimmy Rogers. [Reed] would be drunk all the time, and just didn't take care of business," Rush said.

He also fielded offers for studio work and tours, but by his own admission the young buck didn't always grasp the signif-icance of the offers.

"I often think that I missed my boat by not listenin' to Muddy," Rush said. "Muddy used to ask me-he called me 'Blood'-and he'd say, 'Blood, come go with me.' He used to try to get me to go to Germany and overseas way back when he first started going. I didn't want to go because the money wasn't great. But never-theless no one was makin' big money any-way. ... It would have been a big step for me and people would know more about Bobby Rush than they do now. Sometimes I think about that."

The social climate of the '60s led Rush away from the deep blues being played by compatriots. As the Civil Rights Movement gathered momentum, blues fell out of favor, and Rush listened to his younger friends who chastised him for playing antiquated music born out of slavery He stopped play-ing harmonica for more than 10 years, and began to work on a style that eschewed the standard 12-bar format and combined the humorous qualities he found in the work of Louis Jordan and Fats Wallet.

The switch paid off with his early-'70s hit "Chicken Heads," a funky anthem released on Galaxy Records that intro-duced Rush to the Southern chitlin' circuit audience. When Rush began touring below the Mason-Dixon line with his female dancers in tow, he began to amass a loyal fan base.

"Tina Turner and myself started this a long, long time ago, said Rush. "I remember like in '58, '59, I bad two ladies with me, and at that time, we called 'em shake dancers. They're shake dancers because they didn't sing, buy they're shake dancers 'cause they're there to dance ....Sometimes they would do solo in front of me, but most of the time they'd be on the side. Then later on James Brown come out with it, but James was bigger than me and kind of beat me to the punch."

While the Godfather of Soul made calling out his bandmates' names-"Macco, blow your horn!"- a signature of his work, Rush hit upon his own trademark: talking to himself On records and in live performances, Rush has made self-dialogue an art form, setting up his stories with the tag line, "And I said, 'Bobby Rush,...''

"The reason why I call my name in the records is because 10 or 15 years ago, that disco thing come in awful strong," remem-bered Rush. "And people was playin' 0, 2 records in a row on the radio and wasn't callin' anyone's name, and nobody knew who the record was. So I got to sayin', 'Hey, Bobby Rush ...' Before I really got the identity to open my mouth to sing, you could tell who I was. I called my name in my record two or three times, and it caught on. Now you catch a lot of guys want to call their name."

That trick also has helped Rush sidestep potential criticism for the now-classic routines in his risque' stage Show. Whether he's describing a cheating wife in "I Ain't Studdin' You," the lucky man with an insa-tiable partner in "Henpecked," or the young man introdticed to love- making by "Sue," Rush sings it all with a wink of the eye and a you-won't-believe-what-happened-to-me laugh.

"I was in Amsterdam last year, and to be honest with you, the show went well, but the audience and the people around, it was so new they didn't know how to take me. Now since that time, I've gotten letters on top of letters from people saying, 'Don't change it. We salute you. Keep it up.' But in the mean-time, there was a lot of people saying, 'Boo, boo.' I remember Muddy Waters was telling me a story about how some people didn't like it when he first went overseas with the elec-tric guitar. Prince, when he first came out, they literally threw eggs at him. Now I'm a guy who takes a chance, so I took this big chance. I'm a gambler," Rush said.

With Rush's popularity growing, there's been inevitable talk of his ability to cross racial lines and make inroads into the white market, an insinuation that his show is some-how too hard-core for some audiences. That discussion is a disservice to Rush's talent. Like fellow cultural pioneers such as the artist for-merly known as Prince, Richard Pryor and Run-D.M.C., the proof is in the perfor-mance. The only true problem raised by Rush's recent acclaim lies in his wish to show people his full capabilities. He's the first to admit that his records don't always capture the fire of this live show (his 1995 Waldoxy release One Monkey Don't Stop No Show being a notable exception), but he has a plan to change that pattern.

"My thought on my new album is that I'll play harp on all cuts," said Rush. "I believe this will set me into a situation where my show will be wrapped around my harmonica. I'm a guitar player and a bass player, and the reason I don't play gui-tar as much now is I want to be known as a particular guy, not a jack of all trades. I want to be known as a harmonica player, although I play guitar. There's a whole lot of musicians and entertainers, and you can teach a man how to play a guitar, but you can't teach him how to be an entertainer. Entertainers are born, musicians are made. And I think I'm blessed in that I'm one guy who was born to do something.

Stevie Wonder is an entertainer who also plays piano, not a piano player that sings."

Rush also is working out an acoustic segment for his show, a tip of the hat to his old friend Jimmy Reed. "Nobody knows I [can] do shows by myself. I can do an hour-and-a-half show by myself and send the band home," said Rush.

That's just one of the surprising things you learn about Bobby Rush in conversation. There's much more to the man than meets the eye. He's a devoted reader of the Bible, retaining the devotion to his faith that he learned from his father. There are also no indications of the stereo-typical hard-living musician's life: no smoking, drinking alcohol or even coffee. Perhaps most surprisingly, Rush, the man who drives the ladies wild, has been happi-ly married for more than 40 years.

For Rush, playing the blues, in all its forms, has been a blessing that he hopes to continue for years to come.

"This is my life," Rush said. "One time somebody asked me, 'If you had $20 million today, what would you do?' I'd probably do the same thing I'm doing. And I'd just be satisfied inside that I didn't have to do that if I didn't want to. But I would probably do it, because it's in me. It's very seldom a man gets to do what he wants to do and loves to do and gets paid for it I m not looking for retirement or looking for another job. This is what I want to do