Blues Legend Bobby Rush On His New Album “Sitting On Top Of The Blues,” Career Highlights & More

After decades of tearing up the chitlin’ circuit on a nightly basis with his sweaty, no-holds-barred, crowd-pleasing, genre-bending funkfests, Bobby Rush has thoroughly broken through to the mainstream. He notably won a long-overdue 2017 Grammy Award for his spectacular studio album Porcupine Meat and still consistently tours the globe as a must-see headlining concert act.

Grammy aside, to date, Bobby Rush has earned 12 Blues Music Awards and 48 nominations; this includes the prestigious “B.B. King Entertainer Of The Year Award” and “Album Of The Year” honors. Rush co-starred in the 2014 documentary Take Me To The River alongside Terrence Howard, Snoop Dogg, and Mavis Staples. That same year, Rush joined Dan Aykroyd on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon to perform two songs, interestingly marking his first ever late-night television appearance.

Bobby Rush’s brand-new album, Sitting On Top Of The Blues, is now out on his own Deep Rush record label imprint, as distributed by Thirty Tigers. This revered musical legend is well past 80 years of age, yet he is arguably still in peak form as both a recording artist and a live performer.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Bobby Rush in July 2019 — several weeks before the release of Sitting On Top Of The Blues — by phone, and below are recorded (lightly-edited) highlights from that evening chat. More on Rush can be found online at www.bobbyrushbluesman.com.

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Tags: Blues, Bobby Rush, Dan Aykroyd, Elmore James, Mississippi, Snoop Dogg, Thirty Tigers

About the Author

Darren Paltrowitz Darren Paltrowitz is a New York resident with over 20 years of entertainment industry experience. He began working around the music business as a teenager, interning for the manager of his then-favorite band Superdrag. Since then, he has worked with a wide array of artists including OK Go, They Might Be Giants, Mike Viola, Tracy Bonham, Loudness, Rachael Yamagata, and Amanda Palmer. Darren's writing has appeared in dozens of outlets including the New York Daily News, Inquisitr, The Daily Meal, The Hype Magazine, All Music Guide, Guitar World, TheStreet.com, Businessweek, Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, and the Jewish Journal. Beyond being "Editor At Large" for The Hype Magazine, Darren is also the host of weekly "Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz" series, which airs on dozens on television and digital networks. He has also co-authored 2 published books, 2018's "Pocket Change: Your Happy Money" (Book Web Publishing) and 2019's "Good Advice From Professional Wrestling" (6623 Press), and co-hosts the world's only known podcast about David Lee Roth, "The DLR Cast."