Bobby Rush On ‘I Am The Blues,’ Race And Playing Music Behind A Curtain [EXCLUSIVE VIDEO]

The Blues is what you feel from your heart. Blues is something you don’t learn. [It’s] something that you live, something that you wish for, something that you hope for, and what you are. And I’m a blues man, blues guy, blues kids, blue everything, everything around me is the blues and I love it.

I got started… I left my little hometown in Louisiana in 1947. I went to Pine Bluff, Arkansas. In 1951, I moved to Chicago and then I migrated – I stayed there 40 years – and then I migrated back to Mississippi. But when I was a young boy, my first cousin gave me a guitar and I was about seven years old. He was about 15 years old. He wouldn’t let me play the guitar unless the girl was around him, the little girls. And I would go out together with the little girls, making him [interesting to] girls so I could use his guitar. So my dad being a preacher… He said ‘Boy, bring that guitar here.’ And I thought my dad is gonna sing a song for me, ‘Gloria, Gloria Hallelujah,’ or something from the church. But he said, ‘I’m gonna sing a song that I used to sing to the little girls when I was a little older than you.’ And I wanted to hear the song because I thought it was going to be my mother he was gonna sing about. But he sang, ‘Me and my gal went to chinquapin hunting, she fell down and I saw something.’ And I said, ‘Daddy.’ My daddy bein’ a preacher singing this kind of song. I said, ‘Sing it again, Dad.’ He said, ‘Me and my gal went to chinquapin hunting, she fell down and I saw something.’ I said ‘Sing it again.’ Now what I want him to do, sing another verse, if the girl fell down he saw something, I thought the next verse he could tell me what he saw. And I said, ‘Dad, how big was she?’ He saw, ‘She was fat, real fat.’ I said, ‘What she had on?’ He said, ‘Nothing but a dress.’ Now in my little mind a fat lady had fallen with nothing on but a dress. I got the vision in my head. [Laughs] Oh god, what he saw. I said, ‘Sing it again.’ By that time my mother was in the kitchen cooking. She said, [sighs], meaning don’t sing that kind of song to that boy. So he said, ‘Me and my gal went to chinquapin hunting, she fell down and I saw something.’ And my mother walkin’ up… And I said, ‘Sing it again.’ And my mother was comin’ up… I said, ‘Dad, dad, [here come my momma].’ He was singin’ he had his hat on his head, he said, ‘Me and my gal went to chinquapin hunting, she fell down and I kept running.’ And I don’t know what the song would have been [laughs], I don’t know what he saw. So that’s how I got started singing the blues man. Then I built me a guitar upside the wall with the strings off a broom wire, and I had a brick at the top and a ball at the bottom. So one day the brick fell out and hit me in the head and start the bleeding. So I reversed the brick at the bottom, smart now, put the ball at the top. Then my songs start to sound like a guitar, [bam du-du bam-bam], [maybe a song name?]. And that’s when my guitar started, man. And from that time to now I recorded 347 songs, since 1951. And an old man been doing this for 63 years and here I am, that’s it. That’s Bobby Rush.

I went a lot of places, a lot of places. I could not go where you had the club… I played a mini club set, no colored allowed. Because… I was there, because I was a musician at that point. I played many places behind a curtain… Well, they want to hear my music, didn’t want to see my face. [You played behind a curtain?] Oh, yeah, yeah, played behind a curtain. Myself and the late Muddy Waters, Jake Billy Noir. We played a million nights. What they want is to hear all the music but didn’t want to see the guy who’s playing the music. Because they want to hear that blackness, they want to hear that blues. But, I got so good, a place in [Robert?], Illinois in 1952… So the guy would let me… ‘So ladies and gentleman we’re being entertained by Bobby Rush and the Four Jivers.’ They would open the curtain and I would take a bow and they would close it right back up. So finally… But the guy told me, he said, ‘We like that you take a bow, but we don’t want to see the band.’ So they had two curtains. I would stand in front of the band, and the band would stand in front of another curtain. So when they opened the curtain they wouldn’t see anybody but me. So I was on the way of being a star then. [Laughs] But, you know, I laugh about it… But the meaning why they did it was one thing… But I had fun behind the curtain because I know couldn’t no one see me, so I had the little girls come behind the curtain so… So there was a lot of things going on behind the curtain. [Laughs] If you know what I mean.