“So now I’m king of the Chitlin’ Circuit and I am not ashamed of it. Louis before settling in Chicago where he met Little Walter, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. After making $2 to $3 a day in the band, Rush says he traveled to East St. He first wanted to start his career in Chicago but only had enough money to travel to Memphis, Tennessee, where he started to play with B.B. He says he wanted to emigrate from the southern states due to the racial tensions at the time. Rush made his career through large venues between Chicago and the Mississippi Delta - now known as the Chitlin’ Circuit. “I put a brick at the top and a ball at the bottom, so that was the blues man,” Rush says. In the book, one of his earliest memories he recounts is when he created a guitar from a broom with a wire in his mother’s house. Rush has written over 400 songs and won his first Grammy at 83 years old for his album 'Porcupine Meat.' The Grammy-winning musician shares stories about his life dating all the way back to the Jim Crow era. For more information click here.Īmerican blues musician Bobby Rush took inspiration for the name of his memoir - “I Ain’t Studdin’ Ya” - after one of his hundreds of song titles. Find that audio here.īobby Rush is going on tour this month. at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium.Editor's note: This segment was rebroadcast on March 9, 2022. The 2020 honorary degree recipient Carole Pearson Troutt will be presented her degree at the Commencement Exercises of the Rhodes College Class of 2020, Saturday, at 6:00 p.m. The lessons I learned while working on this project will be carried with me through a variety of contexts and further experiences.' Working with Bobby Rush, Eddie Cotton, Fuzzy Jeffries, and Boo Mitchell on a recording at the famed Royal Studios teaches us not only about making music, but about the cultural history and significance of what it means to make music in Memphis.

These experiences have included Rush’s teaching of a course entitled “Music and Community in Memphis,” participation in symposia and public lectures, and performances alongside Rhodes students in Memphis area venues including Elvis Presley’s first home. This semester, Rush partnered with the Curb Institute on a project involving dozens of students that culminated in a recording of an original blues version of “America the Beautiful” which will be released in recognition of Memorial Day as a celebration of unity.Ĭamden Napier, member of the class of 2021 and Curb Institute Fellow, shared that “The opportunity to engage in a project with one of the most iconic figures in Blues music, especially in the Mid-South region, is indicative of the unique learning experienced offered at Rhodes College through the Mike Curb Institute. The relationship between Rush and the college has been a part of the educational experience of well over one hundred Rhodes students. Rush was named the inaugural Curb Visiting Scholar in the Arts in 2014 and continues his relationship with the college through immersive student experiences and historically significant public programs.

Over the past decade, “Professor Rush,” as he is known to the students in the Mike Curb Institute for Music, has forged a unique partnership between a liberal arts college and a blues legend. The honorary degree will be presented at the Commencement Exercises of the Rhodes College Class of 2021, to be held Saturday, at 8:30 a.m., Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium.

The Rhodes Board of Trustees announced today that internationally renowned Blues artist, Blues Hall of Fame inductee, and Grammy Award winner Bobby Rush, whose career spans eight decades, will be this year’s recipient of the Honorary Doctorate of Humanities.

Bobby rush blues. six decades on