# CD review: Bobby Rush – All My Love For You – 2024: Video, CD cover

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2024/03/28/cd-review-bobby-rush-all-my-love-for-you-2024-video-cd-cover/
- Published: 2024-03-28T00:02:54+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**All My Love For You, Bobby Rush’s latest album, features all original songs that,
according to Rush, were written while he was “down with COVID” and reflected on 
where life is going to take him next. These new songs provide insights into a man
who loves telling a good story and has fun doing so, while emphasizing the groove—
that Bobby Rush funky groove—audiences have adored for more than sixty years.**

Over the past ten years, this funk blues icon, now 89 years old, garnered numerous
music industry nominations and awards—2 Grammys, a Blues Blast Magazine Lifetime
Achievement award and 14 Blues Music Awards—along with countless accolades and other
well-deserved publicity, and, in 2021, published an autobiography (_I Ain’t Studdin’
You: My American Blues Story_).

If you want a story about perseverance and justice, it doesn’t get better than Bobby
Rush. As “The King of the Chitlin’ Circuit”, he was an electric entertainer, a singing
and dancing machine. He grinded through night after night at bars and juke joints
and small theaters.

The Blues Hall of Famer was loved and respected by fans and musicians, but other
than his 1971 Top 40 R&B hit “Chicken Heads”, he didn’t really burst into the mainstream
public’s consciousness until he recently won three Grammy Awards for Best Traditional
Blues Album, all after the age of 82. “Things came a little late in my life, but
it wasn’t time earlier. I’m so glad God allowed me the chance to enjoy some things,
even at my late age in life,” Rush said.

While he is the proto-typical blues musician, Bobby Rush can’t be pigeonholed. He
brought the funk before the 70’s funk boom. He’s been called the master of “folk
funk.” He worked blue and rapped before the advent of hip hop. He plays the harp
in the same style as his mentor Sonny Boy Williamson II, who told him, “It doesn’t
matter what you wear, it’s what you sound like.” Close your eyes and listen to Rush’s
2021 acoustic blues album _Rawer Than Raw _and you feel like you’re on the back 
porch alone with him in 1949.

At 90 years old, Rush is one of the last living blues men that made the move from
the South to Chicago in the middle of the twentieth century when blues was becoming
widely popular. He was a contemporary of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter,
and such. He tells tales of living through Jim Crow and growing up black in Louisiana
and Mississippi, but remains positive, even joyous about his journey. “I used to
carry water 15 miles a day for 50 cents. I used to pick cotton in a cotton field,
it’s a shame that young you work that hard. People can see I’ve got no chips on 
my shoulder. I do good music and hope everyone likes it. It’s not a black and white
issue with Bobby Rush. It’s about the music.”

In an August interview on NPR’s _All Things Considered_, Bobby Rush was asked about
his recent “fame,” his Grammys, and recording more music. Rush responded, “I have
fun with everything I do. I have fun every day. Every day I get up is fun because
when I think about what it could have been, I’m so thankful for what it is.”

He followed that up with, “Yeah, doing what I want to do and what I wanted to do
all the time, was strip my music down to the bare storytelling.”

And much like his friend and current contemporary, Buddy Guy, Rush continues having
fun and telling stories the way he knows best.

Bobby Rush (born Emmett Ellis Jr) is joined on this album by Dexter Allen (guitar
and bass) and Joey Robinson (drums and keyboards). In addition to the guitar, Rush
handles all vocals and, of course, the harmonica. Allen engineered the album, and
he and Robinson were responsible for all mixing. This three-man ensemble’s superb
musical skills are on display throughout this tightly produced record.

Themes of fun, funk, and love are found throughout the album. “Running In And Out”
has that toe-tapping, funk-filled groove that is signature Bobby Rush. “TV Mama”
is fun and fresh with Robinson’s grinding keyboard baseline, while Rush sings about
loving his woman with _the big wide screen_. With its slow, steady beat, “You’re
Gonna Need A Man Like Me” takes you back to those Delta blues standards from long
ago, including a haunting melody, and ends with a terrific harmonica outro.

“I’m The One” touches each one of these themes with its robust story-telling, a 
driving backbeat, and sensational musicianship from this small studio ensemble. 
The song might be best described as a _Bobby Rush anthem_ and may soon become a 
fan favorite wherever Rush performs live.

_All My Love For You_ begins with “I’m Free,” an autobiographical insight into Rush’s
boyhood and early years. Solid harp playing and that signature funk provide a strong
start to the album. “One Monkey Can Stop A Show” features a standard blues draw 
with a heavy keyboard rhythm and a brass-inspired beat. Rush’s storytelling prowess
is on display for “I’ll Do Anything For You” with its bluesy beat and call-and-response
guitar riffs. The album ends with “I Got A Proposition For You,” a barrelhouse-inspired
piano and keyboard number, which also highlights this small tight ensembles’ musicianship.

With_ All My Love For You_, Rush proves that he is definitely _The One_—a gifted
and talented artist who continues to bridge the past with the present. A true gift
for today’s blues fans, Rush has earned the right to be called an elder statesman
of the genre that is the backbone of modern American music.

Rush has toured the world, spreading the gospel of the blues, and being named “International
Dean of the Blues” and “Friendship Ambassador to the Great Wall of China.” He truly
loves the music and the opportunity to still share it with people. It’s impossible
to be in a bad mood in his presence. “Blues is the mother of all music. If you don’t
love the blues, you probably don’t like your mama.”

Rush is taking advantage of his moment. He was recently featured on the Grammy-winning
album by The Count Basie Orchestra directed by Scotty Barnhart _Basie Swings the
Blues_. He will appear on the forthcoming Lou Reed tribute album _The Power of the
Heart_. A street was named after him in his adopted hometown of Jackson, Mississippi.
He is touring behind this year’s Grammy-winning album _All My Love For You _both_
_as a solo act and as an opening act for his friend Buddy Guy’s farewell tour. He
met Guy in 1956 in Chicago. “For the last 20-25 years, we have come to grow more
than friends, like brothers now,” Rush said. “We are the two oldest blues singers
in this category now. Buddy gave me so much insight in life. We is the blues, this
is it. Bobby Rush/Buddy Guy, Buddy Guy/Bobby Rush. Last of the kind!”

![Bobby Rush's latest album is All My Love For You](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/
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