Blues singer, guitarist Otis Rush dies at 83
Otis Rush, a blues singer and guitarist whose soaring voice, emotionally charged riffs and searing live performances made him a major influence on 1960s rockers and one of his genre’s most acclaimed musicians, died Saturday. He was 83.
The cause was complications of a stroke he had suffered in 2003, according to his wife, Masaki Rush, who announced the death on Rush’s website but did not say where he died.
A self-taught, southpaw guitarist who played a right-handed model upside down, Rush developed a quavering guitar sound and a throaty baritone voice that frequently burst into falsetto. Fusing rhythm-andblues and the country blues of the Mississippi Delta, he exerted a profound influence on an entire generation of musicians.
Although his career spanned six decades and numerous recordings, Rush’s reputation rests largely on the records he made between 1956 and 1958 for Cobra Records, a shortlived, shoestring operation run by a TV repairman in Chicago.
His memorable recordings for the label included “All Your Love (I Miss Loving)” (1958), a hypnotic rumba that shifts into a shuffle during the guitar break. He wrote the song while traveling to the studio for a recording date with Ike Turner’s band the Kings of Rhythm. The song’s minor keyed tonality inspired saxophonist Junior Walker’s early Motown hit “Cleo’s Mood,” while its rhythms were echoed in Fleetwood Mac’s song “Black Magic Woman,” later covered by Carlos Santana.
Rush said he was inspired to form his first band in 1955 by another Chicago bluesman, Muddy Waters. But he owed his vocal phrasing to gospel-inflected artists such as Ray Charles, Little Willie John and B.B. King, favoring a doomy quality that once led guitarist Jimmy Johnson to declare that “even if he be playing in a major key, he sang minor.”
His sound proved crucial to the development of West Side blues, so named for the Chicago clubs frequented by Rush and other like-minded performers. (The style’s name was something of a misnomer; Rush played throughout the city and lived for a while on the South Side.)
Unlike fellow Chicago singer-guitarist Buddy Guy, a consummate showman, Rush did not dance around, play guitar behind his back or walk through the crowd with a long guitar cord. He preferred to let his music speak for itself.
“When he is inspired, he bends and twists each note in a phrase so delicate that his instrument seems to be forming actual words,” New York Times music critic Robert Palmer wrote in 1982. “It is the quality and feeling of his guitar playing,” he added, “the fine points of the way he uses the language, that let the listener know how he is feeling and what he is thinking about on a particular night.”
Rush’s sound was driven in large part by his unorthodox playing style, which enabled him to generate “swooping, slithery bends and time-warping vibrato,” as guitar teacher Dave Rubin once wrote. He could imitate a slide guitarist without a slide, and the fluid, vocal quality of his fretwork helped him turn hits by singers Aretha Franklin (“Baby I Love You”) and Tina Turner (“I Think Its Gonna Work Out Fine”) into compelling guitar instrumentals.
After Cobra went out of business in 1959, Rush joined the larger Chess label, where he recorded another blues standard, “So Many Roads.” However, he grew frustrated as the label did more to promote his blues rivals, Guy and Little Milton. He later signed with the Houston-based label Duke, which released just one single by Rush.