Aural History: The Slow-Burning, Soul-Splitting Heartache of Otis Rush

How Otis Rush taught his electric blues peers how to weep in song and truly confess the blues.

Written by Avirat Thakor

Photo courtesy of DownBeat

The blues genre is one of the most direct genres of emotional expression in Western popular music while paradoxically also being one of its most mysterious and enigmatic. From the initial explosion of ’20s classic female urban blues to the amplified heights of ’50s Chicago blues, the greatest blues musicians aimed to simply translate the reality of their lives into musical form down to the subtlest of tones and hushiest of breaths. Despite its gloomy reputation, the blues is wide enough in scope that it could truly encapsulate every facet of the human experience, whether it be softly caressing a loved one late at night, taking a stroll down a busy street, or suffering alone on one’s deathbed. The great blues songwriter Willie Dixon used to call the genre “the facts of life,” and there are few descriptions that are more apt for a genre so concerned with the here and now.

However, this expressivity of the genre was not always direct — the trauma and suffering that many blues artists faced was so unbelievably intense that directly communicating their feelings would be too revealing, especially for those who relied on a tough, gritty image to survive day to day. That is why so many artists of the genre relied on implies their true feelings through allegories and symbolism in their lyrics, shielding their souls from harm and concealing a much darker reality they did not have the strength to fully expose. But Otis Rush broke clearly from this tradition, daring to bare himself to his listeners more than anyone before him. Like many Chicago bluesmen, he had a tough, lonely childhood, growing up in rural Mississippi in a poor sharecropping family. Yet, unlike Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson II, and his other Chicago peers, who often internalized their suffering to create a tough-edged sound, Rush searched far deeper within himself, facing his trauma and insecurities head-on. In his view, bluesmen should not merely hint at emotional pain, they should make the genre bleed, weep, mourn, and scream out in agony, and if any blues conventions would prevent him from achieving the maximum confessional effect, he would simply rewrite them.

This approach was a radically new paradigm of playing the blues, so to pioneer the innovative style, Rush soaked up the rich, bluesy atmosphere of Chicago, playing various clubs on the West and South sides throughout the early 1950s. It is here he met the songwriter Willie Dixon, the primary architect of the city’s blues sound at the Chess label. He was so impressed by Rush that he got him a record deal at the newly created Cobra records, where the latter would make a name for himself. Founded by Eli Toscano, it was a small, upcoming label that could not even afford its own studio, but with visionaries like Otis Rush onboard, it would be the foreground for the creation of the West Chicago blues sound. From 1956 to ’59, Rush recorded eight singles for the label that would become landmarks of the genre, freeing it from its solemn reserve and allowing it to be a vehicle for expressing his deepest fears, regrets, and sorrows.

In the sessions for Rush’s first single, Willie Dixon hummed him a melody for a song he wrote about the singer’s relationship at the time, and Rush would transform the song into a standard of the genre: “I Can’t Quit You Baby.” A masterpiece about feeling imprisoned by love, the original version was a showcase for his impassioned vocal style, where you can clearly hear the pent-up tension and frustration each time he roared out the main chorus and brought his voice to a strained falsetto. However, Rush’s true tormented soul can only be fully communicated through his guitar playing, and the best version of the song to hear is the famous unreleased alternate version he recorded soon after. It simply obliterates its listeners with emotion within 15 seconds, the combination of the horn section and singer’s slow-burning, drawn-out guitar phrasings making for one of the most weeping, devastating musical statements of the decade. Rush was one of the first electric guitarists who tried to teach his instrument to truly cry with all of the long-bent notes and lengthy phrasings to give the impression of a desperate, suffering loner trying to find a way out of an unfeeling world, and this recording was the first time he unlocked its full potential.

With the next single’s B-side, “My Love Will Never Die,” he would up the ante of emotional turmoil even further. Dixon’s original with the Big Three Trio was a pensive, quiet ballad of heartbreak, the tragic heights contained within the lyrics were not fully unleashed until Rush recorded it. If the horn-guitar intro to the alternate version of “I Can’t Quit You Baby” expressed the anguish of romantic frustration, the horn-guitar intro to “My Love Will Never Die” is the sonic equivalent of Rush engulfing himself in musical flames as the creaky horn section screams out in terror. He gives it a solemn, funeral-like march, stretching out each verse to make it sound as if he was physically trembling. Those subtle guitar flourishes add the necessary sonic depth, but it's really all about Rush purging his demons right in front of you. This recording is the most romantically desolate the blues have ever sounded, as if his body were to lay to waste after delivering this last fiery swan song.

Among Cobra’s first singles, “I Can’t Quit You Baby” was a commercial success, hitting number six on the Billboard R&B chart, and “My Love Will Never Die” was a major artistic triumph for Rush. Both tracks allowed him to kick his recording career into full throttle, helping him explore as many creative directions as he could and elevating the reputation of his label sky-high. Even within the heartbreak subgenre of blues he created, Rush designed a wide assortment of dramatic, emotionally striking riffs, be it the sizzling unease of “If You Were Mine,” the sharp-as-a-knife riff of “It Takes Time,” or the weary pings of “Groaning The Blues.” He even converted the epic machismo of “Hoochie Coochie Man” riff into a gut-retching cry of heartache on “Love That Woman,” pulling out the pain deeply encoded within the song. Yet, Otis was just as talented in conveying things other than depression —both “Sit Down” and “She’s a Good ’Un” are delightfully grimy and sexual, and he managed to make Willie Dixon’s classic “Violent Love” a magnificently refined and exquisite love serenade.

This exciting artistic run would unfortunately not last much longer. Through poor management and a looming recession, the record label was beginning to go bankrupt. It is during this period that Rush released his most career-defining songs: “Double Trouble,” “Keep On Loving Me Baby,” and “All Your Love,” all of which became some of the most revered recordings in the genre and would be covered dozens of times. Most of all, this “desperation trilogy” captures his greatness as an artist better than anywhere else, breaking the usual conventions and making music that was entirely his own.

Photo courtesy of The Sunday Times

The most famous of the three is “All Your Love,” primarily due to Eric Clapton’s version with the Bluesbreakers and its later influence on Peter Green and Santana’s “Black Magic Woman.” Nonetheless, Rush’s version is unquestionably an epic recording in blues history, iconoclastically shattering down expectations with its deeply cutting, angular riff and Afro-Cuban groove that gave it a unique flavor among all the seminal recordings in the ’50s. Rush didn’t incorporate these unusual elements to merely test the boundaries of the genre — the distinctive rhythm really does make the song feel frantic within a controlled order, expressing an infatuation that causes just as much psychological chaos as it does between lovers.

Lesser known but not any worse, “Keep On Loving Me Baby” is simply a blues explosion, each stuttering riff sounding as if Rush were lighting a fuse that would cause the horn section to erupt with a mighty shriek. It is also here where you find one of the singer’s most crushing vocal performances, where he slowly increases the anguish in his voice until he is practically growling his way through the song.

Still, both of these recordings still pale in comparison to the epochal greatness of “Double Trouble,” arguably not just Otis Rush’s greatest song but also one of the greatest recordings in the genre ever. The subject matter itself is not unique in the blues — the topic had dozens of purveyors well before Rush began performing. Yet, this song is a masterpiece because it does not hold back one bit from expressing the intensity of feeling it can induce. The iconic line “They say you can make it if you try / Yes, some of this generation is millionaires / It’s hard for me decent clothes to wear” is an unbelievably striking lyric that embodies what it is like to be beaten down over and over again, giving everything to try to survive but failing anyways while seeing everyone around you succeed. It is this poignancy that makes it deeply felt by those who have never faced poverty in their lifetimes. Everything, from the hazy horn swoops to the bleeding, aching guitar tones provide the smokey, isolated atmosphere necessary to show deep, inner turmoil, but the whole song truly climaxes in the main riff, the most heartbreaking musical phrase in his catalog. It captures the mental breaking point when that final pang of despair finally causes the listener to lose their composure and truly sink within themself. The true magic of the song lies in the fact that it achieves these tragic heights through honest emotional expression. There are no theatrical or symbolic elements at play here, no lines drawn between the listener and Otis. He expressed the full depths of his soul here.

With these final recordings, Rush had reached an artistic summit few blues artists would ever attain, but it was sadly not a peak that would last after Cobra went bankrupt. Otis Rush was not much of a self-promoter and was more interested in playing the music he loved than fulfilling his showbiz obligations, which led to the mismanagement of his artistic genius as he moved from label to label. He still continued releasing some excellent singles (“You Know My Love,” “Homework,” etc.) and albums (such as Mourning in the Morning), but none of it was nearly as awe-inspiring as his ’50s peak. Still, he continued to perform in the studio and live off and on until his passing in 2018.

Nevertheless, Otis Rush demonstrated that all genres need a person who can come in and remind everybody why they all make music in the first place. At times, some artists can get so used to operating under a veil that they become afraid of lifting it for their audience, and that can often get in the way of building meaningful connections between an artist and the world around them. Rush showed his peers that the greatest asset that all bluesmen have is themselves and the reality they live in, and the more authentically they express their world and the feelings that come with living in that world, the closer they will get to creating music that can heal themselves and others around them.