ALBUM REVIEW: Bobby Rush Brings Full Band to Full Blues on ‘All My Love For You’
Jim Shahen
Posted On August 17, 2023
The king is back.
Bluesman Bobby Rush, the 89-year-old King of the Chitlin’ Circuit, is still going strong. In 2021, he released Rawer Than Raw, a solo acoustic LP that earned him a Grammy nomination for Best Blues Album (ND review). This week, he’s back with a full band for the new album All My Love For You. Age has not dimmed Rush’s voice, playing abilities, or wit, and All My Love For You finds the blues legend in characteristically strong, playfully lascivious form.
Bobby Rush (photo by Laura Carbone)
“TV Mama” is an ode to a “big hip woman, prettiest thing you’ve ever seen … my TV mama, the one with the big wide screen.” As well as allowing Rush to engage in his bread-and-butter euphemistic lyrical content, the song also showcases his musicianship. Rush blows some killer mouth harp and offers up some solid guitar work, providing a sturdy backdrop for his warm, solid vocals.
He continues his absurdist spin on romance and sex talk with the midtempo “I’ll Do Anything For You.” Much as with “TV Mama,” the song itself is well-constructed. He plays some tasty slide guitar and harmonica runs that are a masterclass in the 12-bar blues form. And, of course, Rush takes his lover’s plea to absurd heights, offering to sleep out in the rain, rescue her from the jungle, and (in a likely double entendre) be her “driving wheel” if she’s in need of a chauffeur.
Rush’s ability to use the blues to uncork hyperbolic and raunchy lyrics is made possible by the fact that he’s a master of the musical form, with more than 70 years of playing it to his name. He tells that story on the autobiographical rocker “I’m the One.” An impassioned Rush sings about his childhood fascination with the blues and leaving home for Chicago in 1952, where he learned from B.B. King and Muddy Waters. But he makes clear he staked out a different path than his peers, proclaiming “I’m the one who put the funk in the blues.” (There’s more of Rush’s life story in his 2021 memoir, I Ain’t Studdin’ Ya: My American Blues Story.)
On the funky R&B of “One Monkey Can Stop a Show,” he reimagines one of his older songs. It’s a new interpretation of his 1995 track “One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show,” about a woman leaving Rush because of his no-good philandering ways. On the new song, he pledges to do better. Of course, this lesson doesn’t come out of any sort of moral revelation but out of (in no particular order) fear of death, voodoo hexes, and/or castration.
It’s classic and uniquely Rush, and it’s why All My Love For You matters. He’s one of a kind, and with his 90th birthday coming in November, there’s no telling how much longer Rush will be an active recording and touring musician. All My Love For You offers another chance to hear the man do what he does best.
All hail the king!
Bobby Rush’s All My Love For You is out Aug. 18 on Deep Rush Records/Thirty Tigers.
