Otis Rush - Right Place, Wrong Time
Here we are as indicated, with #2 of three in a row depicting all sorts of birthdays. April is so heavy with 'em, all seven posts this month concern someone's born day.
Today's milestone is all about one of the architects of what we know as Chicago Blues.
Part of the second wave of Southern-born artists to migrate to The Second City after Muddy Waters got there, our main man arrived in 1948 and never left.... except to go on tour, bringing the music to the whole world.
An instantly-identifiable guitar slinger and an always-emotionally-intense vocalist, he is undeniably one of the formative fellows that made Blues what we know it as today: perhaps the central foundation of American music.
Otis Rush lived well into his eighties, passing in 2018 at the age of 84.
He suffered a stroke in 2003 that limited his playing, but he did make one last appearance at the Chicago Blues Festival in Grant Park, in 2016, to bring down the house one more time at that annual shindig, for which he was notorious at blowing up.
Speaking of that festival, here's that time he showed up with guitar masters Luther Allison and Eddie C. Campbell to lay waste to the place, thankfully transmitted over the FM band as it happened.
Otis Rush
Chicago Blues Festival
Grant Park
Chicago, Illinois USA
6.3.1995
01 Everything's Gonna Be Alright
02 Big Legged Woman
03 Otis intro/Crosscut Saw
04 Right Place, Wrong Time
05 Somebody Have Mercy
06 Homework
07 It's My Own Fault
08 All Your Love
09 I'm Tore Up
10 I'm a Fool for You
11 Box Shuffle In C/Tell Me the Reason
12 Gambler's Blues/Sweet Little Angel
Total time 1:19:54
Otis Rush - guitar & vocals
Brother John Katke - guitar
Leonard Gill - bass
Dave Maxwell - piano
Big Ray - drums
plus an unidentified horn section
with special guests:
Luther Allison - guitar & vocals (Tracks 11 & 12)
Eddie C. Campbell - guitar & vocals (Tracks 11 & 12)
off-air DAT of the original FM broadcast
pitch corrected by Pervesser Goody in 2011
dead air & applause very slightly edited to fit a single CD by EN, April 2024
566 MB FLAC/direct link
This circulates as an 80 minute and 30 second thing, so I decided to trim some of the dead air and applause to cram it onto a single CD, for those that still do that.
I will be back once more for April, with a post in 24 hours that is very much guaranteed to kick out all the jams through the goalposts of Hell itself.
But for now let's get you all in the right place for which there can be no wrong time, as we tribute the b'day of Otis Rush, a legendary Blues deity born this day in 1934!--J.
4.29.1924 - 9.29.2018
566 MB FLAC/direct link
This circulates as an 80 minute and 30 second thing, so I decided to trim some of the dead air and applause to cram it onto a single CD, for those that still do that.
I will be back once more for April, with a post in 24 hours that is very much guaranteed to kick out all the jams through the goalposts of Hell itself.
But for now let's get you all in the right place for which there can be no wrong time, as we tribute the b'day of Otis Rush, a legendary Blues deity born this day in 1934!--J.
4.29.1924 - 9.29.2018