Best Traditional Blues Album and Best Contemporary Blues Album
Category 57
Best Traditional Blues Album
Any Place I'm Going
Otis Rush
[House Of Blues Records]
Category 58
Best Contemporary Blues Album
Slow Down
Keb' Mo'
[Okeh/550 Music]
First Grammy dispels blues for veteran Otis Rush
By Scott Hillis Wednesday February 24
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Otis Rush no longer has the blues. He finally has received the recognition from his peers that music critics have long argued he deserved.
The blues legend complains that his 64-year-old hands cannot massage the strings as fast as they used to, and he grumbles about ``know-nothing'' producers he blames for botching his early artistic efforts.
But after wresting back control of his career, he walked off with his first Grammy Wednesday night. And the burly riffmaster seems to have made peace with the world.
``I play the blues to make a living, I don't play 'cause I got the blues,'' Rush told Reuters the day before the Grammy awards, a day filled with nervous anticipation.
Rush's 1998 effort, ``Any Place I'm Going,'' landed him firmly on the comeback trail, winning the music industry's top accolade for best traditional blues album.
The album's 11 tracks showcase Rush's trademark throaty vocals and meandering guitar solos, seasoned with saxophones, trumpets and piano.
``This last one, it's the best I've ever done,'' Rush said of the record. ``I had a good feeling about it.'' Rush said that was because he helped produce the album, to make it clean and tight.
``Before, the other guys were running the show, and this time I was able to do what I wanted to do,'' Rush said.
Despite his lofty standing among blues greats, Rush made no secret of his yearning for a Grammy, the one prize that would finally prove he had made it. He lost in 1994 to Eric Clapton, and this year was up against John Hammond, Luther ``Guitar Junior'' Johnson and a tribute to the late Howlin' Wolf.
``I think this is the important one. It's good to be nominated, but that's not the real thing,'' Rush said.
Control means everything to Rush, whose career languished for nearly 20 years until ``Ain't Enough Comin' In'' in 1994.
Rush discovered the blues as a boy growing up in Philadelphia, Mississippi, when he was so fascinated with his brother's guitar that he tried to rig an instrument out of a bucket and a cut-up inner tube. In learning to play, Rush, a lefty, simply flipped the guitar over and picked it upside down, a peculiarity he has kept.
Several disastrous recording efforts in the 1970s left Rush angry at music companies, and his tally of albums has fallen short of other blues greats'. But the momentum of his legend and his intense live gigs in blues bars as far afield as Japan and Brazil ensured that Rush was anything but forgotten.
``Otis Rush is arguably the greatest living bluesman, with only John Lee Hooker and B.B. King at his level as distinctive and innovative stylists,'' gushes the entry in ``MusicHound Blues: The Essential Album Guide.''
Wearing his favored black cowboy hat with the flaring brim and sipping a glass of beer, Rush said everyone could relate to the blues. ``Everybody got some blues, just like everybody got a little Jesus in 'em and a little Satan. Which one you want to set loose?'' he asked, chuckling.
``As long as people live, they'll have the blues, as long as they got one problem or another. If you're hungry, that's the blues. Can't pay the rent, that's the blues.
``I'm getting older, slower, but I need speed -- that's the blues.''
Reuters/Variety
