UPDATE: Bobby Rush to play Levitt Shell on July 2nd
The blues is all about perspective. Think of how many classic songs of the genre urge you to take a step back and reflect, either on what’s plaguing you or on your good fortune. “The blues ain’t nothing but a botheration of your mind,” Blues Hall of Famer and Grammy Award winner Bobby Rush sings in “What Is the Blues?” — and just by saying it, he’s inviting us to contemplate. “I think, therefore I’m blue,” he seems to say, and every witticism, wry observation, and double entendre in his catalogue seems to confirm it.
So it’s been clear to anyone paying attention that Rush was a doctor of philosophy long before he received an honorary doctorate from Rhodes College in May. Now, with the publication of his autobiography, I Ain’t Studdin’ Ya: My American Blues Story, written with historian and composer Herb Powell (Hachette Books), it’s clearer than ever that Rush is a thinking person’s bluesman.
The title itself suggests a kind of meta-awareness. If you ain’t studdin’ someone, you’re not “studying” their hogwash. You’re not letting anyone’s claptrap worry you. In high-falutin’ terms, you’re not letting them frame the situation with whatever catastrophe (or gossip) they’ve cooked up.
It’s worth spelling out in a literal way because, as you read Rush’s book, you have to connect the dots yourself. He shows meanings by example. “I started lying about my age when I was 12, becoming 15 overnight — and I ain’t never looked back,” he writes on page one. “If you can’t give me a pass on that, then I ain’t studdin’ ya.”
It’s playful, heady stuff, and it captures Rush’s manner of speaking. Co-writer Powell wisely steps back and lets Rush’s voice unfold in true storytelling mode. And nearly every word reveals his poet’s eye for detail, the eye of the songwriter who’s wryly observed human behavior for decades.
“The sugarcane stalks were just starting to turn yellow in late September,” the book begins. “I looked at the back of Daddy’s hands as he massaged the stalk. The contrast of his boot-black skin against the greenish-yellow leaf looked like the stark colors that I only saw on the shelves of the general store.” With such vivid language, Rush is especially eloquent on the subject of his parents, and it’s clear that his father, a preacher and “a true bookworm,” played a large role in Rush’s philosophical bent.
The philosophy includes many hard-won lessons on the deadly absurdities of race in America — “White Devils, Green Money,” as one chapter puts it. Rush doesn’t paper over the injustices of growing up in the South; nor does he let such prejudices define him. He clearly ain’t studdin’ ’em; rather, like his father, he carries an indomitable dignity that has helped him weather the good times and the bad.
Yet, the man who emerges from these pages is a man of great faith and hope. Yes, his faith is of the Baptist variety, deeply informed by his father, but it’s also a secular faith in the more progressive side of the American Dream, a faith that justice is worth pursuing.
As it happens, and with impeccable timing, his more secular faith as a citizen is about to get some extra play, just a week after his book’s release. As a capstone to his many years as a visiting scholar in the arts at Rhodes’ Mike Curb Institute for Music and on the eve of his July 2nd show in the Shell Yeah! Benefit Concert Series at the Levitt Shell (originally scheduled for July 1st), Rush is releasing the single “America the Beautiful,” by Bobby Rush and the Curb Collective, featuring Eddie Cotton. The funky redo of the patriotic classic is a collaboration between the artist and students from the Curb Institute at Rhodes College that “pays tribute to our musical roots and celebrates our collective sounds as a nation.” Watch for Rush and his students to perform it live at his Levitt Shell show.