The Jack London is proud to present a living legend of American music and the greatest living Bluesman!

“[Blues is] the root of all music, it’s the mother of all music. If you don’t like the blues, you probably don’t like your mama.” 

Headliner highlight of the 2024 Waterfront Blues Fest and previous Editions; three-time GRAMMY winner; Blues Hall of Famer; 16x Blues Music Awards Winner; B.B. King Entertainer of the Year, blues icon Bobby Rush recently released his new single and video "I Want To" and latest critically acclaimed album "All My Love For You". Unbelievably at age 84, he exudes the energy of a 20-year-old, and is on the road for over 200 dates a year.

Bobby Rush has been making records for nearly 70 years and has appeared on more than 400 recordings, 75 career releases, and 27 studio albums to his name. In 2021, he finally told his story in his autobiography I Ain’t Studdin’ Ya: My American Blues Story, which Kirkus Reviews called, “A fascinating story well told... A richly detailed account of a bluesman’s full life." He has recorded for more than 20 labels, and estimates that he has cut over 370 songs since he first began making music.

Bobby Rush, born Emmett Ellis, Jr., grew up in rural Louisiana picking cotton on his family’s farm, tending to mules and chickens, and living in a home with neither electricity nor indoor plumbing. He built his first guitar on the side of the family’s house out of broom wire, nails, bottles and bricks. The blues, Rush recalls, provided “an escape from the cotton fields. You’d go out on Saturday night to the juke joints, but then on Monday morning you’d go back into the cotton fields to work for your bossman.”

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, Rush established an unparalleled reputation as an entertainer, incorporating what he learned from B.B. King and Muddy Waters (after arriving in Chicago in 1952) with his own inimitable style. Based in Jackson, Mississippi since the 1980s, Rush began “crossing over” to new audiences, featuring in the Martin Scorsese-produced documentary The Road to Memphis, appearing alongside Terrence Howard, Snoop Dogg and Mavis Staples in the documentary Take Me to the River, and performing on the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon along with Dan Aykroyd.