KELLY: That's a lot for a child to carry. But I didn't know until I got older how devastating that was. She was a Black woman when she wanted to be or had to be. And if I look back on it now when she was white, when she wanted to be or had to be. And my daddy was - when he was around, he was her chauffeur and her husband and my father when we got home. RUSH: I just remember going to school or going out someplace, she would tell people that she was babysitting me. KELLY: When we sat down to chat, I started by asking about his childhood growing up in the Jim Crow South with a Black father and a mother who passed as white. Things I used to do down in Louisiana, I don't do no more. RUSH: (Singing) We come a long way, but I got a long way to go. At 89 years old, he is out now with a new album called "All My Love For You." He grew up to be a prolific blues musician, traveling in the same circles as B.B. KELLY: Young Bobby Rush made good on that promise. KELLY: Really? You knew when you were that little that's. Everything, everything, everything gonna be all right. RUSH: And, man, Lightnin' Hopkins or Muddy Waters, somebody come on. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EVERYTHING GONNA BE ALRIGHT") At night when he goes to sleep, I would listening to John R., WLAC Radio.
RUSH: My dad had been a preacher, and he had a old radio. (SOUNDBITE OF LIGHTNIN' HOPKINS SONG, "EVERYTHING GONNA BE ALRIGHT") RUSH: There's nothing out there but a barn and a couple mules and a couple cows, you know? KELLY: It was the 1940s, rural Louisiana, halfway between Homer and Haynesville.
By the time you get that bucket of water to the workers in the field, it's time to go get another bucket of water. Sometimes you walk a half a mile to get water and come back. By the time Bobby Rush was 9 years old, he was already working in the cotton fields.īOBBY RUSH: I wasn't big enough to chop cotton like my older brothers, so I was the water boy.
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