Bobby Rush Quotes

"My daddy was a preacher,"
"He had a church in Houma and a church in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. He would preach at one church on the first Sunday and the other one on the third. As a kid, I was very involved in church, and going to church, but I never sung in the choir. I remember my first guitar, I made it out of a broom wire. I had a brick on one end and a bottle on the other end -- it was like what they used to call a diddley bow. I'd go to church on a Sunday, and the choir would be singing, and I'd be singing, but not in the choir. The ladies would be shouting and everything. We'd get out of church about one o'clock and come home, and my dad would have to go back and preach most of the time in the afternoon. I wouldn't go back to church with him. I'd play the guitar outside my house. And the same people that had been shoutin' in church, man, they'd be boogie-woogiein' with me, havin' a ball. I was about 10 or 11 years old."
Bobby Rush

"I just went through names. I started to name myself Truman Roosevelt. 'Cause it sounds good. I would listen to the sounds of names -- there was a cousin of mine who's named Bobby, and it had a ring, but Bobby's so common. I needed a name that had the first name and last name as a combination. What I mean about that, if you notice, everybody call me Bobby Rush. I tried to pick a name where you say one, you say the whole name, like one word. There's too many Bobbys, too common, and there's too many Rushes, too common, but Bobbyrush, there ain't but one of 'em. Bobbyrush. It's double entendre too, like, I'm in a hurry, I'm rushing, and quick to catch on, whatever you want to call it, slow but yet fast. But I thought about the name for a year before I adopted it for myself. Came out of the blue sky. Sonny Thompson asked me one time, 'How you like your name?' I said, 'I love it.' And nobody never -- since I adopted the name, I always tell my real name, it's no big secret, but people call me Bobby Rush, not Bobby, and I prefer people to call me Bobby Rush. 
Bobby Rush