“Call me homeboy,” Rush, requests with his typical enthusiasm. “I want people to have a feeling for me like I have a feeling for my home folk. That I’m still a Louisiana bayou boy. I’m one of the alligator boys.”

Rush, 74, who closes Sunday’s edition (5:45 p.m.) of  the Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival (October 17 and 18), was born Emmit Ellis Jr. in Homer, Louisiana. The son of a pastor, the vocalist was involved with the church but somewhat surprisingly wasn’t a member of the choir. He had other things on his mind.

“As a five- or six-year-old boy I knew exactly what I wanted to do,” Rush remembers. “I wanted to be this blues man that had the ladies crawling out the windows and climbing the walls. Of course, now I’m still singing the blues and still waiting for the women to climb the walls,” he adds with a laugh. “My daddy never told me to sing the blues but he never told me not to sing the blues. That was a green light to me.”

Rush moved to Chicago in 1953 where he soon became absorbed in the blues scene and then established himself as a recording artist. The soulful and often funky vocalist left there in the 1980s to make Jackson, Mississippi his home. Despite his decades away from his state of birth, the music of Louisiana has remained a part of his style, of his sound.

“I looked up to Louis Jordan – he was a big shot – and Fats Domino. I was influenced by these guys yet I wasn’t old enough to be a part of the scene,” Rush offers. “We all did a little of the Louisiana thing because Louisiana was so big,” Rush adds speaking of his contemporaries like Little Richard and James Brown. “It all had that Louisiana rhythm.”

Another element singular to Louisiana music – especially in the southwest region – that Rush continues to utilize is referencing animals in the lyrics. “We talk another kind of talk,” the vocalist says with a chuckle. “We talk about chickens, donkeys, monkeys and alligators and all. Louisiana people talk about things that move upon on the ground. Even if you’re an old lady you must move.”

On stage, Rush too is a mover, keeping up with the fine ladies dancing on stage who have become a signature part of his shows. He keeps up a terrific pace performing some 250 to 300 dates for the last 45 years. The vocalist who prides himself as an entertainer receives invites from abroad (there’s a video online of his trip to China), is a regular at festivals and continues to do clubs.

“I still want to have my face in the place,” Rush says. “I want people to be able to hire me at an economical price. What has happened to many of the artists in my status, we’ve over-priced ourselves and put the little guys out. The little guys are the ones that got us here the mom and pops, the chitlin’ circuit, the juke joints, the chicken shacks. Those are the people and the places that got us all where we are now. Now, don’t get me wrong, I take my hat off to the big festivals, that’s good, but that ain’t where we’re from. We come from a little hole in the wall. I’m still trying to do little hole in the wall.”

In 2008, Rush was honored with three Blues Music Awards and also released a new album Look at What You’re Getting. He boasts that in his long career he has put out a whooping 249 records (singles and albums). In recent years, he finds that he’s attracting a broader audience.

“I’m crossing over with the white audience,” he says, “but I don’t want to cross out. Many guys in my position, especially Black entertainers, they cross over but they cross out. I never want to cross out from my people themselves in my personality or my music.

“I’m feeling so good to be invited back to Louisiana be­cause I’m so rooted into  it,” Rush says who, when called for this interview, expressed his excitement at just seeing the 504 area code appear on his phone. The animated vocalist promises a show full of fun that he hopes allows folks to relax and forget their troubles.

“Just focus on me and do me like a smoothing iron. You be a cloth and I’ll iron you to death.”

This article was originally published in the September 12, 2009 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper