Article Contributed by LPC Media
Published on 2026-09-24
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — September 23, 2026 — Craft Recordings announces an expanded deluxe edition of Porcupine Meat, the Grammy Award-winning album from the legendary Bobby Rush. At the age of 82, Rush was at the very peak of his game, with the agility of a seasoned performer who knew just the right mix of down-home funk, playful lyrics and joyful sagacity, all nourished by the deepest well of the blues and fully on display.
Available November 6, the 10th-anniversary digital album features a previously unreleased Elmore James-penned song, “Cried So Much for You,” along with live renditions of “Got Me Accused,” “I Don’t Want Nobody Hanging Around” and “Porcupine Meat,” all recorded for Philadelphia’s World Cafe radio program in 2016.
Listen to “Cried So Much for You” and pre-save Porcupine Meat (Deluxe Edition).
Finally... In 2017, after over sixty years of booking his own gigs, of sustaining relationships with almost every club owner and promoter on the chitlin’ circuit, of maintaining—and sometimes driving—his own tour bus, of producing many of his own records and then hustling them to radio stations, of leading one of the tightest bands in Southern soul music, and of consistently delivering a show that brought fans back time and again, Bobby Rush won his first Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album. Porcupine Meat was his breakthrough.
Rush and Grammy-winning producer Scott Billington, who had worked for Rounder Records for over three decades at the time of the Porcupine Meat sessions, had known one another for over three decades. In fact, Rounder Records executive Marian Levy had tried to sign Rush in the 1990s. But the time was not right. Rush knew his market and his fans, and he reckoned that he was doing just fine as an independent artist.
His hit records such as “Chicken Heads,” “Sue,” “Hoochie Man” and “Bowlegged Woman, Knock-Kneed Man” were released on a variety of national labels—Galaxy, Warner Brothers and Philadelphia International—and local labels, including Mississippi indies LaJam and Waldoxy and his own Deep Rush imprint. Then, in 2015, as Rush observed his audience becoming increasingly diverse and international, he decided it was time to make a change, so he signed with Rounder. As he commented, “I crossed over, but I didn’t cross out.” Rush had also partnered with an energetic young manager, Jeff DeLia, who made the transition seamless while staying true to Rush’s core audience.
The project began with Rush, musical director and guitarist Vasti Jackson, songwriter Johnette Downing and Billington rehearsing at Jackson’s studio in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Rush had brought his stack of yellow legal pads, filled with lyrics and ideas for songs. Jackson recorded song demos that were distributed to the New Orleans dream band that Billington had assembled for the project: guitarists Vasti Jackson and Shane Theriot; keyboardist David Torkanowsky; bassist Cornell Williams; sousaphonist Kirk Joseph of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band; and drummer Jeffery “Jellybean” Alexander.
Then, on the evening before the sessions commenced, Rush asked Billington to come to his hotel, where he played cassette demos of three more songs: “Porcupine Meat,” “Me, Myself and I” and “Nighttime Gardener.” They were ready to go. The basic tracks, and many of Rush’s final vocal and harmonica takes, were cut live with the band at the state-of-the-art—and unfortunately short-lived—Parlor recording studio in New Orleans.
Many of Rush’s records from the 1990s on had focused on a particular Southern soul sound, with programmed beats and synth horns. It was what radio and his middle-aged Black audience expected. But now, with that audience waning and aging, he was free to make a different kind of record.
“Rush was indefatigable in the studio,” said Billington. “He gave each take his all, and he was always in the moment. Bobby Rush doesn’t second-guess himself.”
After tracking, Billington and Rush added several guitar and keyboard overdubs, background vocals and a horn section arranged by New Orleans trombonist Jeff Albert.
Born in Homer, Louisiana, as Emmet Ellis Jr. in 1933, Rush and his family moved to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, when he was a teenager. There, he heard and sometimes played with blues originators such as Elmore James. In 1953, he relocated to Chicago, just as the Chicago blues sound was coalescing, and became acquainted with blues masters such as Muddy Waters, Little Walter and Jimmy Reed.
In 1971, “Chicken Heads” reached No. 34 on the Billboard R&B chart. In the early 1990s, he made one more move, this time to Jackson, Mississippi, primarily because his work was concentrated in the South. He built a large home, and in 2024 the city was proud enough of its adopted son to rename one of its streets Bobby Rush Boulevard.
The past two decades have been boom years for Bobby Rush. He has toured internationally and was featured in the movie Dolemite Is My Name with Eddie Murphy. Among dozens of awards, he received an honorary doctorate from Rhodes College. Porcupine Meat also won Album of the Year at the Blues Music Awards.
Today, at the age of 92, he continues to tour and perform with undiminished vigor. This past year, he toured with Kenny Wayne Shepherd, with whom he made his Grand Ole Opry debut. A full-length documentary about Rush’s life, King of the Chitlin’ Circuit: Bobby Rush, directed by Al Warren and produced by Taiwo Gaynor for Mississippi Public Broadcasting, premiered August 10, 2026, in Mississippi and will be distributed nationally by American Public Television to air on PBS stations beginning in late November.
Since his first Grammy Award in 2017, Rush has picked up two more, for the 2020 album Rawer Than Raw and the 2024 album All My Love for You.
Rush also played harmonica for the Delta Slim character in Ryan Coogler’s multi-award-winning film Sinners, performing the Little Walter standard “Juke,” as well as coaching actor Delroy Lindo as he developed the Delta Slim character. A line from Rush’s “Funk O’ De Funk”—“That’s as funky as a Mississippi donkey”—was used in the film’s dialogue.
Sinners went on to garner sixteen Academy Award nominations and win four Academy Awards. Rush appeared on the 98th Academy Awards show, performing “I Lied to You” with an all-star band that included Raphael Saadiq, Shaboozey, Buddy Guy, Eric Gales, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Brittany Howard, Alice Smith, D-Nice and Misty Copeland.
Rush has said, “If you live long enough, you become a legend,” but it would be difficult to find someone more befitting of the title. At its core, Rush’s music reaches back to an era in which the blues served as an outsider’s solace, as well as the foundation of so much American music to follow.
Yet there has always been a modern element to Rush, as he focuses on staying just up to date enough for his fans, who remain his priority. Porcupine Meat reflects all of this, as well as having a “serious” side that places Rush at the forefront of the blues scene today. On its 10th anniversary, it is worth celebrating anew.
Stream and learn more about Porcupine Meat (10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition).
* Previously unreleased track for the expanded digital edition
** Additional track for the expanded digital edition
