Jackson, Mississippi will be renaming one of their major streets after Grammy-winning blues musician Bobby Rush, the Associated Press reports.
A living legend, Rush is known for popularizing the “folk-funk” style.
On Tuesday, the Jackson City Council voted to rename Ellis Avenue to Bobby Rush Boulevard, which is on the north-south corridor, direct route from Interstate 20 to the Jackson Zoo.
Rush spoke to the Jackson City Council back in April about the honor when one of the members first brought up the idea of renaming the street after him.
“I remember three white guys, two riding a horse and one guy leading a horse, when my dad was getting hay out of a barn as a Black man,” Rush recalled. ‘They asked my mom, ’What are you doing with this n-word?’” He said his mother replied that she is also Black.
“She had to go into the store and prove she was a Black woman to save my daddy’s life,” he added.
Born in Louisiana, Rush lived in Arkansas and Chicago before making his home in Jackson in the 1980s.
Throughout his legendary career as a blues musician, Rush has won twelve Blues Music Awards and in 2017, at the age of 83, he won his first Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album for his LP Porcupine Meat. In 2021, he won his second Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album for Rawer Than Raw.
Rush had been inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame, and Rhythm & Blues Music Hall of Fame
