The Official Site of Music Journalist Rush Evans

Originally published Discoveries magazine, May, 2005

“The college of musical knowledge!” shouts Peter Wolf on The J. Geils Band live album, Full House, right before launching into Otis Rush’s gritty blues tune, “Homework.”

That was 1972, and The J. Geils Band had already spent several years on the rock and roll road, which is, of course, the true home of the proverbial college of musical knowledge. They were learning from blues masters like Muddy Waters and B. B. King. Blues-based rock and roll was what that band was all about. [Read more →]

Originally published Discoveries magazine, August, 2005

Norman Mott didn’t really fit in anywhere. His eccentricities rendered him an outcast, except in a circus of freaks. He was trapped in a world that didn’t understand him, until he managed to escape conventional society (as well as that of the freaks) when he dumped the sandbags of a hot-air balloon and took to the sky on a lonesome journey. He was last seen three miles from heaven. [Read more →]

Originally published September, 2004, Discoveries magazine

“All Coons Look Alike To Me” was the cleaned-up name of a song recorded in 1902. What was the title deemed too controversial for public consumption? “All Pimps Look Alike To Me,” the p word being considered obscene at the time. “Coon,” as a word and as a subject, was not only acceptable, it was highly popular and it represented a musical category unto itself. This particular “coon song” was the ironic biggest hit written by Ernest Hogan—a black Kentuckian who often billed himself as “The Unbleached American.” [Read more →]