The 32nd Delta Blues Festival takes place Sept. 19 in Greenville with a strong lineup of Delta traditionalists, harmonica great Charlie Musselwhite and soul-blues stars including Bobby "Blue" Bland, J. Blackfoot with the Soul Children and Bobby Rush.
This year's festival will take place on the fairgrounds of the Washington County Convention Center and is scheduled to run from noon until 10:30 p.m.
With the cancellation of the San Francisco Blues Festival last year, the Delta Blues Festival is now the oldest continuously running blues festival in the nation. Last year a Mississippi Blues Trail marker was placed at "Freedom Village" outside of Greenville, where the festival was inaugurated in 1978.
Other performers will include Shirley Brown, T.K. Soul, Butch Mudbone, Eddie Cusic, T-Model Ford, Mike and Jerry Kattawar, John Horton and Homemade Jamz.
Rush, a frequent headliner at the festival, looks forward to introducing his old fans to some new material.
"I'm going to play some songs from my new CD, Blind Snake," says Rush. "It's solid as a bone. And I've modified my show a bit, made it more up to date.
"I'm doing something today that I think is as fresh as what James Brown was doing back in 1970 or what R. Kelly is doing today. I don't mean that I sound like them, but it's just that I'm in the pocket. It's going to be Bobby Rush plus."
Rush says that he's probably played at the festival 20 times, but advises fans not to take his presence or that of other festival veterans for granted.
"When you talk about me and Bobby 'Blue' Bland, you're talking about the last of a kind," says Rush. "I don't know if we'll be able to do it again, so people shouldn't miss it.
"Bringing the two Bobbys together should be a treat."
For more information, go to www.deltablues.org.
