On Thursday, December 6, 2007 at 10:00am, MDA Tourism Heritage Trails Program, the Mississippi Blues Commission and the Philadelphia/Neshoba County Community Development Partnership will honor blues legend, Otis Rush.
The ceremony will take place at the newly restored train depot located at 256 West Beacon Street in downtown Philadelphia, Mississippi. Otis Rush and his family will be present.
Rush is regarded as one of the premier blues artists of the past 50 years. He has been cited as a guitar hero to many performers, bands, and fans, including Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Rush was born in a rural area near Philadelphia on April 29, 1935, according to family sources. (Biographies often give his birth date as 1934, but no birth certificate exists.) His blues came to fruition in Chicago in the 1950s, but was shaped by the hardships and troubles of his early life in Mississippi. He was raised by his mother, Julia Boyd, in a family so poor that Otis had to wear the same clothes to school every day, and when the plantation boss summoned him to work the fields, he had to forgo school. As a teenager, Rush got married and moved to Chicago, leaving Philadelphia from the train station where the Mississippi Blues Trail marker will be unveiled.
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