Unfolksy Tom Rush Sings The City Blues

Interviewing Tom Rush wasn't the easiest thing to engineer. His telephone number isn't listed in any phone book, much less the Harvard alumni files; and when I called the Club 47 where he performs, the manager made me feel a little like a fourteen-year-old girl trying to get into the Beatles' dressing room.

Finally locating him, I suggested we have lunch on the CRIMSON. Rush thought this was a good idea until he remembered that he never eats lunch because he doesn't get up before 2 p.m. Contrary to my expectations, however, Rush turned out to be quite unassuming. An easy-going one-time English major, he lives inauspiciously on a Cambridge side-street with a male roommate, a shelf of Ian Fleming and an autographed picture of Judy Collins.

An unbelieving friend of mine, who levels charges of "cultural dualism" at Cambridge folksingers, spreads a story of the night Rush came through the Leverett House dining room (he did not live off-campus) and someone called out, "There goes Tom Rush in his $20 workshirt."

Rush did not remember the incident but remarked, "I wear other shirts, too. Besides, workshirts last a long time and only cost $2.89 at Central Square Army Surplus."

He added with a grin, "I don't pretend to be either illiterate or poor. I've had a lot of jobs that sound folky--but I was just a kid on vacation. I drove a truck for a while, until somebody discovered that I didn't have a license. Once I picked apples for five cents a bushel and all I could eat; I was only five at the time and didn't know any better. I reached the heights though, the summer I worked as a packager in a supermarket, a loyal member of the Amalgamated Meatcutters and Butchers Workmen of North America--A.F. of L.C.I.O.

Rush says his parents were a little skeptical when he first started singing, but "when I started making more money than my father (his father teaches at Concord Academy) they didn't say much more."

If Rush is humorously off-handed about his past, he is positively evasive about the future: "Well, right now I'm living the way I want, doing something I enjoy doing. When that stops, I guess I'll do something else." Rush has four albums released, a new contract with Electra, and his now customary Monday night mands a sizeable and quietly destand at the Club 47 that comvoted audience. If, as one of his songs says--woman don't always treat him right--things could be a lot worse.

If the freshman register is an accurate guide, when Rush arrived here fresh-polished from the halls of Groton, he was kind of pretty and awfully sincere. He sang that way, too, on his first record, Tom Rush at the Unicorn, made in 1962 when he was 21. Got a Mind to Ramble appeared a year and a half later, marking Rush's emergence as an autocthonous performer who is sensitive, controlled, and quietly versatile. Rush explains it, "I guess I did a little thinking and got involved with a few more women." In this album "Mole's Moan," a subtle instrumental written by Geoff Muldaur, contrasts with the grotesquely funny lyrics of "Big Fat Woman":

Big fat woman, get your big fat leg off of me

It feel so good, 'til it scare the hell out of me

Big fat woman, big fat leg

Every time she move, move like a soft-boiled egg

You obese woman, meat shakin on the bone

Every time she dance, skinny gal gonna lose her home

This year Rush cut two new records: Tom Rush and Blues, Songs, and Ballads. While Tom Rush is no doubt the better of the two, Blues, Songs and Ballads has personality. It captures some of Rush's best performances: a riotous rendition of the old jazz tune "Sister Kate" acquired from Eric von Schmidt and a version of "Baby Please Don't Go" that I prefer to Mose Allison's. Excepting "Rag Mama" and "Drop Down Mama," which have inordinately good lyrics much of the remainder is pedestrian.

Tom Rush is excellent and shows Rush at his most versatile. It includes "If Your Man gets Busted;" "When She Wants Good Loving," from the flip side of "Idol with the Golden Head" by the Coasters, a of "The the invariably request John," another von .

All this is very nice Rush is worth buying "The Panama Limited Rush derived from a train songs recorded by the late and White. I like what even better (a heresy cause his version is better than White's on lute scale but perhaps live in urban American and not in Mississippi 1930's. But philosophy aside, "The Panited" is a wonderful partly talked, partly about somebody leaving (a girl this time), with train effects created .

Garrulous comment to write groovy at the range of but I doubt that any coming a folk virtous to him. More critics place Rush at evolving city-blues somewhere obscurity and crass country. While purists may the motley influences gone into his style-- as disparate as the Swan Silvertones and Eric von Rush sings more good than most folksing today.

In performance he lapses into tone, appearing interested. But turned transcends-- sense of humor and timing that can make good song really

All this is very nice Rush is worth buying "The Panama Limited Rush derived from a train songs recorded by the late and White. I like what even better (a heresy cause his version is better than White's on lute scale but perhaps live in urban American and not in Mississippi 1930's. But philosophy aside, "The Panited" is a wonderful partly talked, partly about somebody leaving (a girl this time), with train effects created .

Garrulous comment to write groovy at the range of but I doubt that any coming a folk virtous to him. More critics place Rush at evolving city-blues somewhere obscurity and crass country. While purists may the motley influences gone into his style-- as disparate as the Swan Silvertones and Eric von Rush sings more good than most folksing today.

In performance he lapses into tone, appearing interested. But turned transcends-- sense of humor and timing that can make good song really

Garrulous comment to write groovy at the range of but I doubt that any coming a folk virtous to him. More critics place Rush at evolving city-blues somewhere obscurity and crass country. While purists may the motley influences gone into his style-- as disparate as the Swan Silvertones and Eric von Rush sings more good than most folksing today.

In performance he lapses into tone, appearing interested. But turned transcends-- sense of humor and timing that can make good song really

In performance he lapses into tone, appearing interested. But turned transcends-- sense of humor and timing that can make good song really