Few performers in American music have toiled for so many years before earning widespread acclaim and respect as Bobby Rush. Rolling Stone dubbed Rush King of the Chitlin' Circuit. Martin Scorsese featured him in his 2003 documentary The Blues. In 2006 he was named to the Blues Hall of Fame, and in 2015, he was named BB King Entertainer of the Year, one week before King himself, a close friend of Rush, passed away.

But Bobby Rush is not coasting. He's plays between 100 and 200 dates a year with a big band, and he's recently signed the most significant record deal of his life. Rounder Records, a label with a long history of backing authentic folk and blues artists, has released Porcupine Meat. As the title implies, it's as rural and down-home and true to himself as anything he's ever done.

In this hour, Bobby Rush speaks about his passion for performing, his farewell to BB King and about the long, arduous journey from his youth in Pine Bluff AR to Chicago and to his years touring the Deep South as a regional favorite.

Then toward the end of the show, our time machine audio segment steps back another generation in the blues, with tape of Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Slim and Sonny Boy Williamson telling Alan Lomax what it was REALLY like to launch a music career in the 1920s and 30s in the segregated south.